Once in a while, government does something right.
That's a difficult concept, I know. But hang on; I'm not finished.
When that happens, angry forces usually form to restore the status quo, especially in the Education Blob.
Four years ago, Florida State College at Jacksonville created Academic Success Centers.
These were lab areas, established at each of the five campuses, dedicated to bringing unprepared students up to speed so they were capable of working at college level.
In effect, it was year 13 of high school for high school graduates. Most students are not prepared for college or employment when they graduate from public schools.
The centers were based on what research showed were the best practices in developmental education.
Guess what? The ASC at one campus had an unheard-of 78 percent success rate in math. (At some of the other campuses, where professors did not follow the model, success was lower.) Other colleges around the country came to study the centers and some adopted similar programs.
Several things then happened.
President Steve Wallace and Vice President Don Green were the parents of the ASC program.
Unions don't like administrators. They signed off on the ASC program, but grumbled because people in it were paid more than the union bosses thought they should earn.
Pretty soon, the local newspaper launched a crusade to get rid of Wallace and Green, and the board eventually obliged.
With them gone, support and interest in the ASC program waned.
At the same time, the Florida Legislature got interested in developmental education. It revamped the law to make drastic changes in dev ed and in short order the centers were outmoded.
While I would never be so bold as to try to divine legislative intent, the politicians apparently decided reforms to public schools were going to work and graduates would be ready for college or the workplace, thus dev ed would not be needed much, if at all.
So students arriving from high school will be tossed into the mix at state colleges and it will be sink or swim. Remedial work is supposed to be embedded in regular courses or compressed into eight weeks.
Thus, one of an endangered species a government program that worked appears to be on its way to extinction.
I covered the Legislature when each year some politician had a pet theory that went on to become law, tagged with a catchy name such as PREP, PRIME or RAISE, and then to disappear into the ash bin of history after the sponsor's term ended and the next fad came along.
Theories are a dime a dozen. Success is another matter, and it is prized in the private sector.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
