(Mrs.) Jobs on Education

“The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago” ~ Laurene Powell Jobs

The Billionaires Club has been greatly concerned with our students’ education enough so to put their own money behind making formative change. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been working advocating for education.

Now, according to The New York Times, Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer Steve Jobs is also coming forward by initially committing $50 million to the advocacy organization she founded, The Emerson Collective. The Emerson Collective is an advocate for policies concerning education and immigration reform, social justice, and environmental conservation.

In an interview with the New York Times Mrs. Jobs said, “The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago”, she went on to say, “Things are not working the way we want it to be working. We’ve seen a lot of incremental changes over the last several years, but we’re saying, ‘Start from scratch.’ ”

Mrs. Jobs told the Times first assignment is named XQ: The Super School Project, the project will bring teams of educators, students, as well as leaders from other sectors, to develop highly effective public high school; altering school schedules, curriculums and technologies. Then during 2016 a group of judges will pick as many as 10 of the best ideas to fund.

This is not Mrs. Jobs first advocacy efforts for education, for years Mrs. Jobs funded College Track, which assisted economically disadvantaged students in the United States to apply for and be successful in college.

Apple has always had education at the core of their product development and so it is exciting that Mrs. Jobs will be taking a role in the future of our public schools. In addition of all the grade levels, it is high school that I feel needs an improvement in technology integration into curriculum.  Mrs. Job’s project recognizes this and hopes to positively improve it.

I will be eagerly watching what XQ: The Super School Project comes up with for our students. Stay tune…

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Best of Luck Student (and Teachers) taking ACT test today

I dropped my son off at high school today to take his ACT test. There was more than a half a dozen teachers that were in line holding pencils getting ready to take the college preparatory test. I am impressed by these teachers who have been willing to sit for this assessment in hopes of scoring in the 80th percentile so that they may in part qualify for the Florida Best and Brightest Scholarship merit pay bonus the state of Florida’s legislators allocated this year. The State legislate chair allocated $44 million for teachers to receive bonuses on scores they took for a college preparatory test.

I wish them all the very best of luck!!

For a background on the Florida Best and Brightest Scholarship see Chronicle Editorial;
https://thomastalks.org/2015/08/12/chronicle-agrees-in-op-ed-another-state-misstep-in-education-tied-to-focus-on-high-stakes-testing
or
https://thomastalks.org/2015/08/08/7146/

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Times: latest on Florida’s Best and Brightest bonus

Transcripts are now okay… CRHS Teacher sits for ACT

Citrus County Schools received an email today from the Florida Department of Education on our challenge to the FL-DOE’s Technical Assistance Paper which stated, “An official record is the original score report from ACT or the College Board (SAT)”, and implied that official school transcripts would not meet the FL-DOE’s definition of “official record”.   Today’s email from FL-DOE stated, “Records or transcripts are acceptable as official documents“.  This is a far more common sense approach and I am pleased with FL-DOE’s replay to Citrus Schools challenge on this issue.

In addition, I encourage you to read the article below by the Tampa Bay Times about Citrus County’s own Tim Byrne a Crystal River High School chemistry teacher who will be taking the ACT test with his students this weekend in hopes of scoring high enough to received the Florida’s Best and Brightest bonus.

We wish him much success on Saturday– regardless of what score the ACT determines– Mr. Byrne is 100% in my book for what he does everyday in his classroom, not just how he does on a college entrance assessment.

Read the article at: http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/whats-the-latest-on-floridas-best-and-brightest-bonus/2244959

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