Where Bush differed from the Democrats was in his belief that giving more power to disempowered families via education choice was necessary to create systemic, sustainable improvement. Although the political and legal climate during his tenure limited his success in expanding parental choice beyond school districts, his advocacy then is why Florida today leads the nation in the number of families and teachers exercising education choice.

One of the primary lessons we’ve learned over the last 50 years is that we can’t regulate our way to educational excellence and equity. A great public education system requires the proper balance of regulation and consumer choice.

Selecting a moment in time when the ramp-up to Bush’s reforms began is a bit arbitrary, but I’m going to choose the Florida Legislature’s passage of the Educational Accountability Act of 1976. This law was designed to ensure that every Florida student received a quality education. It required school districts to establish graduation standards, and in 1978 the law was amended to require that students pass a basic literacy test to graduate with a standard diploma.

The failure rate of black students was so high the first three years of testing that a class action lawsuit was filed against the state claiming that black students were being tested on literacy skills they were not being properly taught. On Sept. 4, 1981, a U.S. Court of Appeals decided in favor of the plaintiffs in Debra P. v. Turlington. The court ruled that state government, which was controlled by Democrats, violated the due process and equal protection clauses in the Fourteenth Amendment. By 1983, the state had regained the legal authority to make passing a basic literacy test a graduation requirement, but state leaders knew Florida’s public school system had severe problems.

Democrats responded by looking for ways to increase state control over public school classrooms. The Gordon Rule was the most prominent example of the state micromanaging classroom instruction in the 1980s. Named for its bill sponsor, Sen. Jack Gordon, a Democrat from Miami, the Gordon Rule mandated how many papers high school students were required to write each semester. I recall my English teacher colleagues at St. Petersburg High School in the ‘80s having to document and catalogue all their students’ papers for district and state auditors.

The Gordon Rule addressed the quantity of student writing but not its quality. To control for quality, Florida implemented in the late ‘80s a statewide writing assessment in fourth, eighth, and 10th grades called Florida Writes. Florida Writes used a structured scoring rubric that pushed teachers to teach students a formulaic writing style.

Gov. Bob Graham’s preferred solution for improving public school instruction in the ‘80s was merit pay for teachers, which also was a policy favorite of Democratic Gov. LeRoy Collins in the 1950s. Graham convinced the Democratic Legislature in 1983 to create a merit pay plan for teachers, which infuriated the state teachers unions. In 1986, Graham spent one of his workdays at St. Petersburg High, where I was teaching. We spent my 50-minute planning period discussing merit pay versus other systemic improvement strategies, and he was classy enough to send his top policy adviser back a few weeks later to continue the discussion. I appreciated his desire to help teachers and disadvantaged students, but a one-size-fits-all statewide merit pay plan for teachers has never worked, and never will. Many charter and private schools have effective merit pay plans, but those plans are customized to the needs of each school.

At the time of Graham’s visit, St. Petersburg High was part of a National Education Association (NEA) experiment in teacher empowerment/site-based decision making. My colleagues and I told Graham and his staff that less state regulation and more school-based decision-making was the key to improving public education. St. Petersburg High was home to a large magnet school, which gave us more freedom to innovate than district schools without education choice programs.

The teacher empowerment/site-based decision-making movement gained a lot of momentum in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, nationally and in Florida. One of the weaknesses of the movement was the lack of good academic performance standards and data to judge the effectiveness of schools and school-based changes. To build on this momentum and address these weaknesses, Education Commissioner Castor, Gov. Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay convinced Florida’s Democratic Legislature to pass the Education Reform and Accountability Act of 1991, known as Blueprint 2000. Blueprint 2000 was Florida’s most significant education reform legislation since the 1976 Accountability Act.

Despite the strong support of Chiles, Castor, MacKay, and the Florida affiliate of the NEA, the Florida affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the other state teachers union, almost blocked the legislation from becoming law. Pat Tornillo, the legendary state president of the Florida AFT affiliate who was from Miami-Dade, argued that no systemic improvements should be considered until the public schools were adequately funded. Since no definition of adequate funding exists or ever will, this meant no systemic improvements should ever be considered. Rep. Doug Jamerson, who chaired the House K-12 education committee and would later become commissioner of education, played a key role in ultimately convincing Senate President Gwen Margolis, also from Miami-Dade, to allow Blueprint 2000 to pass.

At the request of the Florida NEA, Castor appointed me to be a teacher representative on the Education Reform and Accountability Commission, the group responsible for helping implement Blueprint 2000. Before or since, I’ve never worked with such an impressive group of bipartisan educators, elected officials and community activists.

Blueprint 2000 failed to accomplish its lofty aspirations because its mandate focused exclusively on implementing new government regulations. Education choice was not available to us. Consequently, the commission never considered finding the appropriate balance between regulations and consumer choice.

Blueprint 2000’s original premise was that state government and local school boards would return most decision-making power to each public school in exchange for holding these schools accountable for increasing student learning. Early versions of the legislation envisioned local school councils comprised of parents, educators, and community members having significant decision-making authority. But in response to pressure from school boards and district superintendents, these school councils were made advisory and devoid of any meaningful power prior to the legislation passing.

Blueprint 2000 required the commission to develop new student learning standards and an assessment system to measure these standards. The commission recommended standards based on a 1991 U.S. Department of Labor report on the skills students would need to be successful 21st century citizens and employees. The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (the SCANS report) identified the importance of basic literacy skills (reading, writing, and computation), but the report also highlighted skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, planning and resource allocation, time management, information management, systems thinking, intrapersonal management (self-awareness and self-management) and interpersonal management (empathy and relationship management).

To assess these comprehensive real-world skills, the commission recommended a student assessment system similar to the assessments that have long existed in vocational education and other applied subjects such as drivers education. These rely heavily on instructors applying standardized scoring rubrics to student work and having external evaluators audit and validate the instructors’ assessments. We also encouraged the state to examine the International Baccalaureate program, which uses a similar approach for some of its assessments. A key advantage of this method was that in addition to satisfying state oversight needs, it also would provide students, parents, and teachers with real-time feedback on how each student was progressing.

The state assessment director told the commission that because of legal restrictions placed on the state by the Debra P. v. Turlington decision, the state could administer only a traditional, once-a-year paper-and-pencil literacy test. This became known as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT.  At this point, we had lost site-based decision-making, the SCANS standards, and a more effective and efficient state assessment system.

The final issue the commission grappled with was so difficult it ultimately fell to Bush to resolve several years later: How do we improve the performance of schools with low test scores? Castor hired Sandy McCarroll, a no-nonsense administrator from New Jersey, to help answer this question. McCarroll and John Winn, a Department of Education staff member who later would become Bush’s education commissioner, developed a proposal they called Required Action Levels (RALs), which the commission never supported. RALs were a continuum of state interventions ranging from forcing a school to rewrite its school improvement plan to a state takeover of the school. Had we had a robust, statewide education choice program in the mix, we might have been able to find common ground. In most well-designed markets, consumer choice is how low-performing suppliers are dealt with.

Castor resigned as education commissioner and became president of the University of South Florida in January 1994. (I resigned from the commission a few months later.) Gov. Chiles appointed Doug Jamerson, a black legislator from south St. Petersburg, to replace her.

Jamerson was a regulatory accountability hawk. His parents had sent him to a Catholic high school in St. Petersburg because they knew black children had been historically underserved by the Pinellas County School District. Jamerson wasn’t going to trust school districts to properly educate black children. His mantra as education commissioner was “trust but verify,” but he also wasn’t able to make any progress on the “what to do about schools with low test scores” issue.

The school improvement tools the Democrats, me included, turned over to Bush when he took office in January 1999 were weak: school advisory councils with no real power, basic literacy standards only, and an old-school assessment system. And yet, Bush was able to use these to help turn Florida’s public education system from one of the country’s weakest to one of the strongest.

Looking forward, the next 20 years appear promising for Florida’s public education system. Education choice programs are enabling teachers to open their own schools and parents to become more engaged in their children’s education. As Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) expand, more low-income and working-class students will have access to some of the out-of-school learning opportunities that more affluent students currently enjoy. Technology is allowing more teachers and parents to provide each child with an education customized to his or her unique needs. And online assessments are merging summative and formative assessments, allowing parents, students, and teachers to have real-time access to valid and reliable data.

The good news is that the best is yet to come.

Editor’s note: March 2 marked the 20th anniversary of the legislative session in which Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched a number of K-12 reforms that transformed education throughout the state. With the start of the 2019 legislative session earlier this month, redefinED embarked upon a series of articles that examine aspects of Bush’s K-12 education revolution and how it continues to reverberate. Today’s piece lays the historical foundation that made the landmark changes possible.    

Budget battle: Gov. Rick Scott again hints that he's considering vetoing the $83 billion state budget, calling it the result of "backroom deals." “I am beginning to review the budget and I have the option of vetoing the entire budget or vetoing the items that circumvented the transparent process and do not have an acceptable return on investment for hardworking taxpayers,” said Scott. Governors often use line-item vetoes, but not since Lawton Chiles in 1992 has a governor vetoed the entire budget. Scott began signing bills Tuesday. Palm Beach Post. Tampa Bay Times. WFSU. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gwen Graham calls the budget "education-eviscerating," and she joins school districts and officials in calling on Scott to veto it. Florida Politics. News Service of Florida. Florida Politics. Lakeland Ledger. Gradebook. Here are nine ways Florida schools will change if the education bill is signed into law. Tampa Bay Times. Several legislators missed the vote on the education bill because they were eating lunch or using the bathroom. Miami Herald.

School choice bills: School choice was a winner in this year's legislative session. Among the bills passed were financial incentives to attract charter schools, more money for tax credit scholarships, broadened eligibility for scholarship money students with disabilities, and money to charters for construction. redefinED. WFSU.

Other education bills: Among the less-noticed education bills that were passed during this legislative session were measures to expand scholarship programs for low-income students and those with disabilities, a state study of best practices for middle schools, and rules allowing parents and community members to challenge classroom textbooks and materials. Some that didn't pass include an attempt to allow computer coding class to be counted as a foreign language requirement, a move to bring minimum teacher salaries to the national average, and a bill to end mandatory retention of third-graders based on state reading tests. Gradebook. Lake County School Board members express disappointment that the Legislature didn't provide more relief from standardized testing. Daily Commercial.

Budget-cutting: Changes in the way the state distributes federal Title I funds will force Duval County school officials to cut deeper than they'd like in programs at their high-poverty schools. Previously, the funds came into the district, which could then decide where best to spend the money. Under the education bill passed by the Legislature, the money will be spread around to more schools and go directly to the schools. Florida Times-Union. Volusia County school officials say they have a $7 million gap between expected revenue and expenses for the 2017-2018 school year. Daytona Beach News-Journal. School officials in Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties say they expect to cut 5 percent out of their budgets because of the education bill. WEAR.

Teachers honored: The Department of Education names two of the five finalists for the 2018 Florida teacher of the year award. Tammy Jerkins, a pre-calculus teacher at Leesburg High School, and Michael Miller, a fifth-grade teacher at Kissimmee Elementary School, each were awarded $5,000. The winner will be announced July 13. Orlando Sentinel. Daily Commercial. (more…)

The impact of scholarship programs on Florida’s private schools, recently portrayed in the Orlando Sentinel, should be seen in the context of a larger transformation of public education. It brings to mind a revealing exchange in a gubernatorial debate two decades ago.

In that 1994 debate, the final one between Gov. Lawton Chiles and challenger Jeb Bush, moderator Tim Russert was trying to pin down the future governor on the implications of his proposed voucher plan: How would it change the ratio of students attending public schools to the students attending private ones? What did he think the ideal ratio would be?

Bush rejected Russert’s premise. It wouldn't matter if the proportion of students attending private schools reached “50 percent” of all K-12 students, “or if it was 5 percent,” he said. He added, to applause: “We would have redefined what public education is.”

These comments have largely been lost to history, overshadowed by Chiles’ famous retort after being accused of being a liberal defender of the status quo: “Let me tell you one other thing about the old liberal. The old He-Coon walks just before the light of day.” (See the full exchange in this video excerpt.)

Ironically, though, Chiles signed a law during his second term, creating charter schools in 1996, that helped set into motion the redefinition of public education Bush had predicted.

What has gotten less attention less attention to date is that the role of private schools has since been redefined, as well. (more…)

It’s true: ALEC likes school choice. Walton likes school choice. Jeb Bush likes school choice. Some of the folks who like school choice even say bad things about traditional public schools and teachers unions.

But this is true too: President Barack Obama is a fan of charter schools. Former President Bill Clinton is ga-ga about KIPP. Liberal lions like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Hubert Humphrey supported public funding for private options.

More importantly, this is true: Growing numbers of parents and politicians of all stripes like school choice. Many don’t bash public schools or teachers unions. Many could care less who the Koch Brothers are.

I know this is obvious to anybody who’s managed to take a peek beneath the surface of the choice debate. But at this time of year, with state legislatures in Florida and elsewhere in session, complexity is not a common commodity. Anything having to do with school choice is sealed into a boilerplate narrative about for-profit this and right-wing that. This year in Florida, the privatization label has even surfaced in stories about student data and IEPs for students with disabilities.

It’s different in the real world. Out here, parents are flocking to new learning options for the most personal of reasons: the success of their kids. (more…)

The community takeover of Lake Wales public schools feels so much like an educational Camelot that it is easy to forget this romance was spawned by Florida’s charter school conversion law. It’s also easy to forget that its local benefactor was a powerfully connected Democrat.

The account of these schools and their champion, Robin Gibson, so ably reported this week by redefinED associate editor Sherri Ackerman, is a poignant reminder that school reform and school choice can indeed start in the homes of parents who think children are not getting what they deserve. Gibson, an attorney who helped run campaigns for former Democratic governors Lawton Chiles and Bob Graham, and was once chairman of the state university Board of Regents, thought his own children and the tiny city of Lake Wales were being hampered by public schools that were treated like stepchildren. So he began an effort, in 2002, to convert them to charters.

“I don’t think there’s anything partisan about it, if you’re for a first-class education system, ’’ Gibson says today. “I think everyone’s for that. I’m an advocate for what works, and I’m an advocate for educating the entire demographic.’’

Unsurprisingly, there was resistance. But Gibson and his friends brought sophistication and enterprise to the effort, taking over five schools in 2004 and starting a sixth from scratch. The charter campuses of Lake Wales now enroll 3,800 students – ranking them ahead of 15 of the state’s school districts in size – and the academic success has put the schools on track to be designated "high performing" under charter law.

The Lake Wales conversions provide educational as well as political lessons. (more…)

Editor's note: This is the second of two parts about Lake Wales Charter Schools. Part one here.

Robin Gibson counts one legendary Democratic governor as a close friend, and helped run the U.S. Senate campaign of another. So it may be surprising to some, given the misperceptions about school choice, that the prominent Democrat is a leading figure behind the creation of a city-wide charter school system in Central Florida.

When Gibson, an attorney, led the charge back in 2002 to turn around struggling schools in Lake Wales, he knew it would be a labor of love. Public education is at the heart of what the former Florida Board of Regents chairman believes makes communities successful.

“If there are great schools, the rest of it will take care of itself,” he told redefinED in a recent interview.

It was that belief that guided Gibson to search for a way to improve education in Lake Wales, long after his children had moved away, and to convince others to support the cause. The effort resulted in a new system, Lake Wales Charter Schools, with six schools and nearly 4,000 students.

None of it would have happened, say many in the community, without the drive and dedication of their adopted native son.

“He is kind of seen as our local statesman,’’ said Betty Wojcik, executive director of the Lake Wales Area Chamber of Commerce and a trustee for the Lake Wales charter system.

The Miami native and University of Florida graduate came to this picturesque stretch of Polk County in 1966, ready to work for a new law firm and start a family with his wife, Jean. “I’d had enough saltwater and palm trees,’’ he told a reporter in 2006. “I was looking for a small town, rolling hills, lakes and oak trees.’’

Gibson’s four children attended Lake Wales public schools – but not for long. Dissatisfied with their quality, he and Jean sent their kids to private schools outside of town. But it didn’t sit well with Gibson that his beloved city’s schools weren’t up to snuff. (more…)

Though we know little about the parents who long have chosen their school through where they decide to live (or to pretend to live), Florida keeps count of those who no longer want their neighborhood school. And here's some data to chew on: In a state known for its breadth of learning options, that number last school year reached 1.2 million.

In other words, using a conservative approach with new 2011-12 enrollment records, 43 of every 100 students in Florida public education opted for something other than their zoned school.

This number is produced largely from state Department of Education surveys required of the 67 school districts and reflects, not surprisingly, surging growth for choice options. Though total public school enrollment grew by only 1 percent last year, reaching 2.7 million, charters grew by almost 16 percent, online by 21 percent, private scholarships for poor children by 17 percent. (See an enrollment compilation of 2011-12 options here.)

Granted, Florida is not like most other states in this regard. A combination of educational, budgetary and political factors, including the gubernatorial tenure of Jeb Bush, has put the Sunshine State on an accelerated path of parental empowerment. That said, it is a diverse, highly populous state with national political significance, and this kind of transformation is central to the new definition of public education.

The national education debate is still absorbed by adults who grew up with a pupil assignment plan built almost entirely on geography. Many of them went to the same schools as their parents and even their grandparents, and it’s natural they would define public education that way. That may help explain why parent activists or groups such as the PTA continue to oblige the teacher unions that pressure them to resist laws giving parents more options. The union message – that traditional public schools are endangered – plays to the parents’ natural fears.

That’s why these numbers are worthy of pause. (more…)