Report looks at last 8 years of education reform in Florida

By Katherine Lewis-Monday, September 18, 2006

Those are the findings of an 11-member task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush and Board of Education Chairman Philip Handy to examine the state's prekindergarten through 12th grade education system and offer suggestions for strengthening it.

Collier County School District officials said they weren't surprised by the results.

The Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force assessed current policies and offered recommendations for building on the reforms Florida has implemented.

"We had nine months to look at what was happening in Florida for the last eight years," said Paul Peterson, task force member and Hoover Institution senior fellow. "It was our job to look at what the long-term situation would be for Florida if the current policies were in place."

Last week, the Koret Task Force released a 250-page document, titled "Reforming Education in Florida."

While the task force found that Florida was outpacing the nation in its rate of closing the ethnic achievement gap, particularly in elementary schools, the panel found that Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) gains among high school students haven't kept pace with those in lower grades.

"Their findings are an affirmation of what we in Florida have known for some time: when we make schools accountable for student achievement, students learn and schools improve," Bush said in a prepared statement Sept. 12.

Collier school officials said the report affirms the approach they are taking.

"My first reaction looking at it is that it confirms what the Legislature is doing putting A++ into place, but also what the (school) board has put into place with the strategic plan," said Cynthia Janssen, the School District's chief academic officer.

The A++ Plan, which Bush proposed earlier this year, stresses "rigor" and "relevance" in Florida schools. The $20 million initiative includes a move for high school students to focus on a major and a minor subject as their college counterparts do and a move at the middle schools for students to earn credits while providing them with exposure to career opportunities.

"We have data that we collect on every student, but it is only good if it is used. We are seeing it work in the elementary schools. Teachers work in teams, they review their data, not just at the end of the year but every day. We have started this more formally at the middle school level and I think we will see a lot more of it in high school," Janssen said.

The task force made several recommendations, including to improve the state standards, which currently are under review.

"Specifically, we think the content needs to be reviewed so that when students move out of elementary school, they are not only reading, but they have the content knowledge necessary to become effective students in middle and high school," Peterson said.

The task force also suggested that Florida expand its retention policies beyond third grade, as well as strengthening its proficiency standards in reading and math.

"The retention policy in third grade has been very good. We have seen a steady decrease in the percent of students retained. Because it is important that you meet criteria to be promoted, it has forced us to put an emphasis on that criteria. The first year we started, we had 23.6 percent (of third graders) retained.

"The next year, it was 11.3 percent. Last year, it was 8.4 percent and this year it is 5.4 percent," Janssen said. "We have seen a consistent decrease due to the interventions that we have put in place for struggling elementary students. It is critical focus we need for the middle and high school."

While the state was praised for its "imaginative programs to enhance the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers," the task force thought the state could do more.

Its suggestions included building on alternative certification programs and streamlining the approach to certification, allowing school principals to hire any candidate who possesses a bachelor's degree, demonstrates substantive competence and passes a background check.

That isn't a good idea, said Lyle Farmar, the service unit director for the Collier County Education Association, which is the group that represents 80 percent of the district's teachers.

"It is not a good idea just to hire someone with a bachelor's degree who does not have an education background. They need a degree in education because, when you major in education in college, you are taught how to manage a classroom successfully," he said.

The report also suggests that veteran teachers be required to demonstrate their competence by possessing a college or graduate degree in the relevant subject, passing a rigorous subject test or showing that their students are making satisfactory achievement gains on the FCAT.

It was another point that did not stick well with Farmar.

"What if a teacher has a class that does poorly one year and the next year the class does not? How does that tell you if a teacher is effective?" he said.

The task force also addressed the class-size amendment, which was passed by Florida voters in 2002 and limits the maximum number of students in the core curriculum classes such as math and English. At the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, prekindergarten through third-grade classes must not exceed 18 students, 22 in fourth- through eighth-grade and high school classes must have no more than 25 students.

"We saw that a decrease in class size led to an increase in performance in kindergarten and first grade statewide. But we did not find evidence of a large increase in performance beyond first grade," Peterson said.

In its findings, the Koret Task Force said while the state has done well at achieving fiscal equity among the school districts, it should consider experimenting with pupil-based funding programs. This would allow the state to test whether schools with greater control of their funds would be more productive.

The task force recommends the Legislature devise and seek voter approval of an alternative approach to class size that would give flexibility to state and local education authorities.

"I am not in favor of a draconian solution," Peterson said. "We need to be sensitive to what is happening in specific parts of Florida."

While Janssen did not have a specific comment on alternatives to the class-size amendment, she did say that the district needed to be able to have flexibility to implement the legislation.

"We need to stick with the school-level average (versus a class average). It will allow us to have some of that flexibility while meeting the intent of the class-size amendment."

The complete report from the task force is available at www.KoretTaskForce.org.

© 2006 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.

Lawmakers link teacher bonuses with student test scores

By Deirdre Conner Friday, June 16, 2006

A new mandate to reward Florida teachers for their students’ test scores is generating heat as details of the plan are unveiled.

Saying high-performing teachers should be rewarded, Republican lawmakers settled on a plan that would tie educators’ pay to how much progress their students made on standardized tests. While the law suspended an extremely controversial rule imposed by the state board of education earlier this year, school districts are facing a logistical headache in coming up with a plan that is likely to be unpopular with teachers.

The new rules require that districts pay out bonuses to at least a quarter of all teachers. In Lee County, that would be about 1,300 teachers. And the extra money must represent at least 5 percent of one’s base salary. For a teacher earning the average $40,000 annually, that would amount to $2,000.

The state Legislature directed $147.5 million toward the effort, of which Lee County will get $4.4 million, to be paid out at the end of the 2006-07 school year.

The state anticipates it will need more than 30,000 new teachers next year to accommodate growth and class-size limits, and in high-growth Lee County the demand is even stronger.

The chance to earn a few thousand dollars extra, advocates say, could be a huge incentive. But with Florida’s teacher pay about $6,000 short of the national average, opponents say higher salaries across the board would be a better way to recruit and retain teachers.

Donna Mutzenard, president of the Teachers Association of Lee County, said the union is not happy about the idea, but it will work with the Lee County School District to formulate a plan. Whatever they create will have to be approved by the Department of Education. Payouts likely will come sometime in June 2007 after scores from the spring’s Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test are out.

“I would love to put that $4.4 million in the salary schedule (instead),” Mutzenard said.

The amount would give teachers in Lee a 2 percent across-the-board raise, she said.

Still, the new plan is a bit more flexible than the initial one imposed earlier this year by the state board of education.

Lawmakers passed the state’s original performance pay law in 2001, allowing counties to create their own rules about who could get the bonuses. Earlier this year, the board voted on a new way to enforce the law by rewarding the top 10 percent of teachers statewide, saying the reaction was a crackdown on districts’ noncompliance with the law.

TALC, backed by the state teachers’ union, sued the Florida Department of Education earlier in the year after the new rules were announced. The suit argued that Lee County’s plan already was following the state law, and it was in part based on learning gains.

Last year, the district gave out $500,000 in merit-based pay to 160 teachers.

Now, the STAR (Special Teachers Are Rewarded) program will replace all that. It still requires individual districts to come up with their own plan but has stringent requirements. At least 50 percent of the evaluation must be tied to improved student achievement. According to a memo sent June 13 from Education Commissioner John Winn, it must pay out the bonuses to both administrators and teachers, as well as base a portion of every teacher’s pay on performance.

The catch is this: Districts can’t require an application for the bonus; all teachers must be considered for it. That might sound simple for reading, math or science teachers, whose students take the standardized FCAT Test. But how will they go about quantifying the work of art teachers, guidance counselors, librarians?

It’s up to the school district to figure out a system for measuring the “achievement of individual students” in non-core subjects.

“That’s going to be our biggest task. Right now we have the application process and people choose their own plan. With this, you can’t have applications, so I don’t know how we do it,” Mutzenard said.

Florida isn’t the only performance-pay battleground. Measures to tie teacher bonuses to student achievement have been discussed or are in effect in dozens of states in all parts of the country. According to Quality Counts 2006, a yearly report from the industry magazine Education Week, only three states currently have a bonus system tied to student performance on standardized tests: Florida, North Carolina and Oklahoma. The Houston Independent School District in January also approved a plan to base teacher bonuses on test scores, and the state of Texas is following suit. And in Massachusetts, as in many other states, Gov. Mitt Romney wants to give teachers bonuses as high as $15,000 based on test scores as well as classroom evaluations.

Local experts say merit pay must be thought out thoroughly. Patricia Wachholz, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, said she’s not sure the current plan will recruit or retain any of the teachers Florida so desperately needs.

What states should be doing, Wachholz said, is making sure students who need the most help are getting the most experienced, high-performing teachers.

“I don’t object to the FCAT, but I think the way we use it is subverting its intention,” she said. “We want children to be able to read, we want them to be able to write and do some numbers. We also want them to be good citizens, appreciate the environment and the fine arts. I’m disturbed by how we’re using this test and calling it a comprehensive assessment.”

© 2005 Bonita Daily News and The Banner. Published in Bonita Springs, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.