Monthly Archives: September 2019

Last spring, a record number of Florida public middle school students passed the state’s Algebra 1 EOC, placing them squarely in the pipeline to bachelor’s degree level STEM careers. What now?

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Paul Cottle

Last spring, 84,000 public middle school students in Florida passed the state’s Algebra 1 end of course exam. It was the largest number of such students since the Florida Department of Education began reporting grade-level results on the exam in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How good are Florida’s high school graduates at math? Not very, according to SAT results for the state’s high school graduating class of 2019.

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Paul Cottle

Florida is one of eight states in which 100% of the high school graduating class of 2019 took the SAT, and a comparison of Florida with the other seven 100% states is immune to the criticism that perhaps only a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Whatever it is the State of Florida is doing to recruit new teachers isn’t working: Evidence from the state’s teacher certification exams.

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Paul Cottle

To earn a Florida teaching certification, an individual must pass the state’s certification exam in the subject area she or he intends to teach (or pass the elementary education exam that consists of exam sections in language arts/reading, social science, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

When my SCALE-UP classroom was closed for the first week of class by an electrical fire, I refused to teach in a lecture hall and just waited a week until my SCALE-UP room became available. Recent research on student beliefs about active learning from Harvard shows why I made that decision.

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Paul Cottle

An electrical fire closed FSU’s Carothers Hall a week-and-a-half before the beginning of the fall semester, closing off access to two of the SCALE-UP classrooms in which my colleagues and I teach our Studio Physics classes. Through the heroic efforts … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Connor Oswald, FSU Physics B.S. grad and doctoral student in FSU’s Education and Evaluation Program, is joining me on Thursday afternoon to present this week’s FSU Physics Colloquium talk.

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Paul Cottle
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Florida’s educational policies seem intentionally designed to dumb down high school. That’s why school and district level leaders and teacher-leaders are so important.

Posted on September 7, 2019 by Paul Cottle

This is what Florida’s state educational policies for high schools incentivize: Each student should learn a little algebra and have a bit of reading skill, learn to read a paragraph about biology (although actually knowing some biology is not encouraged), … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New research shows that when it comes to physics teaching, no good deed goes unpunished.

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Paul Cottle

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on student perceptions of active learning says this in the “Significance” box: Despite active learning being recognized as a superior method of instruction in the classroom, a major … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Heroic effort gets Studio Physics classes and others back into their places in stricken Carothers Hall

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Paul Cottle

Heroic efforts by FSU’s facilities and information technology staff have gotten Studio Physics classes, staff for the FSU-Teach math and science teacher preparation program and others back into the 60-year-old Carothers Hall only two and a half weeks after the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment