Over the course of the past several years, education policy makers have increasingly looked to non-traditional education reforms as means both of correcting traditional public education inequities and of improving the state of education overall. In Florida, one of the first states to implement statewide accountability and reform measures, the results have been encouraging. Both white and minority students have demonstrated consistent, year-to-year learning gains since the full implementation of reforms, with the gains of minority students outpacing those of white students, thus narrowing the achievement gap.
This year, Florida entered its fourth straight year of consistent, measurable improvements in public education, and evidence continues to mount that Florida's reforms are an effective antidote to years of institutionalized racial and socioeconomic injustices in education. Yet despite our success, media reporting remains stubbornly fixated on a handful of exceptions, while the larger story of Florida's success goes unreported. Policy makers and practitioners must remain sensitive to the exceptions; however, state policy must be formulated and implemented with the perspective of providing the greatest gains to the greatest number of students. We will never be fully satisfied; but we cannot allow the exceptions to undermine the success of our results.
In 2003, Florida began using its 10th grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) as a graduation requirement for high school seniors. Throughout the spring of 2003, media reports focused on the plight of students who had failed the FCAT test, frequently minority youngsters who would be unable to graduate despite their hard work. Their hopes of a high school diploma dashed, dejected students were held up as examples of fallout from a poorly envisaged and cruelly executed new program. Reports of such students dominated media coverage about Florida's "new" graduation requirement, and seldom went beyond a rundown of how many students would be adversely affected.
The reality of the situation could not have been more different. Seldom mentioned in press accounts was that Florida has used a standardized test to determine graduation eligibility since 1984. Also absent was any mention that the old test, the High School Competency Test (HSCT), tested seniors' knowledge of 8th grade material. But perhaps most notably neglected was coverage of student scores: in 2003, 84 percent of African American and 87 percent of Hispanic students passed the FCAT, an increase from the year before, despite the fact that the 10th grade FCAT is considerably more difficult than the 8th grade HSCT. During this time, statewide graduation rates increased from 62 percent to almost 70 percent, while dropout rates decreased 68 percent - with the largest improvements among minorities.
Another recent example surrounded Florida's popular Corporate Tax Credit scholarship program. Available only to students who qualify under federal free and reduced lunch guidelines, the program allows corporations to earn a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on donations, all of which are distributed to students as scholarships to attend private schools. During the summer of 2003, the tyranny of the exception dominated press coverage again, as reporters "exposed" the problems of a handful of participating private schools to attack all of Florida's choice programs and, in a new twist on exclusive coverage, a single media outlet used each minute development in the story as cause to rerun its initial story again and again. The more than 1,100 schools that successfully participate in the programs were rarely mentioned, nor were the program's 12,000 low-income participants, who were given the opportunity of a private education that would otherwise have been out of their reach.
Florida's experience has shown that the policy initiatives in these examples - uniform and enforced standards and school choice - are valid public policies worthy of emulation elsewhere. Their validity is only reinforced by the fact that critics of these reforms rely almost exclusively upon the exception as a means of attacking them, rather than any intellectually or rhetorically honest appraisal of the policies and their impact. That is why policy makers must, overall, make certain that public policy is driven by empirical, scientific evidence impacting the universe of students, rather than by the exceptions. Because of Florida's leadership in developing and implementing education reforms, we have been under intense attack throughout the state, and there are valuable lessons to be drawn from Florida's experience.
The reform movement must adopt an offensive posture in delivering its message to the public while remaining sensitive and responsive to the exception. The negative media attention has focused on flaws and exceptions without acknowledging a program's merits or a policy's successes. We cannot allow this coverage to sabotage the efforts of teachers, students, administrators, and parents. The old paradigm of merely responding to the exception is no longer effective. A passive reliance upon media and others to accurately report the results of our reforms is not sufficient. Florida has mounted an outreach program to parents and the public, which includes efforts to communicate proactively with over 130,000 public school educators via email. This system has given Florida policy makers and leaders an efficient and unfiltered means of communication with teachers. Such dialogue is invaluable in promoting policy reform. Further, we should spread our message in affected communities by informing them about resources available to our most struggling students. By taking the good news of common sense policy results and changes into communities, we can impress upon citizens and parents the important role that wise policy reforms play in their lives.
Recently, the 2003 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results were made public. Florida posted significant improvement in reading and math for nearly every student group and was the only state in the nation to show significant gains in fourth grade reading with particularly dramatic advances in minority achievement. These latest results demonstrate that Florida's 2.6 million students are the type of exception U.S. policymakers would do well to note.
Phil Handy is chairman of the Florida State Board of Education.
