If Florida deserves applause for its recent academic progress, the Miami-Dade school district deserves a standing ovation. The five-time finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize is a standout district in a standout state. Between 2000 and 2010, no big district in Florida made more progress in reading and math, even though Miami-Dade has a greater rate of low-income (70 percent) and minority kids (91 percent) than any of them. Over roughly the same period, no big district in Florida made a bigger jump in graduation rates, going from far below the state average to slightly above it.

Against that hopeful backdrop, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, (pictured here) offered some particularly biting assessments of Florida’s education reforms last week. In an op-ed for the Miami Herald, the former principal and state lawmaker said school grades were “madness” and “ridiculous” and “nothing but hoodwinking parents and the community.” Then she added:

“Every time a young black male commits murder in Miami, or even at times a lesser crime, I check their school records to see if they have a diploma. Most of them are casualties of the FCAT. I call them the FCAT kids.”

It’s fair to say Florida’s public education system has far to go, even after 14 years of heady change, even after being a national leader in academic gains for much of that time. There are still far too many kids not being educated to their potential, in an evolving system that is still searching – and sometimes fumbling - for the best ways to maximize its potential.

It’s also reasonable to debate how much the FCAT and school grades have contributed to the progress. Miami-Dade has had two hard-charging, highly acclaimed superintendents in a row. It probably benefitted more from the class-size reduction amendment than many districts in Florida. Compared to the other big districts, it has among the highest percentages of students enrolled in charter schools and in private schools via tax credit scholarships.  I think – and these are just the hunches of a layman -- that those factors and many others made a difference.

But I don’t think it can be credibly denied that the FCAT and school grades were essential parts of the mix. (more…)

There is no defense for the latest blemish on Florida’s school accountability system. And it’s incumbent upon those who have built and supported that system to quickly acknowledge oversight and management issues within the state Department of Education and ensure the proper steps are taken for a fix.

After the problems with the state writing test in May, it’s hard to believe what has now been widely reported: The state got more than 200 school grades wrong, evidently because it forgot to calculate one of the new elements in its revised grading formula. With all due respect to the hard-working, well-intentioned people in DOE, that’s a bit maddening. To make matters worse, the state announced the grade changes in a press release, emailed after 10 p.m. Friday, that didn’t own up to errors but instead referred to “preliminary revisions” discovered during a “continuous review process.”

A state that has rightly set a high bar for its schools, its students and its teachers obviously has to set a high bar for its own piece of the education bureaucracy. Florida’s education leaders have given more than lip service to terms like “data driven” and “evidence based” and “no excuses.” But in this case, the data isn’t right. And the evidence suggests that honest mistake is no longer a credible excuse.

Critics are using this mishap to shore up their call for a roll-back of Florida’s ed reforms. What a shame for Florida’s kids if they succeed. Standardized tests and school grades are imperfect tools. But in Florida, they’ve been used effectively to put a bigger spotlight and more focus on student achievement, particularly for low-income and minority kids. For years now, one credible, independent analysis after another has found Florida students in the national vanguard in terms of academic progress. Three positive reports have surfaced in the past six weeks alone (see here, here and here).

It’s not fair that DOE’s successes are overlooked and its mistakes amplified. It’s not fair that its critics are held to a lower standard. But this is the environment that Florida’s ed reformers live in, and it’s not likely to change any time soon. At the end of the day, they should continue to be guided by the evidence, no matter how much it is ignored by critics. Or, in this case, how much it points to their own shortcomings.

As you know, we keep tabs on what’s written and said about school choice and ed reform, particularly in Florida. This week has been a doozy when it comes to head-scratching statements. Today we highlight a few and offer a quick response …

In just a few years, Orlando-based Fund Education Now has become the leading parent group in Florida. Aggressive. Media savvy. Super effective. I respect its members for their passion. I sometimes agree with them. But there are times when the rhetoric is at odds with reality.

After this week’s FCAT fiasco, the group wrote in an action alert to members: “These abysmal FCAT Writes scores are proof that Tallahassee’s ‘education reforms’ are an unmitigated disaster.” I agree the state raised the bar too fast and too fast on some of our standardized tests. But have the state’s policies as a whole flat-out bombed?

In the past four years, Florida has ranked No. 11, No. 8, No. 5 and No. 11 among all 50 states in Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report. And contrary to some critics’ claims, that’s not just because of policies on paper that sound good; it’s also because the state has moved the needle on student achievement, particularly for low-income kids. On the K-12 achievement portion of EdWeek’s rating – which considers performance and progress on NAEP, AP and graduation rates – Florida finished at No. 7, No. 7, No. 6 and No. 12 over the past four years. In 2011, it finished in the Top 10 in eight of nine progress categories. It finished in the Top 3 in six of them.

The reason Florida tumbled out of the overall top 10 this year is because of budget cuts, and because its NAEP scores have stalled in reading and math. That’s troubling when the state is still nowhere near where it needs to be. I think that’s what led the state Board of Education to be too bold in raising the bar.

But Florida’s policy makers, like them or not, have been more right than wrong in the past decade when it comes to standards and accountability and school choice. To deny there’s been progress is good for stoking fury and mobilizing troops. But it’s unfair to the teachers who made it happen. And it could undermine changes that really did make things better for kids.

In an op-ed Sunday, syndicated columnist Bill Maxwell describes what he sees as another round of teacher bashing in Florida and blames “conservative lawmakers who dominate Tallahassee” and are gunning to privatize public schools. The prompt for his outrage: A cost-cutting decision by the Pinellas County School District to curb the use of individual printers by teachers. (more…)

The last thing you want to give people waging a scorched-earth campaign against you is a gas can and a match.

Though well intended, the hard-charging Florida Board of Education moved too far, too fast last year when it raised the bar on academic standards. The short-term result for the state’s standardized writing test isn’t pretty. According to scores released this week, the percentage of passing fourth graders alone dropped from 81 to 27.

In an emergency session, the board tried to mitigate. It revised the passing scores downward so the percent passing will be roughly the same this year as it was last year. Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson also admitted the state should have better communicated the new scoring criteria to teachers.

But (sigh) the damage was done. The people who have bitterly fought every major education reform in Florida since Jeb Bush was elected governor – and who will never admit there has been real progress - now have a bit of real ammo. They’ll use it to take fresh aim at everything from new teacher evaluations to expanded school choice. They’ll be even more aggressive ripping into the next batch of reading and math scores, which will also look a lot starker this year.

Conspiracy theories are spinning wildly. This was a well orchestrated plot, goes one, to make traditional public schools look bad so charter schools shine by comparison and the privatization agenda can reign supreme. Never mind that just a few years ago, the state had a record number of A and B schools. Or that charter schools take the same tests. Or that, if the past is any guide, a disproportionate number of them will be tagged with F’s.

You won’t read this in the papers (except, thankfully, in this Orlando Sentinel column), so here’s the backdrop for Florida’s latest ed reform flap. (more…)

Do critics have a double standard when it comes to scrutinizing school choice options like charter schools and vouchers? Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson suggested as much in an interview published today by the Tampa Bay Times’ Gradebook education blog.

In response to a question from the Times editorial board, Robinson noted that charter schools that struggle academically and/or financially can be shut down (in Florida, that has happened many times) but that same ultimate penalty is rarely leveled at traditional public schools (off hand, we can’t think of any examples in Florida). “For the bad charter schools that aren’t working, they should close,” Robinson said.  “But for the traditional schools that have also failed a number of our kids, we don’t see the same level of righteous indignation.”

Robinson has deep roots in the school choice movement, having once served as president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. And interestingly enough, the editorial board's questions focused mostly on choice options. Here are some other excerpts:

On testing accountability in voucher schools: “The private school curriculum isn't aligned to what we test on the FCAT (the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test). So you're comparing apples to oranges. At the same time, there are the Stanford tests, there are Iowas, there are other tests you can take. So I'm not against assessment. What I am saying is, simply saying because they don't take the FCAT therefore they're not accountable is not correct.... “

On charter schools vs. magnet schools: “Charters and magnets both are theme schools. Charters and magnets both are public. And charters and magnets both take money. You often find magnets cost more than charters. But yet people say charters take money from public schools. People say charters are creaming the best and brightest kids. I can tell you from looking at the scores, that's not the case. And yet the magnet schools … are taking the best and brightest students … Magnet schools historically have been the largest public school choice program in the country, but also been more exclusive than other programs. And yet, all the angst we put on charters.”

On closing the achievement gap: “I've often said what you don't have is a political gap problem as much as you have a political crap problem.  … If white kids are reading better than black, Latino, Hispanic or Native American kids, that's not a reading problem. We know what it takes to get kids proficient in reading. The question is, are we willing to make the tough decisions, political decisions, to get the right resources - human and financial - into the schools or after-school programs … to make it happen?”