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The Broward School Board voted 5-4 to fire Superintendent Vickie Cartwright late Monday night, with the five members appointed to the board by Gov. Ron DeSantis ousting her. Board member Daniel Foganholi, who DeSantis appointed in May, proposed the motion to terminate Cartwright after the board heard audit reports critical of the school district. Chair Torey Alston, selected by DeSantis in August, seconded the motion. The three other board members tapped by DeSantis in August after the grand jury report release voted with Alston and Fogaholi to dismiss Cartwright — Ryan Reiter, Kevin Tynan and Manuel “Nandy” Serrano. Notably, the four women elected to the board opposed the motion. Some of them warned chaos would ensue and criticized the move as “unfair” to the new four board members who just won their elections last Tuesday and will be sworn into the board Nov. 22 — Allen Zeman, Rodney “Rod” Velez, Jeff Holness and Brenda Fam. Cartwright took the role as interim in July 2021 and became the official superintendent in February. She was also the first female superintendent in the district's 107-year history.

 

The Miami Herald

Free Reading Teachers Intervention Handbook

Recent NAEP scores illuminate the pandemic’s impact on student achievement. More students than ever before need intervention to accelerate learning back to grade level proficiency. From setting up your classroom and establishing a solid foundation to supporting special student populations and instilling a growth mindset, discover expert-backed insights and strategies to use in your intervention classroom by downloading this Free Reading Intervention Teacher’s Handbook.

 

A federal appeals court on Monday blocked the Biden administration from moving ahead with its mass student-debt cancellation program, which was also ruled unlawful by a federal judge in Texas last week. A three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a preliminary injunction against President Biden’s plan to erase hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans, at the request of six states that sued to challenge the debt relief. Notably, the six-page ruling wasn’t a decision on the legal merits of the Biden plan and turned for now on the preliminary issue of whether any of the six states had legal standing to challenge it. The state of Missouri, at least, likely has a sound basis for bringing the case, the court said.

 

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Members of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), one of the oldest and largest K-12 professional development associations, has officially approved a merger with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a nonprofit that helps K-12 teachers make the most of digital tools. The fusion of the two organizations to create a new education professional development "mega-organization" underlines how important technology has become to education. Richard Culatta, currently the chief executive officer of ISTE, will lead the new, larger organization. “How do we design schools differently? How do we design tech differently? How do we think about teacher training differently? How do we think about recruiting and retaining teachers differently? How do we think about education research differently?” Culatta says in an interview. “Those are all the questions that we’re really interested in focusing on over the next months and years.”

 

Education Week

The Walton County School District has gotten an A+ grade for the 2021-2022 school year from the Florida Department of Education, one of only 14 districts in the state to make the list of High Academic Performance. “We’re proud to be the number 3 ranked school district in the state of Florida out of 67,” Superintendent A. Russel Hughes asserts. This is the fourth consecutive year the district has been graded an A+ by the Department.

 

WJHG

The Alachua County School District is in the midst of reviewing its LGBTQ critical support guide to meet new state regulations. The move comes after the Florida State Board of Education unanimously approved a new rule that says parents must be fully informed of how bathrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms are designated and supervised, which includes whether the rooms are gender-neutral or will be separated by someone's biological sex.

 

Gainesville Sun

The Sarasota County School Board is set to approve an agenda item at today's meeting that would add two days of school to the 2022-23 school year. The days, previously marked as professional days for teachers and staff, would be January 9 and March 20.

 

Sarasota Herald Tribune

Supported by the Departments of Commerce and Labor, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a new initiative called "Raise the Bar: Unlocking Career Success" in a bid to increase and expand access to high-quality training programs for young Americans. With the support of the $120bn dollars dedicated to K-12 education in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and Perkins funding, the effort aims to strengthen the connection between K-12 education, postsecondary education, and workforce programs, to fill high-paying jobs like those created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and CHIPS and Science Act. These includes expanding access to skills-based learning and training pathways, like registered apprenticeships in key industries such as advanced manufacturing, automotive, and cybersecurity. As part of the initiative, the Department will host regional summits with students, educators, employers, and other stakeholders to learn about practices that have led to success and challenges that must be addressed.

 

Ed.gov

Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Diana Greene's annual evaluation last week featured strong commendations for eliminating ‘F’ grades from traditional schools, leading schools successfully through the pandemic, and building and promoting community partnerships. The school board transitioned this year from a qualitative evaluation system to a summative evaluation system with quantitative data tied to goals and principles of a strategic plan. Under the new evaluation system, Dr. Greene was given an overall rating of “effective.” Her commendations included implementing innovative programs, partnerships, and curriculum — including early adoption of the BEST standards — to address literacy overall and learning loss associated with COVID-19, eliminate all F-grade traditional schools, and increase the ratio of schools rated “C” or better to 93%.

 

News 4 JAX

New Mexico voters have overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that makes theirs the first state to guarantee a right to early childhood education, while directing substantial, steady funding to childcare and early education. Seventy percent of voters approved Amendment 1, which will devote a portion of money in the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund, which is linked to oil and gas development on public land, to early care and education. The money, which already funds K-12 education, won’t just be a one-time infusion, but a steady stream of about $150m a year for early childhood programs. It could even allow New Mexico to achieve a system of free childcare and preschool for all state residents.

 

Early Learning Nation

Enrollment by international students at U.S. college and university campuses rose by 3.8% to 948,519 in the 2021-2022 school year, compared with 914,095 the prior year, according to a new report by the nonprofit Institute of International Education and U.S. State Department. New-student enrollments jumped by 80%, to 261,961 in the 2021-2022 school year. An early snapshot from this school year, collected by IIE and nine partner higher-education associations, shows a continued uptick in enrollments from overseas, across all academic levels. Though the trend is positive for U.S. institutions, international-student enrollment is still far off pre-pandemic levels however. The U.S. had roughly 147,000 more students in undergraduate, graduate and nondegree courses or in postgraduate optional practical training programs in the 2018-2019 school year.

 

Wall Street Journal