A new national study provides more evidence that school improvements may have stalled in Florida -- yet the overall grade appears to be incomplete.
After a decade leading scholastic reform, the Sunshine State lost ground on the 2011 Education Performance and Policy Index compiled by the American Legislative Exchange Council.
While Florida received an overall grade of B+ (the same as last year), it registered declines or static performance in several areas:
- Low-income students dropped from third to 12th place with their scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
- State academic standards received a C, due largely to loose thresholds for school grades.
- The state received C's for "delivering well-prepared teachers," "identifying effective teachers," "retaining effective teachers" and terminating "ineffective teachers."
- The highest grade in the teaching category was a B+ for "expanding the teaching pool."
The middling results came on the heels of an even tougher "Quality Counts" report card issued by Education Week. That survey showed Florida slipping from fifth to 11th place nationally.
Education Week handed Florida an overall grade of "C+" -- down from a "B-" the year before.
"The Florida Age of Public School Improvement hit a wall in 2011," declared Matthew Ladner, a national education reform analyst and co-author of the ALEC report.
"This should not be terribly surprising, as Floridas improvement seemed certain to plateau in the absence of additional reforms," Ladner said.
Crediting former Gov. Jeb Bush with inaugurating two-pronged reforms -- bottom-up school choice programs and a top-down accountability system -- Ladner observed "there have been plenty of bumps and problems along the way."
He cited, for example, questionable school grading standards -- in which campuses received gaudy grades, despite lackluster student performance.
"Even after the last increase in grading standards, more than 10 times as many Florida schools received A/B grades as D/F grades," Ladner noted. Some A and B schools, particularly at the high school level, had students scoring below the 50th percentile on the FCAT reading test.
On the NAEP exam, Florida has given back some of the impressive gains it registered over the past decade, and other states have pulled ahead.
"Despite the enormous amount of progress seen on NAEP, too great of a gulf lies between a state system awarding 10 times as many top grades as low grades, but still suffering from large minorities of students scoring below basic on the NAEP exams," Ladner asserted.
"Governor Bush has consistently said for years that success is never final, and reform is never finished. The 2011 pause in progress demonstrates that he called it correctly.
"Moving the needle on student learning on a meaningful scale and at a sustained basis represents one of the greatest public policy challenges of our times. Governor Bush has passed the torch to a new generation of Florida reformers, and they must now find new ways, and fine-tune the old ways, to push academic progress forward," Ladner concluded.
Academic reformers say the state remains well-positioned on several fronts. The ALEC survey took favorable note of Florida's comprehensive online-learning program, Florida Virtual School, and gave a solid B to the state's charter-school law.
On its national report card, ALEC awarded an overall A grade to just one state, Missouri (A-). Minnesota tied Florida with a B+.
"At the time of this writing, the smoke is only starting to clear from the legislative session of 2011, but this much is clear in Florida: Reformers scored unprecedented victories in the area of tenure reform, merit pay, public school transparency, charter schools and school vouchers," the ALEC report stated.
Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-controlled Legislature believe that the 2011 reforms will keep moving Florida forward.
Still, the ALEC authors added, "Many other states made very bold reforms as well."
Jaryn Emhof, of Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, said, "The [ALEC] report card is sensitive to NAEP rankings, so it is not surprising, given the 2011 NAEP scores, that Floridas grade dropped a bit.
"There is much to be proud of as Florida is still leading the nation. Our kids have made tremendous progress; however, we cant rest on our past. Other states will pass us. We have to continue to build on the strong foundation," Emhof said.
Scott vows to keep the pressure on for reform.
The Republican governor says he supports "parent trigger" legislation that would allow a majority of parents at low-performing public schools to demand changes or convert to a charter school.
House Bill 1191 also requires school districts to notify parents whose students have been assigned to instructors who are teaching out-of-field or have received unsatisfactory performance evaluations.
Scott, who has pledged to add $1 billion in K-12 funding this year while cutting the state budget elsewhere, says he's paying close attention to school rankings.
"How can you improve if you do not know where you stack up?" he asks.
Bill Mattox, a resident fellow at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee, agreed that Florida policymakers and educators cannot settle for the status-quo.
Education rankings are a lot like college football rankings. If you arent constantly making adjustments to improve your performance, your standing is going to slip," Mattox said.
Read the full ALEC report here.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
