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Seven-Day Wonder
With the release of the fourth round of school grades, Gov. Jeb Bush can assuredly claim he has brought a sense of urgency to Florida public education. What is less certain is whether the panic is to a good purpose. . . .

Florida has organized its educational policy around the results of one standardized test, taken once a year in grades 3 to 10, and Bush is so certain of its validity that he is willing to pass judgment on the efforts of every single school and teacher in the state. Do good on the test? You're a winner. Do bad on the test? You're a failure.
This crude, and decidedly political, methodology produces predictable results. . . .
For the 10 schools targeted for vouchers, Education Secretary Jim Horne promises to "assess the strengths and deficiencies of each" and provide a full assessment plan within seven days. Seven days.
Horne, an accountant and former state senator, displays such educational certitude that he told a press conference "we've taken the temperature and now we have to give quick-acting medicine" and a Tampa Tribune reporter that the critics "will not change our course of action. . . ."
At its core the A+ plan is arrogant. It trusts no one but the state to assess how well schools are performing--not parents, not teachers, not principals, not superintendents. And it trusts no one but the state to figure out how to help them improve. . . ."

— Editors
Arrogance in Education
St. Petersburg Times
June 16, 2002


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