Book Description

Jeb Bush campaigned for Governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual track strategy of education reform: standards and accountability for public schools, choice options for dissatisfied parents. Florida lawmakers followed these reforms with additional measures, including instructional based reforms, curtailing social promotion, merit pay for teachers, and additional choice measures. Governor Bush met fierce resistance. Ten years after his election, this study lays out the evidence on the cumulative impact of his reforms. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests representative samples of students in every state on a variety of subjects and is the nation's most reliable and respected source of comparable K-12 testing data across states. In 1998, 47 percent of Florida fourth-graders scored "below basic" on the NAEP reading test, meaning they couldn't read. By 2007, 70 percent of Florida's fourth graders scored basic or above--a remarkable improvement. After a decade of strong improvement, Florida's Hispanic students now have the second-highest reading scores in the nation; and African-Americans score fourth-highest when compared to their peers. This paper lays out the Florida reforms, and suggests how they could be emulated and/or exceeded in Indiana. (Contains 4 figures and 45 endnotes.).