Education Outcomes in Florida

Trying to explain how education outcomes are measured in Florida is like trying to explain The Patriot Act, which only a handful of librarians and scholars really understand. However, it is a rare administrator who hasn’t grasped the significance of Florida’s public school accountability system, which consists of former governor Jeb Bush’s A+ plan and George Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

In the simplest possible terms, Jeb Bush’s A+ plan relies on the results of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and establishes consequences for public schools whose students fail to attain an acceptable level of achievement.

The writing test is administered in February and the reading, math and science test is administered throughout Florida in the spring. The results come back in about two to three months. In some grades, students have to test at or above a certain level of proficiency in core subject areas in order to move up a grade level, or to graduate.

Florida Standards and Accountability

In the first three years of Florida’s standards and accountability program, the state Department of Education softened its portrayal of badly scoring schools in terms such as “critically low” and “Level I.” Then the Department of Education (DOE) came out with a school report card that used letter grades. Schools with large numbers of pupils who flunked the FCAT in reading, writing, and math received an “F.” (Every school is assigned a score: A, B, C, D or F. )

Like the A+ plan, NCLB also demands education results. It says that when Florida accepts federal funding, the state makes sure that all students meet challenging academic standards. Achievement is a legal mandate.

NCLB measures Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) of student improvement. If all criteria for NCLB isn’t met, the school doesn’t make AYP. One student’s progress on a test makes the difference between a school making AYP or not. One answer on one child’s test can make the difference between a school making AYP or not. An outbreak of flu, which lowers attendance, can make the difference between a school making AYP or not.

Adequate Yearly Progress in Florida

According to the Florida DOE web site, AYP points are up in Florida and has risen in the past seven years despite the fact that standards are raised, significantly, every single year. The DOE is going to continue to raise them. If schools don’t maintain AYP standards or achieve a grade of at least a “D” the state can effectively fire the staff and shut down the school.

A compromise was proposed in April 2005 by John L. Winn, the former Commissioner of Education, with the assistance of the Central Florida School Boards Coalition. In a long position paper to The Honorable Secretary of State, Margaret Spelling, Winn suggested a little leeway, explaining that the students who can’t speak English, and the ones who are in special education classes, make AYP an attainable challenge.

Their proposed “Provisional” AYP rankings ensure that an administrator does not eventually lose federal funding or even control of his school. The issue was also brought up at School Board Association presentations and business and community functions. They implied that the misalignment of the two onerous accountability instruments was skewing Florida’s economic growth.

The state backed off. An A or a B school that didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress got a “Provisional” rather than a “No” ranking.”

Which proved that in spite of overwhelming odds, public schools have not slacked in their efforts to continue to educate the broadest spectrum of Florida students.

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