Twenty years ago, Florida’s low-income children had nearly the lowest achievement in the nation. But the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the NAEP, shows that they are ranked first in the nation for scaled score and for the percentage of students proficient in fourth-grade reading and math.
Moreover, Florida’s low-income fourth graders now have a reading score the same as or better than 11 states’ average score for all students.
These students’ monumental achievement refutes the idea that higher spending is needed to improve achievement. Florida notched these impressive gains while spending about $4,000 per pupil less than the national average. Under the leadership of Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida implemented a package of reforms focused on school choice, transparency, and accountability. Key to this were Florida’s scholarship programs for low-income students and its A-F grading system for each public school, which tells parents how schools are doing. Lawmakers provided these tools, and they helped an entire generation of children get the education they deserve.
The need for change is profound. Today, only one-fifth of the nation’s low-income fourth graders read proficiently, according to the NAEP. Only about half of their more affluent peers are proficient. To put that in perspective, the NAEP scale scores show that by fourth grade, low-income students are already behind by 2.8 years’ worth of learning, which is to say, their level is back at the beginning of first grade.
Change won’t happen organically. Too many education officials vehemently oppose accountability measures. Here in Kansas, they won’t even follow the laws we have. A Kansas legislative audit recently found that most of the $413 million in dedicated funding for at-risk students was being “used for teachers and programs for all students and did not appear to address at-risk students as required by state law.” The auditors also discovered that only 9 of the 29 programs and practices that districts said they were using “were specifically designed for at-risk students” and that “only 3 of the 29 programs and practices were proven to be effective.”
Kathy Busch, the president of the Kansas State Board of Education, responded in a cavalier fashion to the audit’s findings, effectively saying, “Shut up, go away, we know what we’re doing.” But that’s quite debatable. If the state board and school districts were indeed spending money effectively and following best practices, we’d see the results in student achievement gains. Instead, proficiency levels for low-income students in Kansas remain stubbornly low despite very large funding increases.
Fortunately, there’s a solution. Legislators could create Education Savings Accounts that allow any student who is below grade level on their state assessment test to take their state aid with them to a school of their choice. If educators won’t effectively allocate spending to get students to grade level, this ESA program creates a safety valve for students to get the education they deserve.
Florida officials learned that the competition created by these “money-follows-the-child” programs also benefit students who choose to stay in their district. Since 1998, for example, Florida’s eighth grade students’ proficiency level improved 48% versus the national average of just 6%. Their low-income students gained 2.6 years’ worth of learning in the fourth grade, more than twice the national average of just 1.1 years.
Political resistance from school unions and administrators will be fierce, so the federal government could pave the way by requiring each state that accepts federal education money to have such a program. Get rid of the crushing federal reporting requirements that just focus on process and hold states accountable for producing results. Nothing will get the attention of local school boards and administrators better than the specter of pupils being able to take their money somewhere else if the schools don’t get them to at least grade level.
One person’s courage to challenge establishment thinking ultimately prompted the Supreme Court to rule in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. What are you doing to advance today’s educational civil rights issue?
Dave Trabert is CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute.
