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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kvkkc1 who wrote (34458)	9/3/2000 8:31:26 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

KNC: Here's an article I found on the Internet that goes into a little detail on the Florida voucher system. I would like my friends on the right to note that this article actually helps state the case for vouchers. In any event, the Florida voucher program appears to be limited in focus. IMO, the defining sentence is: "Time will tell whether the bar the state set was high enough to translate scores into real achievement." My point in posting this is that we need to study the system before expanding it nationwide. No need to waste the taxpayers' money unnecessarily. The author of this piece is Jeanne Allen. She is president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington. The piece was written about a month ago. * * * When Florida passed its A-plus program only a year ago, a bevy of Chicken Littles said that public education would soon die in the Sunshine State. Every special interest that benefits from business as usual was armed with the standard, conventional arguments as to why children shouldn't be given the escape valve that the new program then promised. In short, the Florida program offered schools and communities a wide array of tools to meet state standards or suffer the loss of students and, consequently, money. That loss would come in the form of scholarships for children hapless enough to be in a school that received an F grade from the state for two years in a row. The outcry was predictable: Florida lawmaker Geller said, "This is the beginning of the end for public education." The American Civil Liberties Union's press release screamed, "Vouchers make the situation worse, not better." But what most opponents did not say is that the A-plus program also gave incentive grants to schools to improve, raised salaries, waived rules that make it hard for schools to be flexible with their programs, and more. In other words, the program gave schools the carrot and the stick, an age-old approach to beefing up any enterprise. Upon the law's enactment, it was revealed that two schools - both in the Pensacola area - had received an F rating for the second year in a row. A total of 860 families were now eligible for opportunity scholarships to attend a school of choice. Rather than the mass exodus that was predicted, 130 children chose to go elsewhere from their assigned neighborhood school, and of those who chose to remain, only 53 chose a private school. As for the immediate demise of the public school as predicted by scores of opponents, the opposite occurred. As these choices were being made by the families in those failing schools, the public schools began to react to the stick. "It was like a glass of cold water in the face," recalls Maureen Backenstoss, an official in the Lake County School District. Carmen Varela-Russo, associate superintendent for Broward County Public Schools noted, "The jolt of being labeled an F school and the possibility of losing children to private schools or other districts was a strong message." The schools that received an F grade for the first time put their teachers through additional training in teaching the basics, like reading, writing and math. Schools held staff retreats and vowed to improve their letter grades. Like children spurred into action by their first bad report card, school leaders fanned out across the state to seek help, raise standards and focus on teaching children more and better. Hundreds of examples were collected and reported in newspapers and in think tank reports. Then the new school year started amidst law suits by opponents, but schools worked quietly to stay off the failing schools list. When policymakers were pushing the program, they argued that the A-plus program was precisely the medicine the doctor ordered to pull schools out of failure. They were criticized. "Put more money into schools," most said. "We can't help it," others cried. "We don't create the kids we teach." So this June, when the latest scores of how well Florida school children write, read and count were released, the critics' silence was shocking. Rather than doomsday, the program had sparked major improvements in all public schools. The result? None of the F schools had repeat Fs. Time will tell whether the bar the state set was high enough to translate scores into real achievement. Some additional schools did go from Ds to Fs. But the truth is that progress was made in Florida, and it's progress that 20 years of the same old solutions couldn't produce. The lesson Americans need to take away from Florida is that schools, like every other entity in this nation, need constant outside pressure to stay on task, in this case, to provide better and better instruction and to keep children first in mind as they open their doors every day.