by: Jeffrey Solochek| August 10, 2016| Tampa Bay Times A group of parents filed a complaint in Leon County civil court late Tuesday night, seeking to stop their children from repeating third grade under Florida’s social promotion law. The case, against the Florida Department of Education and seven school districts including Hernando and Pasco counties,…
by: Anya Kamenetz |NPR ED | June 3, 2016 Have you ever seen a school data wall? In a struggling Newark, N.J., public school, I’ve seen bulletin boards showing the test scores of each grade compared with state averages. And in one in affluent Silicon Valley, I’ve seen smartboards that track individual students’ math…
by Kristen M. Clark | Miami Herald | May 25, 2016 A state law regulating a voucher education program that helps students with disabilities appears to have a flaw that lets taxpayer dollars flow to students who later aren’t actually eligible to receive the aid. In a routine review of a sampling of state Department of…
On May 24th, Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds ruled in favor of the State and against Citizens for Strong Schools following a four week trial in March. As plaintiffs, we at Fund Education Now are disappointed Judge Reynolds felt Florida’s funding inequities are not actionable and are deeply concerned that he failed to recognize the tremendous burden the…
A new report issued by Johns Hopkins University, Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic has found that charter, virtual and alternative schools are failing to graduate huge numbers of students compared to district schools. Lynn Hatter, WFSU notes: “Researchers found 52 percent of the nation’s low-graduation-rate high schools are charter, virtual and…
Fed up with Florida’s test-obsessed public education “reform” agenda? Here’s something you can do – support the Citizens for Strong Schools vs. The State of Florida lawsuit. Every $5 makes a difference. The importance of this suit which was filed in 2009 and resulted in a trial that concluded April 8, 2016, cannot be overstated. Judge…
by: Beth Kassab|Orlando Sentinel|April 20, 2016 School choice is already well established in Florida. Students who attend failing or very low performing schools can switch to a better school and even receive a stipend to help out with transportation expenses. Those “Opportunity Scholarships” have been around since 1999. Students with disabilities can transfer to public…
photo credit: Carl Juste by Kristen M. Clark | Miami Herald| April 14, 2016 Florida’s public school students, starting in 2017-18, will be able to attend any school in the state that has space available, under a massive education bill that Gov. Rick Scott signed into law Thursday. Starting July 1, the measure also will…
by Scott Maxwell|Orlando Sentinel|4.10.16 For the past few weeks, in a small courtroom up in Tallahassee, Florida has been on trial. Yeah, the entire state. It stands accused of denying children of a proper education. The plaintiffs are parents — some from here in Orlando — who say they’re sick of underpaid teachers, punitive testing…
Governor Scott recently signed Florida’s 2016 Budget granting public schools a miserly 1% increase. What Scott and legislators called an “historic” level fell chronically short, echoing the “F” in funding Florida earned in a newly released national study. Let’s recap: The current per pupil funding amount of $7,178 is $74 more than the final 2007/08 calculation of $7,142.79. That’s…