-
by Gina Jordan | State Impact
The Florida Department of Education has released more FCAT scores. The results are far less painful than the preliminary writing scores we saw earlier this week.
The state announced results for ninth and tenth grade FCAT 2.0 Reading and FCAT Writing. Results from test retakes were also included.
Some observations:
• 50 percent of students in grade 10 received passing scores performing at or above Achievement Level 3 on FCAT 2.0 Reading (a decline from 60 percent in 2011 when the passing score was set within Achievement level 2).
• 81 percent of students in grade 4 earned a score of 3.0 and above on FCAT Writing, compared to 78 percent in grade 8, and 84 percent in grade 10.
• Here are some highlights from FCAT 2.0 Reading results for grades 9 and 10:
• In 2012, 52 percent of students were performing at or above Achievement Level 3 (Satisfactory).
• In 2012, 47 percent of Hispanic students were performing at or above Achievement Level 3.
• In 2012, 29 percent of students were performing at or above Achievement Level 4.
FCAT 2.0 is based on tougher standards in testing and grading. The test is more rigorous as the state transitions into the more demanding Common Core State Standards in 2015.
“We are asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have, and I am proud of their hard work,” said Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson. “Florida’s higher standards help ensure students are learning what they are expected to know so that they are prepared for college, career, and life. As Florida transitions to higher standards and higher expectations, we can expect our assessment results to reflect those changes.”
Robinson will share more information about the scores later today.
Original Source
-
by DARA KAM | The Palm Beach Post
TALLAHASSEE — State highway officials soon will begin vetting a list of 180,000 potential non-citizens who are registered to vote against a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database, The Palm Beach Post has learned.
This could resolve a sticking point between the state Division of Elections and elections supervisors for the state's 67 counties over the state's demand that supervisors start removing some of the names from their voter rolls.
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' effort will cost at least $90,000.
The news came as a surprise to elections supervisors who, at their summer meeting this week, pleaded with state Division of Elections leaders to more thoroughly scrub the records before sending them on to the local officials for further action.
Last month, the Department of State, which includes the Division of Elections, gave county elections supervisors a list of more than 2,600 voters, many of them in Miami-Dade County, potentially ineligible to vote because they may not be legal citizens. The list was generated by matching voter registration files with driver's license data.
But the information in the list included some voters who were born in the U.S. and others who are naturalized citizens. Secretary of State Ken Detzner and his staff said the Department of Homeland Security had refused to give them access to the federal database with more up-to-date immigration and citizenship information.
But the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has access to the SAVE -- "Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements" -- database, prompting county supervisors on Tuesday and Wednesday to ask the state elections staff to get DHSMV to run the records through SAVE.
Division of Elections Chief Gisela Salas and DOS Assistant General Counsel Maria Matthews told the supervisors their agency was working with DHSMV to resolve the issue but were uncertain about whether it could be done.
Full story
-
by DARA KAM | The Palm Beach Post
Incoming Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, is ramping up his staff in preparation for taking the gavel after the November elections.
Gaetz has hired Department of Revenue executive director Lisa Vickers, who worked for the agency for more than two decades, as a chief policy advisor focusing on governmental operations. Her salary will be $135,000 a year, Gaetz’s chief of staff Chris Clark said this morning. Clark will remain in the same post after Gaetz takes over as president.
Vickers, whose current annual salary as the agency chief is $120,000, submitted her resignation – effective July 1 – yesterday to Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet.
And, in what is sure to be good news for Capitol reporters: Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon‘s spokeswoman Katie Betta will move across the rotunda to take the same role in Gaetz’s administration. Betta’s resume also includes a stint as spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida.
Original story
-
by Kevin McCaney | Government Computer News
A sure measure of Android’s growing popularity as a mobile operating system can be found in the amount of attention hackers and cyber criminals pay it. And in recent months, that’s been a lot of attention, according to security company F-Secure’s latest "Mobile Threat Report."
In the past year, the number of new families and variants of malware for Android have nearly quadrupled, from 10 to 37, while the number of malicious Android application package files skyrocketed from 139 to 3,063, a pace the report calls "staggering."
Among other key finding in the report, Trojan horses are by far the most common mobile threat, and, in the first quarter of 2012, the number of mobile threats motivated by profit dwarfed those with other purposes.
Full story
-
by Rep. Will Weatherford Speaker-Designate | Florida Voices
For the past several years, elected officials around the nation have been seeking ways to stimulate job growth as our nation’s economy continues to recover. While economic development incentives, a lower tax burden and business-friendly regulatory system are helpful; there is perhaps no more effective tool in a state’s economic toolbox than a quality education.
In today’s economy, the greatest predictor of whether you can get a job is your level of education. Our nation’s unemployment rate for Americans with less than a high school diploma is 12.6 percent. For high school graduates with no college education, it’s 8 percent. And for college graduates, it’s 4.2 percent. That means college graduates are more than twice as likely to find a job in today’s economy than non-high school graduates. Clearly, an investment in new learning opportunities is an investment in our economic future.
Florida has a history of doing what it takes to achieve success in the classroom, and in the 21st Century, that now includes embracing new ideas founded on merit, excellence, innovation and creativity. We must push the envelope and explore what Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen calls the “disruptive innovations” to the system. We must learn to adapt and perform at the speed of light – a challenge like we have never seen before.
Consider that the top six jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. That means today’s college students are learning skills that may not be in demand when they enter the workforce. With the costs of college on the rise and the global economy more competitive than ever, this is simply unacceptable. Our universities must do better by innovating and embracing new ways to deliver tomorrow’s skills faster, more inexpensively and efficiently. Businesses are forced to adapt and innovate and so too should our higher education system. Student demand and market supply are already way ahead of us. It’s time for us to embrace technology and challenge the antiquated notions about how our students should be educated.
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently announced they will be offering courses online for free and other schools will likely follow. While some Florida schools offer courses online, we need a college that specializes in online learning. In Tallahassee, we have started a conversation about how Florida will become a national leader in online education and I believe that includes creating the nation’s first online public university.
Soon, the Board of Governors will begin researching and shaping a framework for an online university. We’ve already developed the first online K-12 school, Florida Virtual School, with more than 122,000 students who are currently receiving a high quality education at a fraction of the cost. It’s time to bring the same principles and technology, the way students are learning today, to our university system.
The current model in Tallahassee is broken and allowing politicians to push pet projects for their alma mater or local university is not what we need to increase global competitiveness. Instead, we need to develop a system where certain universities can play to their strengths and complement one another. Having a university solely focused on reaching students in rural and urban communities across Florida and around the globe would take us to newer heights of excellence, access, and cost effectiveness; three worthy goals for our state. Whether we like it or not, higher education is changing. We can embrace the change or stay behind the curve.
Florida is a leader in education reform and we must continue to push the envelope. I envision a state where everyone is rewarded for their hard work – in the classroom, in the workforce and in the broader economy. Improving education is the key to moving Florida forward; embracing technology to meet the much-needed demand is a common sense solution that should be considered. As the late Steve Jobs said, “we must invent the future.”
Will Weatherford is the Speaker-Designate of the Florida House of Representatives, a Republican and a state representative from Wesley Chapel.
Original Piece
-
by Megan Anderson | Orlando Business
Orlando added 8,600 jobs during the past 12 months, according to a new On Numbers analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
In one year, Orlando went from 1,011,400 non-farm jobs to 1,020,000 jobs – a .85 percent increase. Of the 100 metropolitan areas included in the analysis, Orlando ranked No. 38.
New York City and Stockton, Calif., posted the biggest year-to-year gains. The New York area, which extends into the neighboring states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, enjoyed the largest increase in raw numbers, adding 112,500 jobs. Stockton posted the biggest jump in relative terms, expanding its employment base by 5.1 percent.
Click here to see the breakdown for all 100 markets.
Original story
-
by Chris Sweeney | Broward Palm Beach New Times
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether Herschel Vinyard, secretary of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, fabricated part of his resume and has asked Vinyard's counsel to clarify various discrepancies surrounding his employment history.
It seems like a lose-lose situation for Vinyard, who was appointed to the position by Gov. Rick Scott in January 2011.
If Vinyard's resume is up to snuff, then he might be in violation of conflict-of-interest clauses within the federal Clean Water Act. If he fudged his past work experience, then he made false statements to a federal agency, which is a crime.
The fiasco started in 2011, when the environmental groups PEER and the Florida Clean Water Network contacted the EPA and asserted that Vinyard's appointment violated a section of the Clean Water Act that bars the "appointment of any state decision-maker on pollution discharge permits in federal quality water programs who has during the previous two years received a significant portion of his income directly or indirectly from permit holders or applicants of a permit."
The groups pointed out that Vinyard had worked for BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards and was the chairman of the Shipbuilders Council of America, an industry group that represents more than 100 companies.
The resume Vinyard submitted for the DEP post, which can be found here, shows that he was director of business operations at the unit of BAE Systems where he "counseled the company on major environmental permitting decisions," among other duties.
When the EPA pursued this point, Thomas Beason, general counsel for DEP who's handling the matter on behalf of Vinyard, said Vinyard only worked for BAE for two weeks and that he did not receive a significant amount of income from the company. Beason said that Vinyard didn't make money as chair of the Shipbuilders Council. He also said that the BAE unit Vinyard worked for and other companies listed on his resume didn't hold the permits in question.
Full story
-
by Aggregation Desk | The Florida Current
A voicemail from Jim Greer to former Gov. Charlie Crist led Crist to report that he feared the former chair of the Republican Party of Florida was trying to extort money from him, according to a story in the Tampa Bay Times.
About a year after Greer was indicted on felony charges of organized fraud, theft and money laundering, he left a voice mail and text message on Crist's cell phone:
"Listen I just wanted to call and tell you something as a man, not like these other people that have put knives in your back and never had the courtesy of calling you directly or talking to you." He went on to say their friendship was over and that he was about to lose his house.
Crist called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to report the messages, now evidence in Greer's criminal trial, scheduled to begin July 30 in Orlando. Greer is accused of taking $200,000 from the GOP.
Greer reacted to the report Wednesday in a statement to The Miami Herald saying, "As for the extortion claim, it's ridiculous. I was simply telling him man to man that our friendship was over..."
Original story
-
by SUSAN SALISBURY | Palm Beach Post
JUNO BEACH — The cost of increasing the capacity at Florida Power & Light Co.'s four nuclear reactors has escalated to $3 billion, a jump of roughly $600 million since the company's estimate last year. That's double the original estimate.
"The amount for these uprates is increasing at an alarming rate," said Florida public counsel J.R. Kelly, the state's advocate for utility customers.
FPL is increasing the generating capacity to its existing reactors at its St. Lucie nuclear plant on Hutchinson Island and its Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade County. About three-fourths of the project will be completed by the end of this year. So far, 31 megawatts has been added, with 336 megawatts more coming online this year, and the final 123 megawatts in 2013.
In 2009, FPL told the Florida Public Service Commission that the two projects would cost $1.5 billion. Since then the project's capacity has increased from 450 megawatts to 490 megawatts, enough to power 311,000 homes.
The latest cost estimate range is $2.95 billion to $3.15 billion, up from last year's estimate of $2.32 billion to $2.48 billion, Terry Jones, vice president of nuclear uprates, said in April 27 testimony filed with the Florida Public Service Commission.
A year ago, 36 percent of the engineering had been completed, but now it's 90 percent complete, Jones said. The higher cost reflects increased Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements, design evolution, and construction and implementation logistics, he said.
On average, more than 3,400 people, nearly all in Florida, are being employed throughout 2012 to accomplish the uprates, Jones said.
Customers will pay for the uprates over the units' lifetimes.
"Simply put, the additional cost mainly reflects that more engineering, labor and supervision work is needed to complete the installation of the upgraded equipment in the plants," FPL spokesman Mike Waldron said.
FPL estimates that the uprates will save customers a total of $3.8 billion in fossil fuel costs over the units' lifetimes, with $114 million in savings in the first full year of operation. Carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by an estimated 32 million tons.
Public counsel Kelly said he argued before the PSC last year that FPL uses an incorrect methodology in its annual feasibility analysis.
"It ignores or excludes sunk costs, those that have already been spent, and only looks forward," Kelly said. "With that type of methodology, a project may always look feasible and could be $5 billion. The commission did not agree with our argument. We can bring it back to the commission."
For 2013, FPL is seeking $151 million in advance nuclear costs from customers, down from $196 million this year. If the PSC approves the request, the typical 1,000-kilowatt-hour monthly customer bill for nuclear costs that customers pay before construction is completed would decrease by 51 cents from $2.20 to $1.68 next year. In addition, that customer will pay $2.24 a month for the completed uprates.
If a proposed base rate increase is approved, the typical customer will pay a net increase of $1.41 a month beginning in June 2013.
James Whitlock, an attorney for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said the escalating costs are typical of nuclear uprates and new reactors, and it has told the PSC it needs to "stop the bleeding for Florida consumers."
"We've been right. Every year they've been going up," Whitlock said.
The alliance, which is leading a challenge to the constitutionality of a statute that allows advance recovery for certain nuclear costs before the Florida Supreme Court, said the statute does not give adequate direction. The statute applies to both new reactors and uprates.
"It is being treated as a blank check. That is not what it was ever intended to be," Whitlock said.
Jerry Paul, a former reactor engineer and the former deputy administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said, "The low operating costs make nuclear the cheapest base load form of energy even though construction costs are higher. If you want cleaner air and you want cost effective electricity, nuclear power has to be part of the mix."
Original story
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- State officials say Florida's unemployment rate dropped to 8.7 percent in April, but that was largely due to people leaving the labor force.