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DAVIE — Police activity that began about 1 p.m. was restricting traffic through a Davie neighborhood Thursday afternoon, officials said. Meanwhile, five nearby public schools have been placed on lockdown.

The restrictions involve local streets in the vicinity of Southwest 61st Avenue and 38th Court.

The area is just east of Davie Rd.

Motorists through that area should seek alternate routes.

The five schools – Davie Elementary and four Nova schools – were put on lockdown this afternoon, said Marsy Smith, a spokeswoman for the Broward County School District. The lockdown, which started around 2 p.m., was keeping students at Davie Elementary past the end of the day.

Smith said police recommended the lockdown because of an incident in the area. She didn’t know what the incident was.

It was unclear whether the traffic restrictions and the lockdown were related.

No other information was immediately available.

As many of you already know, the Great Schools Partnership has undergone a change from being a program inside of Knox County Schools to one that is external, under the leadership of Buzz Thomas.

Previously the program was funded through Knox County Schools budget, and the idea of taking the program outside of the school system was to allow funding with private donations.

I have posted before about my unease/concern about the individual schools having private foundations that fund special projects for the schools. Wealthy neighborhoods/schools have foundations, but many of the schools in Knox County do not.

One of the ways to address this concern is to have a single foundation that benefits all schools rather than a single one. I suppose the new Great Schools Partnership could be looked at that way.

It looks like the program is responsible for raising money to fund several initiatives that had already been started by KCS/GSP in the past, as well as new programs they have devised.

Currently it looks like they are working on literacy programs for first graders, the expansion of the Teacher Advancement Program, and an 8th grade intervention program.

These are all pilot programs, or very limited in their scope, so I don’t know that it really does achieve the role of a “system-wide” private foundation. It seems that we keep funding these pilot programs, but I’m not sure the funding is there to implement them systemwide. I wonder how many of these pilots actually turn into something that benefits the system as a whole?

Not really being critical of the GSP, just wondering if it is going to be just raising money to do “pilots” instead of raising money for system wide changes.

December 15, 2010 at 9:12 p.m.

The annual state release of data that gives a snapshot of schools’ academic performance and progress has been pushed back to the new year to give school systems a chance to review the information for accuracy.

This year’s scores on the Tennessee Report Card, compiled by the state Department of Education, are based on more rigorous standards that have been implemented to ensure students are ready for college or a career upon high school graduation.

Education officials have long said they anticipate a dip in scores as students adjust to the new requirements.

“There’s a lot of room for error, and we’re taking every step to make sure the data is clean and pristine because it’s such high-stakes,” Tennessee Education Commissioner Bruce Opie said Wednesday during a phone briefing for the media.