FLORIDA – A DECADE OF PROGRESS (1999-2009)

The state of Florida adopted comprehensive education reform, including private school choice, under former Governor Jeb Bush. These reforms have been supported by subsequent Governors and state legislators to the benefit of Florida’s K-12 students. They enacted several K-12 education reforms beginning in 1999 that included:

• Private school choice
• Charter schools
• Public school choice
• Virtual education
• Performance pay
• Alternative teacher certification
• A+ Accountability Plan (standardized measurement of student learning, A-F grading of schools)
• A ban on social promotion (must be able to read by 3^rd grade)

Because Florida’s reforms have been in existence the longest, it is more heavily researched than other states, as demonstrated in the following sections.

Impact on Public School Achievement: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap

As these reforms took effect, Florida students’ National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores– an exam the federal government has administered every two years since the early 1990s –increased relative to their national peers.

In 2003, when all 50 states first participated, Florida fourth-graders ranked 32nd in Reading. In 2009, Florida fourth-graders ranked 10th in Reading.

Between 1998 and 2009, Florida’s black and Hispanic students made a 25 point increase on the fourth-grade reading NAEP tests, making twice as much progress as the national average for black and Hispanic students.

According to Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. and Lindsey Burke, “in 1998, Florida’s black students scored below the national average on fourth-grade reading, approximately 1.5 grade levels below even the most poorly performing states. By 2009, Florida’s black children outscored or tied statewide averages for all children in eight states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and New Mexico. Black children in Florida pulled off this feat despite the fact that all eight states improved somewhat themselves between 1998 and 2009.”

Florida’s Hispanic students fared even better. On the 2009 fourth grade reading NAEP, Florida’s Hispanic students outscored or tied 31 state averages. On this measure, the racial achievement gap between white students nationally and Hispanic students in Florida has dropped by 76 percent since 1998.

Choice in Florida and the Relationship to Academic Success

Additionally, there is strong evidence that Florida’s private school choice program is achieving results for the students participating in it. Extensive evaluations have been done on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which is now serving nearly 100,000 low-income students. In 2006, the state legislature required that every scholarship student take a nationally norm-referenced test every year. Those test scores are reported to a University of Florida research team that writes an annual evaluation. The research team, led by Dr. David N. Figlio since 2008, has consistently found that:

• “Program participants are more likely to come from lower-performing public schools prior to entering the program. In addition, they tend to be among the lowest-performing students in their prior school, regardless of the performance level of their public school.”
• Students participating in the Florida Scholarship Tax Credit performed just as well—if not better—than students nationally. “The typical student participating in the program tended to maintain his or her relative position in comparison with others nationwide. It is important to note that these national comparisons pertain to all students nationally, and not just low-income students,” the study’s author, David Figlio, said. In a later study, Dr. Figlio also found that the typical student participating in the program gained a year’s worth of learning in a year’s worth of time.

There is also direct evidence that the Florida choice program has contributed to the rising academic achievement of the public schools in the state. In 2010, Professors Figlio and Hart of Northwestern University, examined that very question and found that:

• The passage of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program in 2001 led to standardized test score gains in the public schools most likely to lose students to private schools.