Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Scott PowersDecember 4, 2017

Republican state Rep. Rene Plasencia is pushing a bill that would return control to local school boards to decide how to evaluate teachers. Plasencia, of Orlando, is rallying support for his House Bill 427, introduced in late October and referred to the House PreK-12 Innovation Subcommittee, PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee, and Education Committee. The bill would allow […]

Julie DelegalMarch 4, 2015

Rep. Debbie Mayfield, R-Vero Beach, has been listening to parent complaints about high-stakes testing. Mayfield, like most parents and educators, is so frustrated with the entire standards-based accountability system that she wants to give entire school districts the ability to “opt out” of standards-based tests altogether. Judging from an action alert obtained from a Tea […]

Julie DelegalMarch 2, 2015

Part one of this two-part series examines one senator’s move to lower the stakes in Florida’s high-stakes education accountability system, and how the stakes got so high in the first place. For several years, parents and teachers have bristled against the centerpiece of education reform in Florida. “Teacher accountability” is the political term for it, but what […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 22, 2015

When I met Edith for the first time and heard her stories about her kindergarten class, I realized that she is the poster child for what is happening in Florida education at the grass roots level. She is a slight woman in her early 30s, originally from Venezuela, an immigrant like most her students, who […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 15, 2015

The ironically named Student Success Act of 2011 mandated something called the Valued Added Model, which attempts to quantify each teacher’s influence on each student. The complicated formula purports to predict what a student’s normal gain scores on a standardized test will be from one year to another. If a student gains more or loses […]

Tag: teacher evaluations

Rene Plasencia bill seeks to turn teacher evaluations back to school boards

Julie Delegal: Tweaking the tests – Common Core pushback

Julie Delegal: Tweaking the tests – what to watch in education legislation

Catherine Martinez: Welcome to the Common Core kindergarten

Catherine Martinez: 'Value Added Model' of no value to teaching