George Wallace (A Democrat) stood at the door to a decent education for minority children in 1963. And today Al Gore is standing at the door along with the NEA and others following the union party line like sheep. Your fears about what might happen if vouchers are implemented across the board are simply that. Solely throwing money at a problem without dealing with the underlying issues preventing children from learning is not the answer. The District of Columbia is spending over 10,000 dollars per student and has one of the poorest records in education around the nation.
We need to energize parental involvement. School choice helps that. We need to give more power to principals to enforce standards and fire teachers unwilling to perform. School choice has done that. We need to change the structure of education and put parents and children in charge as the customer. School choice does that. And we need the NEA and leading Democrats to stop pretending that money is the sole answer to our educational problem, and join Republicans in the struggle to improve our schools.
Does anyone seriously believe Democrats would be fighting reform in education if it wasn't for the millions of dollars of PAC money being funneled to them by the NEA. Of course not. The corrupt NEA is the most destructive force in America today. It's helping to destroy our most precious gift, our children, by doing everything it can to prevent creative solutions from being attempted in education. The NEA has a grip on far too many parents and childrens throat, and they are forcing parents to send their kids to failing schools year after year. Defend the NEA union destroying America if you must flapjack. But it's one of the largest reasons "average Americans" like myself hold unions in such utter disgust and contempt.
Like the crisis in the 70's in car manufacturing. When the unions fought tooth and nail needed reform until hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost. The same thing is happening in education. The union is fighting reform toot-and-nail in order to protect and expand jobs. But this time, instead of sacrificing quality, they are sacrificing our children's mind.
Democratic politicians, like Goeorge Wallace before, are standing at the door to a better future for minority children. And all their supporters can do is spout platitudes and fears of what might happen, while offering NO real solutions themselves.
In regard to Florida's creative bold experiment. Let's hear from Jeb Bush, a courageous Republican who has been taking on the powerful education lobby, leading Democrats and unions for the sake of our children future. Poke holes at his program and leadership if you must. But real conservative reformers (such as Jeb Bush) are making a difference where they can. I have little doubt, Florida's children will be far better off for the attempt.
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heritage.org
Jeb Bush
Ideas really do have consequences, and if you stick with them and you believe in trying them, and you are creative—not just in the ideas themselves, but in how to implement them—good things can happen.
When I first became governor of the great state of Florida, I set out to implement one such idea that has been near and dear to my heart for a long while: educational choice. I, like many concerned Americans, believe that not enough children in our state or in our country get a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time; and so, over time, in increments not necessarily discernible to everybody, kids fall behind in school. They lose interest in learning. They don’t connect what they do at school with the potential it offers their lives. And we have quiet little tragedies unfolding across our country.
So we decided to do something dramatic in the state of Florida last year. Our A+ Education Plan is based upon some guiding principles.
First, we have implemented measures for meaningful and undiluted accountability. For the public education system, there are now different consequences for success and failure. That must be one of the standard principles for any reform effort.
Second, we have zero tolerance for failure. Not only do we have the honesty to admit it, but we also are creating a system in which we are going to roll up our sleeves to ensure that every child gains a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time. We’re not going to excuse it away, as sadly happens so often.
Finally, and most importantly, the education system in Florida is becoming child-centered. How many times do you hear the term "public school system," with the focus on the word "system" and not on whether children are learning or not. We don’t want a school-centered system or a public education-centered system. We want a child-centered system, where the whole objective is that our children gain a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time.
Now, the elements of our plan are fairly simple. Our students will now be tested in grades three through ten. Until now, we could not measure how one student did compared to another, but starting this school year we will be able to measure how children have progressed. We have created high standards, and our test is a rigorous assessment of those standards. This year, in Florida, we will clearly communicate how schools perform based on student achievement. Schools are graded on an A through F grading system. We have also aligned the schools based upon how they perform in student achievement: We graded all schools; and we moved back to that principle of imposing different consequences for success and failure in some very meaningful ways. Here is how:
We will reward the schools that show improvement. Three hundred schools are A-rated and others have shown improvement by moving up at least one grade. These schools all will get an additional $100 per student. They will be able to use that money for anything they want, with no strings attached.
As for those that fail, we now have a different consequence. When schools are rated F for two years running (to be rated F in the state of Florida today requires that 60 percent of the students taking the standardized test are below the basic level in reading, math, and writing) parents are given other choices. They can send their child to any public school in their school district; send their child to any private school that opts into our system; or send their child to the same school—but that school is going to be dramatically changed because it will have to come to the State Board of Education with a dramatic plan of action to rectify its problems.
During the first year, 78 schools in Florida received an F grade. They serve a total of 61,000 students. So this fall the A+ Program will expand dramatically if there is not marked improvement in these schools. This school year, 134 children in two schools opted out of their current school. Seventy-six moved to another public school; 53 of the students’ parents chose to send their children to five participating private schools in Pensacola, Florida: a Montessori School, and four parochial schools.
The advocacy of ideas is more difficult when the issue is abstract. It is easier when you put a human face on it; and now, there is a human face on parental choice in our state. And that is helping to erase the myths about education that have been built up over time.
Myth #1: The Brain Drain.
You have undoubtedly heard about how only the smart students, only the really committed parents, will accept the choice of a scholarship to send their child to another school. This myth is constantly used by the advocates of the status quo who don’t want to change any systems anywhere.
A study was conducted of the 53 children that have gone to the private schools and the 70-plus students who are going to public schools, and the several hundred students who have remained in the two elementary schools I mentioned earlier. The study shows that their aptitudes are the same, their family income is basically the same, and their family structures are basically the same. I might add, 95 percent of these children are African– American, and about 90 percent qualify for the reduced-price or free school lunch program.
So, the myth of the brain drain has been shattered, at least in the case of our experiment, and I believe we will continue to see that parents will make these choices in their own interest no matter what level of income they have, no matter what their family structure is, no matter what the aptitude of their child may be. That is exactly how it should be. We should not be mandating and demanding that parents adapt to our model of behavior. These are their children. They should have the power to make those choices.
Myth #2: Only the wealthy and elite will benefit.
A myth often repeated by the advocates of the status quo is that only high-income families will benefit. In fact, of the 61,000 students in schools that were graded F, 85 percent are minorities, and 81 percent are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.
Don’t let people tell you this program only helps people in the suburbs. It’s not true. It is going to advance student achievement across the board. It is not geared to the wealthy in our state; and I believe that it is the appropriate thing to do. We should, and will, focus our energies where learning achievement has been deficient.
The public school system in the state of Florida will always be there. It will always be the principal choice for most Floridians. It needs to be improved, and it needs to be reinvigorated, and that is our objective. Because of that, people like Andrew Young, speaking to the NAACP Freedom Dinner in Tallahassee, supported our Opportunity Scholarships. The NAACP is suing us, but Young had the courage to step up to the plate and say he is for Opportunity Scholarships because he knows it will help the kids that have been left behind. I applaud him for his courage.
Bob Butterworth, Florida's Attorney General, one of the highest ranking Democrats in the state, has to support the A+ plan as Attorney General because the state is being sued left and right. But, while he was not a personal supporter of this plan as I proposed it during the campaign, he personally supports it now because he has seen the benefits of focusing our efforts where the effort needs to be made: in schools where kids have not been given a proper quality education. We are beginning to see movement among the traditional advocates of the status quo, who are now recognizing that this plan is going to improve public schools across the board.
Myth #3: Schools that are failing will be left behind.
Our whole approach, the whole point of this reform is to achieve the exact opposite result. I wish you all could have been at the cabinet meeting where the State Board of Education heard from the principals of the two schools that I mentioned previously about their mitigation plans, their plans to improve the quality of education at their schools.
First, the state offered support for additional reading programs. Second, the state and the local school district supported and approved their idea of expanding the school year from 180 days to 210 days. Third, the school district said that it was going to give the power to the principals to select and retain teachers. They could remove teachers they did not want to retain, they could hire any teacher they wanted who wanted to come to work there. Trust me, this is a big deal in public schools across the state of Florida.
Schools focused on after-school programs because they wanted to extend not only the school year, but also the school day. They showed us a plan that would have 70 volunteers in each school to provide mentoring and tutoring opportunities for these young people. They explained how they were going to use direct instruction to ensure that kids in the early grades begin to learn to read at an appropriate level.
It was exciting: more money and a more focused approach to ensure that children learn. I’m not a big gambling man, but I can almost guarantee that these schools are going to see improvement, and that the children are going to get a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time.
So, the myth that somehow the schools will be left behind because parents are pulling their children out, that they will languish, and that we’re going to "destroy" public education is not becoming a reality. What this attitude reflects is pessimism about the condition of public schools. Virtually every parent would have to remove their child from a public school in order for them to be "destroyed." In fact, the exact opposite will happen if reform is done the right way, and, in Florida, we are committed to doing it the right way.
I wish you could see the reaction across the state to this plan. The folks in the system who are most protective of it were probably a little more angry at first than anything else when they saw the law pass
that allows us to do this. But now we are beginning to see a very positive reaction to our plan. There are smaller class sizes now in Broward County in the 104 low-performing schools, the schools that were graded D and F. In Jacksonville, the School Board decided to expand summer school and after-school programs for the low-performing schools. In Tampa, Earl Leonard, the superintendent of the Hillsborough County School District, made a public statement that he would take a 5 percent pay cut in his salary, and all of his top administrators would do the same, if any of the schools in Hillsborough County were given a grade of F. A quote from a teacher says it all:
I've seen principals eat worms. I've seen vice-principals kiss pigs to get students to read a certain number of pages. But I have never seen a superintendent put his salary on the line.
At the end of this process, in a decade perhaps, we will see rising test scores across the board; each and every year we will see more significant improvements in test scores among students at the 25th percentile and below. We’re going to see more resources go to the classroom and less to the bureaucracy; and we’re going to see a renaissance of involvement by in public education.
I hope other governors will use the Florida model as they set to reform education in their states. With education a high priority among voters, one could fairly say now is the time we must act to ensure that all children receive the best possible education. |
