Tagged: StateImpact Florida

Community college students are needlessly assigned to remedial math classes to learn lessons they won’t use during their studies, according to new research from a Washington, D.C. group.

And the study also found that many high school graduates are not learning subjects they will need to use in their careers.

The study was produced by the Washington, D.C.-based National Center on Education and the Economy and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford isn't shy about pushing a non-traditional education agenda.

It’s based on his own life experience.

He's in favor of options that are growing in popularity, like virtual classes and charter schools.

Citing his experience at many levels of education and his work on new, national Common Core standards, the State Board of Education unanimously chose Tony Bennett as Florida's next education commissioner.

Board members said there will be no learning curve for Bennett when he takes over in Florida.

"I think Tony's experience in being a teacher, a superintendent, a coach and a statewide elected leader brought a lot more real-time, real recent experience in terms of where we need to get to," said board member Kathleen Shanahan.

Wendy Pedroso has never liked math, but for most of elementary school and middle school she got B’s in the subject.

It wasn’t until ninth grade at Miami Southwest Senior High School, when Pedroso took algebra, that she hit a wall. In particular, she struggled with understanding fractions.

“I kept getting stuck in the same place,” Pedroso, 20, recalled recently. She failed the class, and worried that she’d never get to go to college. Pedroso sought help from tutors, took algebra again over the summer and passed. She went on to graduate from high school in 2011.