Average teacher salaries rose 2.4% in Florida from 2003–2004 to 2004–2005.  That wasn't enough to prevent Florida from falling from 31st to 32nd nationwide.

Spending per student rose 4.9% in Florida from 2003–2004 to 2004–2005. That wasn't enough to move Florida from 41st nationwide, out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Spending rose 4.4%, or 3.7% per student, on average nationwide.

Florida's student-teacher ratio improved from 17.7 students per teacher to 16.6, moving Florida from the ninth worst to the 12th worst in the country.

On December 14, 2005, Education Week released "Room to Maneuver," a special report on the progress of the No Child Left Behind Act. Only 36% of Florida schools showed adequate yearly progress in 2004–2005. That was up from an even more dismal 24% in 2003–2004.  But was still the second lowest score in the county, ahead of only Hawaii.

Ninety-six percent of Florida teachers were deemed highly qualified. Thirty-two states had 90% or more of their teachers rated highly qualified.

Florida is one of eight states selected to receive Reading to Achieve grants of up to $50,000 to help develop literacy plans and policies to improve adolescent literacy achievement. The grants will be administered by the NGA Center for Best Practices. Just Read, Florida! will form a workgroup of practitioners, made up of Florida teachers and literacy coaches, principals, teacher preparation faculty, school district staff, and citizens, to recommend policies to implement the literacy plan.

An independent selection committee performed a thorough evaluation process, awarding grants to states that will develop a K–12 literacy plan or establish a state plan for grades four through 12 that aligns with an existing early grades literacy plan. The Reading to Achieve grant will allow Florida to refine its comprehensive reading plans for middle and secondary literacy.

Through guidance from the Department's Just Read, Florida! office, school districts and stakeholders will address adolescent literacy in a systematic and strategic manner. Since the overarching goal is to increase student achievement, the transformation of research and policy into practice will enable Florida teachers to deliver effective instruction to all students.

Just Read, Florida! is Governor Jeb Bush's statewide reading initiative that prioritizes reading in Florida's public schools. Charged with establishing reading as a core value in this state, Just Read, Florida! was launched in 2001 with the goal of every child being able to read at or above grade level by the year 2012. For more information on Just Read, Florida! visit http://www.justreadflorida.com

March is Youth Art and Music in Our Schools Month.  But the requirement to study at least one arts discipline in high school is  not part of the Florida High School Task ForceÕs recommendations or Governor Bush's A+ Plan. If these recommendations are passed by the  Florida Legislature, no study of the fine arts or performing arts would be required to graduate from High School in Florida. Yet the arts are considered  a core requirement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Let your elected representatives know that you support the arts and you vote.


Questioning a program with the lofty title Secondary Schools of National Prominence is difficult, but necessary. I have  concerns in several areas that I will share in coming weeks. First, the proposal for conversion from a 6-period to a 7-period schedule would result in less instructional time for students.  Research consistently shows that our lowest achieving students need more time. This shortfall could be remedied by slightly longer school days (e.g.,  28 minutes) or school year (e.g., 5 days). While I strongly support the goal of a nationally recognized secondary system, we can not sacrifice our lowest achieving students in the process—let's work to improve the  performance at both ends of the academic scale.


Although sales  tax revenues in Orange County are 13% more than forecasted, the cost of constructing promised facilities is up more than 45%. As a result, school officials may not have the money to do the job they promised to do. (Orlando Sentinel)

 
By the numbers—The average cost, excluding land, for an elementary school is $12M–15M, a middle school costs $22M–$25M,  and a High School $35M–$40M. It takes 2 to 3 years to plan, design and construct a new school.

The Florida Legislature is moving forward with performance-based pay. Although the Effectiveness Compensation plan is admittedly an imperfect solution, it is better than nothing—which pretty much  describes the state of merit pay for educators in Florida. Increases must be in salary, not bonuses, and based on performance. This allows the employee to borrow and build funds for retirement based on their compensation. It is troubling that compensation is so closely tied to the FCAT in the program appoved by the State Board of Education. This is the problem with high-stakes testing—when the only tool we have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. As in industry, the site-manager needs to set goals for each employee and then reward the individual based on performance against those goals.

The President's FY 2007 budget requests $54.4 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education, a decrease of $3.1 billion, or 5.5 percent, from the 2006 level. The White House says that the education budget demonstrates an effort to eliminate underperforming programs, while increasing resources that promote the competitiveness of the nation's students and the nation itself.
 
Funding for most of the major education programs was held level. A number of programs were zeroed out in the FY 2007 budget, including Even Start, Comprehensive School Reform, Gifted and Talented, STAR Schools, Ready to Teach and Arts in Education, along with a number of smaller programs. The president, as he did last year, zeroed out the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. Congress restored some of that funding for FY 2006, so the final outcome remains to be seen. This is just the opening salvo in a long process that needs to be carefully monitored.

A study of 950,000 Swedish men has shown that taller men get a better education, a researcher said. The study, to be published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, could suggest short people are discriminated against as they are expected to be low achievers, said researcher Finn Rasmussen at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.
 
"The probability of achieving higher education in later life increases linearly with height," said the study. It looked at male conscripts into the Swedish army born between 1950 and 1975 and their education for up to 27 years after their height was measured at the age of 18.
 
"Men taller than 194 cm (6 ft 4 in) were two to three times more likely to obtain a higher education when compared with men shorter than 165 cm," it added.
 
Feeding variables into the study such as social background or intelligence, as measured by IQ, altered the outcome slightly, but a clear link between height and educational attainment remained, the research said.
 
The scientists did not draw conclusions, but Rasmussen said it could be something to do with social attitudes.  "We do not know if people have negative attitudes to[wards] short people. It is possible that there could something in society about the expectations of people or attitudes to what people can perform."

With the approval of the 2006 Federal Education Budget, public education will see the first reduction in funding in ten years. An across-the-board cut of 1% was applied to federal discretionary programs to help fund the new Hurricane Education Recovery Act.

Education/Evolving's report "Real Impact: Student Opinions for a Change" is divided into two major sets of findings. The first set describes our nation's increasingly tech-savvy students and the various ways in which they use computers and the Internet. The second outlines students' frustrations with our nation's still text-dominated schools, as well as students' ideas for how adult education policy and school designers could better meet their needs.

For further information and to order free previews, click here to visit our Florida Workbooks webpage, http://www.qworkbooks.com/fla.html