The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending about $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. ...more

November 1, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. ...more

October 26, 2009

Some schools deemed to be failing in one state would get passing grades in another under the No Child Left Behind law, a national study found. ...more

February 19, 2009

As students throughout Florida settle into the new school year, the time has come for lawmakers and education policymakers to address the looming gifted education crisis. ...more

September 13, 2008

SEBRING — Wearing goggles and protective aprons, Sebring High School chemistry students grind up Tums and Rolaids tablets with a mortar and pestle. The heartburn remedies are harmless, but the students are using these antacid granules to neutralize hydrochloric acid. It's called titration, which is the process of gradually adjusting the dose of a medication until the desired effect is achieved. State educators are near the end of the process of updating the academic science standards for grades kindergarten through 12. After receiving an "F" grade in a 2005 study, new state science standards have been drafted and could be approved next month. It's a good thing that Florida is reworking its science standards, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The current documents are reasonably well organized but sorely lacking in content. ...more

December 16, 2007

SEBRING — The Thomas B. Fordham Institute's study cited the following error in the current standards: a second-grader, for example, "... knows that a thermometer measures the amount of heat absorbed by an object." This is careless and false, the study stated: a thermometer measures temperature, or better, changes in temperature, not the amount of heat absorbed. ...more

December 16, 2007