25 January 2010

New Power Point Presentation: Here. Note: This is a PDF Version, but you can use CTRL-L to make it a "full screen" slide show.

18 January 2010

You may have heard recently that Florida's education system has been ranked 8th in the nation in Quality Counts, a report put out every year by Education Week. While that ranking sounds great, it's important to dig a little deeper to find out what it really tells us about Florida's schools.

Quality Counts does look at things like test scores and graduation rates, which is what you'd expect in a report on educational quality. But most of the indicators used to rank the states are about policies and procedures the researchers believe are important, like a strong accountability system and annual evaluations of teachers. If you have those policies and procedures in place, your state's ranking goes up. If you don't, it goes down.

Are those policies and procedures important? Absolutely! But they're not enough to ensure high-quality schools.

So what about the academic indicators? According to Quality Counts, Florida is ranked 7th overall in K-12 Achievement, same as it was in 2009. But that's because the researchers didn't update that part of the report this year, which means the ranking is based on test scores that are more than two years old and a graduation rate that's more than five years old.

And even state officials acknowledge that when it comes to academic achievement, Florida is behind the rest of the nation. At a state meeting about two months ago, an expert with the Department of Education made a presentation that highlighted a lot of test scores for middle and high school students in math, reading and science, including SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement scores. Unfortunately, Florida ranked pretty low in most categories compared to other states, usually somewhere in the 40s. The expert's conclusion was that "compared to the rest of the U.S., Florida students in middle grades and high school lag behind" and that "Florida students are pretty much last in the nation for science." That's certainly nothing to brag about.

Another part of the Quality Counts report that state leaders probably won't talk much about is the school spending category, where Florida gets an F again this year. But even that's misleading. The F is based on numbers from 2007, which was actually a pretty decent year. Since then, the state's taken a heavy axe to education funding, which means Florida's failing grade in that category doesn't really reflect how bad things are now.

The report does give the state very high marks for the way it distributes school funding, which is why the state's overall ranking for school finance is a not-too-awful 31st in the nation. This just means that school districts in Florida are treated the same when it comes to resources…badly.

Yes, our district does tend to do better academically than Florida as a whole. Our very high SAT and AP results are good examples. But our graduation rate isn't what it should be, and we still have too many at-risk students who struggle in the classroom.

Our schools and teachers are doing great work considering the enormous challenges they face, including societal problems like poverty, unstable families and other factors that have a significant impact on student achievement. But they can't keep doing that work if lawmakers continue to hack away at education funding.

In less than two months, the Florida Legislature will open its annual session and begin hashing out a new budget. Some legislators will point to the Quality Counts ranking as proof that Florida schools are adequately funded, just as they did last year. We shouldn't allow them to use that number to duck their constitutional duty to provide high quality schools for all students.

Unfortunately, we cannot legally post the entire Quality Counts report on Florida, since it's copyrighted. However, you can go Here and download a copy for less than $5.

As the legislative session draws closer, we'll post more information on you can help us fight for public education in Alachua County and throughout Florida.

ACEA BBQ

ACEA BBQ, Feb 5th: MS-Doc Here     PDF Here.

NEWS RELEASE

Citizens for Strong Schools joins statewide lawsuit on school funding
Wednesday, Nov 18 2009

PDF  MS-WORD

Citizens for Strong Schools has entered a new phase in the battle for high quality schools in Alachua County and throughout Florida.

Our group has joined with a number of other grass-roots organizations, parents and students statewide as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state over education quality and funding.

The lawsuit has been filed in the Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee. The legal effort is being spearheaded by former Speaker of the Florida House and current University of Florida law professor Jon Mills, Neil Chonin and Jodi Siegel of the non-profit Southern Legal Counsel and Thom Rumberger of the law firm Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell.

The intent of the lawsuit is not to fix blame but to find solutions. (Check out our FAQ)

"We don't blame any single party, person or group," said Mills. "The problem is the result of years of not fulfilling our paramount duty. It's everyone's fault, and it's everyone's duty to help fix it."

The lawsuit refers to Article 9 of Florida's Constitution, which states that providing a 'high quality' public education for all children is the state's 'paramount duty.' That language was approved by 71% of Florida voters in 1998 and sets one of the highest standards for state support of public schools in the nation.

"As one of the people who helped draft this language and put it before the voters of our state, I believe the citizens of Florida meant what they said when they approved it," said Mills.

All of us with Citizens for Strong Schools know that state support for K-12 education has fallen significantly since that language was adopted. In the last decade, the state's share of funding for the Florida Education Funding Program has dropped from nearly 60% to about 37% as lawmakers have shifted the responsibility for funding schools onto local communities through property taxes. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Florida ranks 50th in the nation in per pupil funding compared to wealth.

Citizens for Strong Schools and Fund Education Now out of Orlando are the first two grassroots groups to sign on as plaintiffs in the case. Parents and students are also named as plaintiffs, and other groups have expressed their support and are expected to sign on to the litigation in the near future.

Although most of the legal work is being supported through the non-profit Southern Legal Counsel, there will be a number of other expenses associated with the litigation. Donations toward this effort would be greatly appreciated, and will help Citizens for Strong Schools and our counterparts in other communities make a positive difference in the future of our students, our schools and our state.

Of course, we will continue to work with those other advocacy groups to keep citizens informed about the current crisis in Florida's educational system and to lobby state leaders. Keep checking this website for details about upcoming events and activities.

Citizens for Strong Schools welcomes the participation of parents, educators and other local residents interested in our group. Join our organization today and help ensure high quality schools in our community and throughout Florida.

#######

For more information, contact Mark McGriff at 352-372-8406.