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March 16, 2005

Lowering the bar

Florida may lower student achievement standards

After 77 percent of Florida schools failed last year under the state's version of the federal No Child Left Behind law, Education Commissioner John Winn said Tuesday he's considering lowering student achievement standards under that law.

The changes would alter standards Florida set for itself under the federal law, something Gov. Jeb Bush and Winn said they wouldn't do just a few months ago.

Changes are needed because Florida has "such a high number of schools not making" adequate yearly progress, Winn said at a state Board of Education meeting in Miami. He said he wants Florida's plan changed before this year's calculation of adequate yearly progress.

Pretty soon, the damn bar’s gonna be buried.

On teacher pay, we trail Georgia.

On graduation rates, Alabama is better.

On eighth-grade reading scores, South Carolina just moved ahead.

Despite six years of major changes by Gov. Jeb Bush and a Republican-dominated Legislature, Florida still ranks with its Southern neighbors near the bottom of the education rankings.

In the legislative session that begins Tuesday, lawmakers will debate even more changes, including an expansion of vouchers, more independence for charter schools and the end of social promotion.

All are large, sweeping issues.

But they won't be accompanied by what some education experts and a former governor say is just as necessary: large, sweeping increases in money.

Florida is behind almost every other state in the nation when it comes to education spending.

Posted by Norwood at March 16, 2005 10:55 AM
Comments

I've done a good bit of work on the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports in Bay County, and I've thought the standards were set unrealistically high from the very beginning. In fact, I even entertained the idea that AYP was set where it was on purpose to guarantee failure and subsequent loss of federal Title I money. Now I'm beginning to think I wasn't being cynical at all.

On its face, it seems totally illogical that a school could fail to make AYP and still get a grade of A from the state. I can point to 6 or 8 schools in my district where that is precisely the case. I think the state's accountability scheme is much more realistic than AYP. Also, JEB ALREADY lowered standards a few months ago by abolishing the timeline for raising the bar on the performance level scores on the FCAT. He did this by executive order in a memo that went unnoticed in the media, as far as I know. The AYP standards are just another way of punishing the poor kids who attend low-performing schools.

Posted by: Ed Deluzain at March 16, 2005 02:34 PM

Norwood, what is your point? No Child Left Behind doesn't work. If Florida doesn't relax the standards 77% of schools will be denied federal money. Those schools will certainly not improve without that money.

Posted by: Michael Hussey at March 16, 2005 07:46 PM