Education and state--Florida

For nearly 60 years, politicians and policymakers have sought to improve the educational outcomes of students across their states and the country through legislated policies and programs. Despite their efforts, little progress has been made in improving the outcomes of the nation’s most vulnerable students. The achievement gap persists, and poverty divides the haves from the have-nots, especially in reading achievement.
This study was designed to explore the impact of increasing time allocated for reading instruction on student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA). Additional research questions were also included to determine if other factors impacted student achievement in ELA. The objective of this study was to determine if adding instructional time for any number of years improved student outcomes in reading.

The accountability era has produced school grading systems that purport to evaluate school effectiveness yet utilize hegemonic formulas that label low-scoring schools and neighborhoods, depriving them of incentive monies tied to their school grades. This quantitative study analyzed the publicly available data of 106 elementary schools in one large urban district in Florida through the lens of Effective Schools Research. Significant findings revealed that the work of Edmonds (1982) and Lezotte (1991) supports a growth model when it comes to school-based assessments and outcomes. The schools in the sample earned cumulative incentive rewards over time that were negatively correlated with the schools’ average percentage of economically disadvantaged students. The lower a school’s average percentage of economically disadvantaged students, the higher the school's average grade. This finding held true for the “A”-graded schools with the lowest average economically disadvantaged percentages from 1999 to 2019. This study also found that the schools in the sample with the larger average percentages of economically disadvantaged students would exhibit higher school grades if calculations using only their language arts and math gains were used. These findings have implications for how we might rebuild the assessment of our neighborhood schools and transform the policy structures that contribute to social and educational inequities.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of Florida Senate Bill 1720 on student performance in Mathematics. Prior to its enactment, placement testing was mandatory in the State of Florida. The results determined if a student was required to enroll in any developmental courses prior to enrolling in college-level Mathematics courses. For many students, particularly those at the State College level, this extended the number of required courses, lengthening the path to completion for a volume of students. The results over time proved a costly burden on institutions that serve populations of students not prepared to perform at the college-level, as well as a major obstacle for student degree completion.

This mixed-methods study was situated within one Florida county and investigated the impact of a newly initiated end-of-course Civics examination upon middle school teachers’ instruction and student learning. High-stakes testing is often a polarizing issue regarding the perceived benefits and challenges for both students and teachers. Participating teachers completed surveys comprised of Likert-type items and short-answer questions inquiring about their instructional choices and resulting student learning with and without the presence of the Civics EOC examination. A subset of department instructional leaders were interviewed providing additional qualitative data with a wider scope due to their dual positioning as teachers and as links between the social studies teachers at their school and the School District of Sunshine County. The analysis of the data reveals that while civics teachers value the increased prestige brought to the subject area with the introduction of the end-of-course examination, the heightened importance of standards has a resulted in a focus on breadth of content coverage rather than depth of learning, leading to content-centered rather than student-centered classroom environments and subsequent loss of voice and choice in curricular decisions for teachers and students. Teachers feel intense pressure to cover the curriculum, raise test scores and engage in test preparation; they question the soundness of the examination to adequately assess the learning of all students and to capture the essence of civics education: active engagement. Teachers’ perspectives on the effect of the examination on teacher practice and student learning were framed within contextual factors that emerged in the analysis: the abandonment of the policy to introduce foundational content at the elementary level; a lack of communication among stakeholders, but particularly between state-level decision makers and local educators; and an absence of the ongoing scaffolding required to create a strong foundation of knowledge and skills to foster continued growth. Consequently, the recommendations of this study of educators’ voices on the policies that impact their profession are directed primarily at state level policy makers and future researchers regarding the flow of communication, inclusion of teacher feedback, continued teacher development, addition of a participatory component, and curricular alignment.

Teachers’ beliefs about the reading standards as well as curriculum materials used
to address the standards affect how teachers implement the standards, which further
impacts student learning. In this case study, 26 middle grades (6-8) reading teachers each
participated in a 90 minute one-on-one audio-taped interview consisting of 33 openended
questions. Analysis was conducted on the teachers’ beliefs regarding the state’s
academic reading standards, content materials the teachers used to teach reading, the
teachers’ self-reported instructional practices, and how the selected teachers understand
the relationship between their beliefs and instructional practices. Likewise, content
analyses were performed using documents such as lesson plans, classroom assignments,
and assessments that were collected from the participants. There were six major findings
in this study. The first finding indicated that participants had mix feelings regarding the
standards; they were viewed by some teachers as guides and building blocks while others viewed the standards as not being beneficial to have in the classroom. The second finding
depicted that participants had mixed experiences of collegial planning; some shared that
collegial planning assisted their efforts with understanding the standards while others
indicated that collegial planning could be improved. The third finding portrayed that the
curriculum materials used to teach reading were both district-given and supplemental.
Due to a lack of rigor with the district-given resource, some participants opted to use
supplemental resources that better aligned to the expectation of the standards. The fourth
finding addressed both teacher and student challenges faced by the participants. Teacher
challenges included the fast pace and implementation of the standards while student
challenges included lack of motivation and student misbehavior. The fifth finding
highlighted how participants viewed the relationship between their beliefs and
instructional practices. Participants discussed the impact, or lack thereof, of the
implementation of the shifts in the standards. The sixth and final major finding of this
study emphasized that professional development was needed to teach the reading
standards. As a result of these findings, implications include providing teachers with
professional development opportunities that target practical ways on how to implement
the shifts of the standards in day-to-day instruction and instructional strategies to enhance
student motivation.

Recent literature on high school graduation and drop out have shifted the focus
from identifying causes of drop out to identifying students who are at risk of dropping
out. The Early Warning Systems (EWS) used to identify students seek to use existing
data to predict which students have a greater risk of dropping out of school so that
schools can intervene early enough to reengage students. Despite widespread attention to
individual indicators, there is no defined system of indicators proven to be generalizable
across grade levels, specifically at the elementary grade levels. Drawing on the tenets of
Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory, the purpose of this quantitative
research study was to determine to what extent the State of Florida’s EWS model can
predict on-time cohort graduation in grades 3-8.
Using a retrospective longitudinal sample, this study first established that
Allensworth and Easton’s (2005) grade 9 on-track indicator was predictive of dropout,
finding that 92.2% of students who were on-track in grade 9 graduated on time. Using
this grade 9 indicator as a proxy for graduation, this study then examined the effectiveness of the Florida EWS at predicting on-track status. Through this a priori link
to graduation, this study was able to shed light on predictive indicators in the elementary
and middle school years without the temporal distance between the predictor grade levels
and graduation typically associated with longitudinal studies of this nature. The findings
that the Florida EWS successfully predicted 71.6% of future on- and off-track status
confirms its use as a predictive indicator of students at risk of not graduating. The
academic, behavioral, and engagement indicators found in both Allensworth & Easton’s
(2005) grade 9 on-track indicator and the Florida EWS were found to successfully
capture the molar activities of students within the school ecological system and were
successful at providing an indication of a student’s development in terms of being on
track to graduate on time from high school.

While classroom teachers report alarming rates of unpreparedness, and even
unwillingness to include diverse populations in the classroom, our nation is continuing
along a trend started in the 1990s to include students with disabilities (SWD) in general
education settings. This quasi-experimental research study uncovered the impact of
completing the required continuing education course in teaching SWD course mandated
by Florida Senate Bill 1108 ([SB1108]; The Florida Senate, 2013b), which amended
Florida Statute 1012.585 (3) (e) (Process for Renewal of Professional Certificates, 2017)
on perceived teacher ability to implement inclusion practices. An online version of the
Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices (TEIP) scale developed by Sharma, Loreman,
and Forlin (2012) was utilized, along with demographic and experiential factors for
classroom teachers in the study district to examine their self-efficacy toward inclusion.
Analysis of the data indicated statistically significant differences in mean TEIP scale
scores for exceptional student education (ESE) and general education teachers. Data analyses revealed that almost half of the teachers had a negative view of and
did not perceive any benefit from the course. While ESE and general education teachers
had similar preparation needs, they also reported areas of concern specific to their subset.
Overall, the course did not provide enough continuing education in the areas most needed
by the participants. SB1108-mandated course completion was also not found to be an
indicator of higher teacher self-efficacy for the majority of teachers. Analysis of the
differences in TEIP scale scores found that only elementary school teachers benefited
from completing the course, while it had the opposite effect for general education high
school teachers and no significant effect for ESE teachers. Differences in TEIP scale
scores from demographic and experiential factors accounted for 13% of the variance in
the population and was not significant for the ESE teacher subset. One percent or less of
the variance was attributed to completion of the required continuing education course.
Implications include reviewing the legislation’s effectiveness for teachers in
different areas and grade levels, hiring and evaluation decisions based on TEIP scale
scores of applicants and employees, and designing more meaningful continuing education
courses. Recommendations for state legislatures, school administrators, designers of
continuing education courses, and for future research regarding improvement of teacher
self-efficacy for inclusive practices are offered.