Southeast
How teacher autonomy helps students and staff succeed at this top Florida school
When teachers at A.D. Henderson School, one of the top-performing schools in Florida, are asked how they succeed, one answer is universal: They have autonomy.
Nationally, most teachers report feeling stressed and overwhelmed at work, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teachers last fall. Waning job satisfaction over the last two decades has accompanied a decline in teachers’ sense of autonomy in the classroom, according to a recent study out of Brown University and the University of Albany.
But at this South Florida school, administrators allow their staff high levels of classroom creativity — and it works.
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A public school of 636 kindergartners to eighth graders on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, Henderson scored in the top 1% to 3% in every subject and grade level on the state’s latest standardized tests, with the exception of sixth grade math, where students scored in the top 7%. In almost every subject, 60% or more of Henderson students score significantly above the state average.
“There is a lot of our own individual input allowed in doing the activities that we want to do in the classroom,” said Vanessa Stevenson, a middle school science teacher finishing her third year at the school. She plans to start an equine medicine class next fall even though the school has no stables — she believes she will find a way.
“It’s a bit of trial and error because there’s nothing being handed to you saying, ‘Do it this way.’ You just have to figure it out,” she said.
Math interventionist Jessica Foreman, center, works with a small group of first graders at A.D. Henderson School in Boca Raton, Florida, on April 16, 2024. Teachers at the K-8 public school, one of the top-performing schools in Florida, say their autonomy helps them succeed. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Joel Herbst, superintendent of Henderson and its sibling FAU High School, calls the faculty his “secret sauce” and argues the school’s success can be duplicated anywhere — if administrators cede some control.
When that happens, he said, teachers create hands-on programs that help students “not only show their understanding, but gain more depth.”
“Give (teachers) the freedom to do what they do best, which is to impart knowledge, to teach beyond the textbook,” he said.
Portland State University education professor Madhu Narayanan, who studies teacher autonomy, said independence has a high correlation to faculty morale and success. But autonomy must be paired with administrative support.
“It can’t be, ‘Here is the classroom, here is the textbook, we’ll see you in six months.’ Those teachers have tremendous autonomy, but feel lost,” he said.
‘THAT LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA’
Henderson emphasizes science, technology and math, using arts and humanities to help with those lessons. About 2,700 families enter a lottery each year for the 60 spots in Henderson’s kindergarten class and openings in other grades. There is no screening — some children entering Henderson are prodigies, most are average learners and some have learning disabilities like dyslexia.
The only tweaking is to comply with a Florida law requiring the student population at university-run “laboratory” schools match state demographics for race, gender and income. Because families apply to attend, parental involvement is high — an advantage Herbst and his staff concede.
Selected kindergartners are tested months before arrival so any needs can be immediately addressed.
“Some of them come in reading and some know five letters — and it is not just reading, but all subjects,” said Lauren Robinson, the elementary program’s vice principal. “We are going to provide every opportunity to close those gaps before those gaps grow and grow, instead of waiting until a certain grade level and saying, ‘Now we’ll try to close them.’ It’s Day One.”
In Jenny O’Sullivan’s art and technology classroom, kindergartners learn computer coding basics by steering a robot through a maze. Fourth and fifth graders make videos celebrating Earth Day. Students learn design by building cardboard arcade games like Skee-Ball for their classmates. Legos teach engineering.
While her new classroom has the latest technology, she insists such classes can be taught anywhere if the teacher is allowed creativity.
“My grandmother is from Louisiana and there’s a (Cajun) saying: ‘Lagniappe,’ that little something extra,” O’Sullivan said. “I get to be the lagniappe in (the student’s) education. Could you do without it? Yes. But would you want to? No.”
Working in small groups while dressed in white lab coats and goggles, the sixth graders in Amy Miramontes’ Medical Detectives class solve a mystery daily. They have examined strands of rabbit muscle under a microscope, using safe chemicals to determine what neurological disease each animal had. They have tested fake neurotoxins to determine which ailments afflicted their imaginary patients.
Miramontes hopes the class not only piques the students’ interest in medicine, but implants knowledge needed in two years when they take the state’s eighth-grade science test.
“They’re always learning by having their hands on something,” Miramontes said. “If they mess up, it’s OK — we start over. But then we learn a great life lesson that we have to be very diligent.”
Marisha Valbrun, 12, took Medical Detectives because she might want to be a doctor. She’s learned that while science is challenging, by seeking assistance she can overcome obstacles.
“I feel like if I just ask any person in this room for help, they can give you that right answer,” she said.
USING ART TO TEACH SCIENCE
Even at a school where teachers exude enthusiasm, elementary art teacher Lindsey Wuest stands out — she can’t stand still while describing how her lessons center on science.
On this afternoon in her Science as Art class, Wuest and a visiting artist are showing third graders how to make clay bobblehead dolls of endangered species — while also teaching the chemistry of why glazes change color in the kiln.
“Hopefully those students who love art can also develop a love of science,” she said. “Project-based learning sticks with the kids for longer.”
Third grader Maximus Mallow said that by working on his leopard bobblehead, he learned how the animal’s camouflage works.
“We have fun while we create stuff about science,” the 9-year-old said.
Henderson’s success leads to grants — and nowhere shows that better than the middle school’s drone program, which recently won a national competition in San Diego.
Henderson’s drone teams have a room to practice flying the 3-inch-by-3-inch, four-rotor devices through an obstacle course, plus flight simulators donated by the local power company.
The drone program is a chance to compete while using the physics and aeronautics learned in the classroom, teacher James Nance said. While expensive equipment is a benefit, Nance said, drone classes can be taught on a shoestring. At a previous school, he made a flying course out of PVC pipe and balloons.
Eighth grader Anik Sahai pulls out his cell phone in Stevenson’s science classroom, an act at Henderson that usually means a trip to the office. But he is demonstrating an app he created that uses the camera to diagnose diabetic retinopathy, an eye disease that is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. It took first place in the state’s middle school science fair and is being considered for commercial use.
The 14-year-old credits his success to his years at Henderson, beginning in the preschool program.
“The teachers here, they’re amazing,” he said. “They’ve been trained on how to get us to the next level.”
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- Arthur Grand Technologies, a tech firm in northern Virginia, has agreed to pay $38,500 to settle claims of discrimination related to a job listing.
- The Justice Department said the company posted a job listing specifying a preference for white, US-born candidates.
- Arthur Grand Technologies attributed the posting to a “disgruntled recruiter in India,” claiming it was intended to embarrass the company.
A northern Virginia tech company is paying $38,500 to settle claims that it discriminated by posting a job listing seeking white, U.S.-born candidates for an opening as a business analyst.
The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had reached a settlement agreement with Arthur Grand Technologies, an information technology firm in Ashburn, Virginia.
The company listed the business analyst job online in March 2023, specifically seeking “Only Born US Citizens (White) who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX (Don’t share with candidates).”
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“It is shameful that in the 21st century, we continue to see employers using ‘whites only’ and ‘only US born’ job postings to lock out otherwise eligible job candidates of color” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in a statement. “I share the public’s outrage at Arthur Grand’s appalling and discriminatory ban on job candidates based on citizenship status, national origin, color and race.”
A view of the lecture is seen at the Department of Justice on April 18, 2019, in Washington, DC. A northern Virginia tech company is paying $38,500 to settle claims that it discriminated by posting a job listing seeking white, U.S.-born candidates for an opening as a business analyst. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
In the settlement agreement, the company said the ad was “generated by a disgruntled recruiter in India and was intended to embarrass the company,” and that it never intended to dissuade non-citizens from applying.
Arthur Grand did not return a call and email Tuesday seeking comment.
The settlement includes a $7,500 penalty to settle a Justice Department investigation and $31,000 as part of a settlement with the Labor Department to compensate individuals who filed complaints alleging they were discriminated against by the advertisement.
The agreement also requires Arthur Grand to train its personnel on the requirements of the federal hiring and discrimination laws and revise its employment policies.
In 2019, another northern Virginia tech firm, Cynet Systems, apologized after posting an online ad seeking “preferably Caucasian” applicants for an account manager job in Florida.
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Southeast
Louisiana classifies abortion drugs as controlled, dangerous substances after Gov. Landry greenlights proposal
First-of-its-kind legislation that classifies two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances was signed into law Friday by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
The Republican governor announced his signing of the bill in Baton Rouge a day after it gained final legislative passage in the state Senate.
The measure affects the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in medication abortions, the most common method of abortion in the U.S.
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Opponents of the bill included many physicians who said the drugs have other critical reproductive health care uses, and that changing the classification could make it harder to prescribe the medications.
Supporters of the bill said it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions, though they cited only one example of that happening, in the state of Texas.
The bill passed as abortion opponents await a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone.
The new law will take effect on Oct. 1.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks in the House Chamber in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Jan. 15, 2024. (Michael Johnson/The Advocate via AP, Pool, File)
The bill began as a measure to create the crime of “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud.” An amendment adding the abortion drugs to the Schedule IV classification of Louisiana’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law was pushed by Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican from Shreveport and the main sponsor of the bill.
“Requiring an abortion inducing drug to be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion drug on an unsuspecting mother is nothing short of common-sense,” Landry said in a statement.
Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion, in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills. Other Schedule IV drugs include the opioid tramadol and a group of depressants known as benzodiazepines.
Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment including hefty fines and jail time. Language in the bill appears to carve out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription for their own consumption.
The classification would require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe the drugs, and the drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics.
In addition to inducing abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labor and stopping hemorrhaging.
More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that the measure could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among both patients and doctors. The physicians warn that any delay to obtaining the drugs could lead to worsening outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
Pressly said he pushed the legislation because of what happened to his sister Catherine Herring, of Texas. In 2022, Herring’s husband slipped her seven misoprostol pills in an effort to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent.
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Southeast
Jack Smith asks judge to restrict Trump statements after 'inflammatory' remarks about FBI raid
Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a federal judge Friday to bar former President Donald Trump from characterizing the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago as a threat to him and his family, arguing that the claims put law enforcement agents in danger.
In the motion filed to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the classified documents case in Florida, Smith requested Trump be prohibited from making statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.” Trump claimed in a campaign appeal that FBI agents were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”
Court documents revealed this week that the FBI used its standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
“These deceptive and inflammatory claims expose the law enforcement professionals who are involved in this case to unjustified and unacceptable risks,” Smith’s filing reads.
The FBI has said such contingencies are routine and that similar language was contained in an operational plan accompanying a subsequent search of President Biden’s properties in Delaware.
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Special counsel Jack Smith filed court papers Friday requesting former President Trump be restricted from publicly speaking about his classified documents case in a way that might pose a danger to law enforcement officials. (Getty Images)
The Justice Department says the policy is routine and meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search of the Florida property was intentionally conducted when Trump and his family were out of state and was coordinated in advance with the U.S. Secret Service. Still, the revelation that the dozens of agents sent to search the home were prepared for potential violence was jarring to Trump’s supporters, who say the two incidents don’t compare since the Justice Department is part of Biden’s own administration.
Smith’s filing cites Trump’s claim that the FBI “was authorized to shoot me,” and was “just itching to do the unthinkable.”
“They invite the sort of threats and harassment that have occurred when other participants in legal proceedings against Trump have been targeted by his invective,” Smith wrote. “Those risks have the potential to undermine the integrity of the proceedings as well as jeopardize the safety of law enforcement.”
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An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
The operational plan was revealed when Trump’s legal team filed a motion asking that documents relating to the raid be made public. Smith says Trump’s attorneys omitted a key word —”only” in their motion earlier this week that prompted Trump to make the FBI accusations.
“Although Trump included the warrant and Operations Form as exhibits to his motion, the motion misquoted the Operations Form by omitting the crucial word “only” before “when necessary,” without any ellipsis reflecting the omission. The motion also left out language explaining that deadly force is necessary only “when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
“Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents — falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him — and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” prosecutors added.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that “repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election.”
Trump is accused of keeping at his estate classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021, and then obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. The FBI agents seized 33 boxes of documents in the raid.
The investigation is overseen by Smith, who Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed. Smith has charged Trump with 40 felony counts, including violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump has pleaded not guilty, and slammed the case as an “Election Inference Scam” promoted by the Biden administration and “Deranged Jack Smith.”
FILE – A police officer speaks with a woman outside former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after the FBI search, in Palm Beach, Florida, Aug. 8, 2022. (REUTERS/Marco Bello)
Earlier this month, Trump called for Smith’s arrest after the prosecutors handling the 45th president’s classified documents case admitted seized documents are no longer in their original order and sequence.
Prosecutors admitted in a court filing that “there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” The prosecutors had previously told the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.”
READ SMITH’S FILING – APP USERS CLICK HERE.
Fox News’ Emma Colton and David Spunt, as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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