School Reform

Some Good Ideas From Florida

reformed school desks Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, is now the chairman for the Foundation for Excellence in Education. He recently wrote an article about the difference school reform has made in Florida. The following was written by Jeb Bush and published in the Arizona Republic.

"More than a decade ago, Florida embraced the core belief that all children can learn when schools are organized around a singular goal of learning. We stopped accepting excuses for poor performances and started challenging the status quo.

During the decade that followed, we ushered in reforms that fundamentally changed the quality of education in the Sunshine State and shattered long-held myths that are now a lesson for our nation.

In 1999, we started grading schools on the same scale as students, A to F. Gone were the cryptic descriptors that left parents and the public bewildered about the quality of schools. No one had to explain the difference between an A and an F!

Grades were based entirely on how students performed on annual tests. Half of the grade was based on how many students were achieving on grade level, which rewards the ultimate goal of the school. The other half was based on how many students were learning a year's worth of knowledge in a year's time in reading and math, which creates an incentive to help all students succeed, even those who were not yet on grade level.

By combining an objective formula for measuring quality with a grading scale that recognized a range between great, not-so-great and really bad schools, Florida's accountability system established a transparent path for improvement. With a clear and achievable goal, school-board members, administrators, principals and teachers organized themselves around achieving it.

school kids Our accountability system included rewards and consequences. To reward the hard work it would take to turn around failing schools, Florida carved out bonuses from existing funding for schools that earned an A or improved a letter grade. Students in schools that earned an F for two years were eligible for Opportunity Scholarships, a voucher for the public or private school of their choice.

Although the Florida Supreme Court found this scholarship program unconstitutional, their tortured decision didn't end the array of choices offered to parents - public-school choice, publicly funded scholarships for students with disabilities, corporate tax-credit scholarships for students in families with low incomes, publicly funded vouchers for pre-kindergarten students, charter schools and virtual schools.

We didn't stop with this initial round of reform. We ended social promotion for third graders who couldn't read.

Schools responded to soaring retention rates by placing a command focus on reading. As the result, more students learned to read independently and confidently by the end of third grade.

The results speak for themselves. In 1998 nearly half of Florida's fourth-graders were functionally illiterate. Today, Florida's fourth-graders and eight-graders are above the national average in reading, and fourth-graders are above average in math with eighth-graders closing in on the benchmark.

In fact, our Hispanic students out-perform the average student in 15 other states, including Arizona. Every leading indicator - test scores, graduation rates, national rankings, participation and achievement in Advanced Placement - continues to rise.

Florida's story dispels common myths about education. We've proved that poverty, an absence of parental involvement, language barriers, disabilities, broken homes, even catastrophic natural disasters like hurricanes, are not valid excuses for a lack of learning in the classroom.

When an education system combines high expectations, clear accountability, incentives for success and choices, students of every background, faced with every imaginable challenge, will succeed."

Is this the way all school systems should be run? Your opinions are welcome if you would like to talk about school reform.