Governor Jeb Bush:
Thank you, Ed. It is great to be back at
Heritage. In typical Heritage fashion, as Dr. Feulner and I were
coming down by elevator, who should we meet but a head of state
from another country, who is here seeking inspiration and
nourishment, which is what Heritage provides for so many people
here in Washington, around the country, and around the world.
Ideas really do have consequences, and if
you stick with them and you believe in trying them, and you are
creative--not just in the ideas themselves, but in how to implement
them--good things can happen. That's what I learned in my
relationship with The Heritage Foundation and, were it not for the
fact that I was crazy enough to run for office and then was lucky
enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your point of view) to get
elected, I'd still be here because I thoroughly enjoyed that time.
But I'll tell you what: I enjoy being governor of the state of
Florida a lot too.
I
want to talk a little bit about our A+ Education Plan, because if
you've read the papers, at least in my home state, you won't get a
full understanding of what we've begun to do, because this is a
journey that's only just started. The reason why we're doing it,
first and foremost, is that not enough children in our state or in
our country really learn. They don't get a year's worth of
knowledge in a year's time; and so, over time, in increments not
necessarily discernible to everybody, kids fall behind in school.
They lose interest in learning. They don't connect what they do at
school with the potential it offers their lives. And we have quiet
little tragedies unfolding across our country.
In
our state, only 52 percent of young people graduate from high
school. Think of that. It's a sad number. Sixty percent of students
in community college--where there's free admission and open
enrollment--are taking remedial courses. They're taking high school
English and math over again. We have to spend more money to do what
we could have done the right way the first time. Moreover, fifty
percent of fourth graders aren't able to read at grade level. Of
our 60,000 ninth graders this year, one-third have a D or an F
average. In our state, like most states, after children turn 16,
education is no longer compulsory; and so, sadly, many quietly drop
off the scene. This places enormous demands on government.
The
impact on our society is great. People are unable to interact with
one another because not every young person has developed the
intellectual power that comes from knowledge--the ability to think
an abstract thought; the sense of history and why it's important;
or the ability to communicate correctly and appropriately, not only
in English, but also in a second language.
So
we decided to do something dramatic in the state of Florida. Our A+
Education Plan is based upon some guiding principles.
First, we have implemented measures
for meaningful and undiluted accountability. For the public
education system, there are now different consequences for success
and failure. That must be one of the standard principles for any
reform effort. There have to be different consequences when
teachers do the right thing and children get a year's worth of
knowledge in a year's time, and when it doesn't happen.
Second, we have zero tolerance for
failure. Not only do we have the honesty to admit it, but we also
are creating a system where we're going to roll up our sleeves to
ensure that every child gains a year's worth of knowledge in a
year's time. We're not going to excuse it away, as sadly happens so
often.
I
initially thought it was very creative when the group that devises
the SAT tests came up with a new system that supposedly was fairer
to minorities. Their new "centering" approach allows a child who
doesn't get a perfect score of 800 on the math test to be given a
perfect score. It sounded so good, but at the end of the day
basically these administrators were saying that there's going to be
different standards in America for kids who have different
socioeconomic backgrounds, and different levels of income in their
family.
Well, in Florida we're going to reject
that notion. We say God has given every child the ability to learn,
and it's up to us to organize our approaches in different ways to
ensure they all get a year's worth of knowledge in a year's
time.
When
that doesn't happen, we will hold our failure up high so as to be
clear about what's not working. And we will not leave these kids
behind; we will focus on them in different ways to ensure that they
do learn.
We've also eliminated the concept of
social promotion in the state of Florida. Now, that is a more
radical idea than you can imagine. When you have 60,000 ninth
graders who aren't graduating, and who have D and F averages, it's
hard not to do this - to promote them anyway. And there's
resistance at the local level to keeping them back. But we are
committed to moving to a system that says that if you don't get a
year's worth of knowledge in a year's time, if you don't meet our
expectations, we're going to find new ways to ensure that you do;
and you're not going to graduate to the next level until that
happens.
Finally, the education system in Florida
is becoming child-centered. How many times do you hear the term
"public school system," with the focus on the word "system" and not
on whether children are learning or not. Well, in Florida, we are
going to eliminate that focus. We don't want a school-centered
system or a public education-centered system. We want a
child-centered system, where the whole objective is that our
children gain a year's worth of knowledge in a year's time. We will
try many different approaches. It's a more dynamic, open system
where all sorts of new alliances are formed; we tear down the
barriers that systems build up, and we make children the highest
priority in our state. Whether we're business people or leaders in
our church or parents or teachers or principals, we need to make
children the highest priority and not worry about the system.
Now,
the elements of our plan are fairly simple. First, we are moving to
a system where we test students in grades three through ten.
Before, we tested in grades four and five for writing, and again in
grades eight and ten. Now, we're going to have a system where we
measure the annual progress of student achievement. That seems like
a pretty simple idea, but very few states have that. Until now, we
could not measure how one student did compared to another, but
starting this school year we'll be able to measure how children
have progressed, and that to me is very important.
So,
we've created high standards, and our test is a rigorous assessment
of those standards. In fact, our standards were given an A- by a
group called Quality 99. We are one of the top five states in the
country in their analysis. It's important to have rigorous, high
standards that can be independently evaluated.
I
wish, Dr. Feulner, that there was a better way to assess how all
states are doing in this regard. In fact, I think this should be a
high priority, since today it's somewhat secretive how these tests
are implemented. It would be very important for us to know how we
are doing. We may think we have high standards, but if we don't, we
want to make them higher. I know that other governors have that
same goal, and perhaps that could be a good project for The
Heritage Foundation.
This
year, in Florida, we will clearly communicate how schools do based
on student achievement. You would think that that is a pretty
commonsensical idea, but I don't know if any other state has done
this. The old system graded schools on a one through five scale. I
ran a little test with people in the education system to see if
they understood the system. Half of them thought five was high, and
half of them thought five was low.
So,
we changed that scale to an A through F grading system. There's no
more confusion. It's totally transparent. It may anger schools when
they are given a D or an F, but it also creates resolve. We have
also aligned the schools based upon how they perform in student
achievement: We graded all schools; and we moved back to that
principle of imposing different consequences for success and
failure in some very meaningful ways.
The
first way we will do it, beginning next Tuesday, is to reward the
schools that show improvement. Three hundred schools are A-rated
and others have shown improvement by moving up at least one grade.
These schools all will get $100 per student. They will be able to
use that money for anything they want, with no strings
attached.
And
I know what they're going to use it for. They're going to try the
whole array of things that President Clinton talked about in his
State of the Union address; but they will do it where it matters,
at the local school level. They're going to reduce class sizes.
They may hire teachers' aides. They may start after-school
programs. They may see technology as the means to improve student
achievement. It's their decision, and it should be their
decision.
Our
job is to set the standards high, to measure them in an
intellectually honest way, to provide financial support for the
schools to achieve the standards, and to get out of their way. So
this system will begin that process.
Finally, we now have a different
consequence for schools that don't succeed. When schools are rated
F for two years running (and to be rated F in the state of Florida
today requires that) 60 percent of the students taking the
standardized test are below the basic level in reading, math, and
writing--60 percent of them. When that happens two years in a row,
parents are given other choices. They can send their child to any
public school in their school district; send their child to any
private school that opts into our system; or send their child to
the same school--but that school is going to be dramatically
changed because it will have to come to the Board of Education with
a dramatic plan of action to rectify its problems.
The
four criteria for private schools to opt into our plan are that
they must accept opportunity scholarships as the full amount of
tuition for these children. In our state, the per pupil expenditure
is around $4,000. It is adequate for almost every private school in
the state that has expressed an interest to opt into our plan.
Second, they have to meet the same local
health and safety standards that any enterprise must accept.
Third, they have to take all comers, and
if there are more students applying than slots, they have to use a
lottery system.
Fourth, they have to administer the same
tests we do so that we can assess how children are performing.
There are no other requirements. In fact,
one of the key elements of our plan was to fend off the people that
wanted to love our plan to death by adding all sorts of impositions
on the private schools. We fought that effort, and I believe that
because we did, we now have enough private schools interested in
this program.
During the first year, 78 schools in
Florida received an F grade. They serve a total of 61,000 students.
So next year the A+ Program will expand dramatically if there's not
marked improvement in these schools. This year, 134 children in two
schools opted out of their current school. Seventy-six moved to
another public school; 58 of the students' parents chose to send
their children to five participating private schools in Pensacola,
Florida: a Montessori School, and four parochial schools.
The
advocacy of ideas--which Heritage is on the vanguard of-- is harder
when the issue is abstract. It's easier when you put a human face
on it; and now, there's a human face on parental choice in our
state. The myths that have been built up over time are beginning to
subside.
Myth #1: The brain drain.
You
have heard the myth about how only the smart students, only the
really committed parents, will accept the choice of a $4,000
scholarship to send their child to another school. That myth is
constantly used by the advocates of the status quo who don't want
to change any systems anywhere.
Well, in fact, we conducted a study of the
58 children that have gone to the private schools and the 70-plus
students who are going to public schools, and the several hundred
students who have remained in the two elementary schools I
mentioned earlier. The study shows that their aptitudes are the
same, their family income is basically the same, and their family
structures are basically the same. I might add, 95 percent of these
children are African-American, and about 90 percent qualify for the
reduced-price or free school lunch program.
So,
the myth of the brain drain has been shattered, at least in the
case of our experiment, and I believe we'll continue to see that
parents will make these choices in their own interest no matter
what level of income they have, no matter what their family
structure is, no matter what the aptitude of their child may be.
That's exactly how it should be. We shouldn't be mandating and
demanding that parents adapt to our model of behavior. These are
their children. They should have the power to make those choices,
and they've done so in the Pensacola district.
Myth #2: Only the rich will benefit.
The
myth that's often repeated by the advocates of the status quo is
that only high-income families will benefit, and in Florida that
myth has been shattered immediately. In fact, of the 61,000
students in schools that were graded F, 85 percent are minorities,
and 81 percent are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.
Don't let people tell you this program
only helps people in the suburbs. It's not true. It's going to
advance student achievement all across the board. It's not geared
to the wealthy in our state; and I believe that it is the
appropriate thing to do. We should and will focus our energies
where learning achievement has been deficient.
The
public school system in the state of Florida will always be there.
It will always be the principal choice for most Floridians. It
needs to be improved, and it needs to be reinvigorated, and that is
our objective. Because of that, people like Andy Young, speaking to
the NAACP Freedom Dinner in Tallahassee, supported our plan. The
NAACP is suing us, but Young had the courage to step up to the
plate and say he's for this plan because he knows it's going to
help the kids that have been left behind. I applaud him for his
courage.
Bob
Butterworth, Florida's Attorney General, and probably the premier
Democrat in the state, has to support the A+ plan as Attorney
General because the state's being sued left and right. But, while
he was not a personal supporter of this plan as I proposed it
during the campaign, he personally supports it now because he's
seen the benefits of focusing our efforts where the effort needs to
be made: in schools where kids have not been given a proper quality
education. We're beginning to see movement among the traditional
advocates of the status quo, who are now recognizing that this plan
is going to improve public schools across the board.
Myth #3: Schools that are failing will be
left behind.
This
is the myth that angers me, frankly, because the whole approach to
this, the whole point of this, is to achieve the exact opposite
result. I wish you all could have been at the cabinet meeting where
the State Board of Education heard from the principals of the two
schools that I mentioned previously about their mitigation plans,
their plans to improve the quality of education at their
schools.
First of all, the state offered support
for additional reading programs. Second, the state and the local
school district supported and approved their idea of expanding the
school year from 180 days to 210 days. Third, the school district
said that it was going to give the power to the principals to hire
and fire the teachers. They could remove teachers they did not want
to retain, they could hire any teacher they wanted who wanted to
come to work there. Trust me, this is a big deal in public schools
across the state of Florida.
Schools focused on after-school programs
because they wanted to extend not only the school year, but also
the school day. They showed us a plan where they would have 70
volunteers in each school to provide mentoring and tutoring
opportunities for these young people. They explained how they were
going to use direct instruction to ensure that kids in the early
grades begin to learn to read at an appropriate level.
It
was exciting: more money and a more focused approach to ensure that
children learn. I'm not a big gambling man, but I can almost
guarantee that these schools are going to see marked improvement,
and that the children are going to get a year's worth of knowledge
in a year's time.
So,
the myth that somehow the schools will be left behind because
parents are pulling their children out, that they will languish,
and that we're going to destroy public education is not becoming a
reality. The exact opposite will happen if reform is done the right
way, and, in Florida, we're committed to doing it the right
way.
I
wish you could see the reaction across the state to this plan. The
folks in the system who are most protective of it were probably a
little more angry at first than anything else when they saw the law
pass that allows us to do this . But now we're beginning to see a
very positive reaction to our plan. There are smaller class sizes
now in Broward County in the 104 low-performing schools, the
schools that were rated D and F. In Jacksonville, the Board decided
to expand summer school and after-school programs for the
low-performing schools. In Tampa, Earl Leonard, the superintendent
of the Hillsboro County School District, made a public statement
that he would take a 5 percent pay cut in his salary, and all of
his top administrators would do the same, if any of the schools in
Hillsboro County were given a grade of F, and, I think, a quote
from a teacher says it all:
I've seen principals eat worms. I've seen
vice-principals kiss pigs to get students to read a certain number
of pages. But I have never seen a superintendent put his salary on
the line.
You
know what? A friend of mine who is committed to this plan, a
businessman and contractor in Tampa, attended Oak Grove Middle
School in the Hillsboro District about 25 years ago. He heard what
was going on and saw the superintendent's remarks, and decided he
was going to get involved in his school for the first time in 20 or
25 years. He met the principal and became excited about getting
involved. Fifteen of his employees have now joined him, and they've
committed to giving two hours a week to provide support to the
eighth graders who are going to be taking the standardized math
test to ensure that they do well. This businessman put 5 percent of
his salary on the line as well, to guarantee, as did all of his
employees working there, that Oak Grove Middle School would not go
from a D to an F.
My
hope and my dream is that we're going to see a renaissance of
activity like that in all sorts of wondrous ways across our state.
It shouldn't be the all-mighty "System" that we're worried about,
it should be our children. It shouldn't just be the responsibility
of teachers to ensure that children learn, it should be the parents
and the community as well.
Three weeks ago, I asked General Colin
Powell to come to Tallahassee and join me in unveiling a new
strategy to have 200,000 mentors in the state of Florida get
directly engaged in schools to ensure that children learn. We are
on track to make that a reality. Businesses are now going to go way
beyond "Adopt a School," which has been a tradition in our state
and around the country. They're starting to get actively engaged.
They're going to provide leadership support for principals and some
financial support. But far more important, they will get directly
engaged in ensuring that children gain a year's worth of knowledge
in a year's time.
At
the state level, we are changing the rules to allow state employees
to spend four hours a month doing the exact same thing as part of
their service to our state. Every Tuesday or Wednesday morning at
eight, I do the same thing with a seventh-grader at a middle school
who has not had the kind of attention that he needs. I'm not sure
that I can give him much help in algebra and things like that, but
I'm trying hard, and I believe that he'll get a year's worth of
knowledge in a year's time. We're seeing this exciting movement
towards focusing on our children, and no longer do we blame the
system or blame the teachers: We are focusing on academic
improvement.
Finally, let me just say that there is a
role for Washington in this, and that is to do less. It is to
reward the states and the communities that have the courage to move
to this system, a system with greater accountability, where there
is a different consequence for success, which happens a lot, and
failure, which happens too often, sadly, as well.
Washington should support initiatives that
push the power back to the states once the nation has clearly
established that we're committed to high standards and to
performance criteria that all Americans can be proud of.
We
allot 47 percent of the state budget to education and we increased
funding for public education this year by $1.4 billion, about a 7
percent increase. I think it's the second highest increase in the
last ten years in our state, which helped us politically make the
case that this plan was not going to abandon anybody; there would
be additional resources, because education is our highest priority
in the state of Florida.
But
it takes 47 percent of our budget. We have a State Department of
Education that spends 40 percent of its time filling out the forms
that former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett tried to help us
get rid of. He did eliminate a few, but there are still too many
out there, and the input-driven regulatory model that demands more
bureaucracy isn't going to help us with our effort to make
education student-focused. It isn't going to help us ensure that
children learn. Washington could help us by removing paperwork
hurdles and rewarding us for having the courage to change the
system. It is somewhat courageous, because there will be mistakes
made along the way. There are a lot of people on both sides of the
issue watching us. And there are people who don't want us to
succeed.
But
at the end of this process, in a decade perhaps, we will see rising
test scores across the board; each and every year we'll see more
dramatic improvements in test scores among students at the 25th
percentile and below. We're going to see more resources go to the
classroom and less to the bureaucracy; and we're going to see a
renaissance of involvement by Floridians in public education. That
is worth rewarding. I hope that eventually, maybe under the next
President, but certainly with Heritage's help, we could convince
Washington to be more of a supporter of these types of initiatives
and less of an adverse player. Again, thank you all very much for
allowing me to come.
Q & A
Q: Governor Bush, violent conduct is
thought to be a major problem in many school districts. Is that a
problem in Florida? If so, are you treating it as you treated these
other issues?
A: We are. School safety is a primary
concern for parents, and they're our customers. So, we have a
responsibility to protect the students that come to school. School
safety and discipline go hand-in-hand, in my opinion, and so we are
committed to that. In fact, I should have mentioned how our grading
of schools works.
The principal factor by which we grade
schools is student achievement on the Florida Comprehensive
Achievement Test. There are two other elements as well. One is
attendance: In order to become an A or B school, you have to ensure
that your children are attending. Second is school safety based on
incidents of violence. To be an A or B school, there can't be a
high incidence of violence.
But we're going to add two elements to the
grading system. One is annual advancement in achievement per
student. Instead of measuring how a fourth grade class of students
did last year compared with the fourth grade class of students this
year, we're comparing how Johnny did in fourth grade with how
Johnny did in fifth grade and determining whether there's a year's
worth of achievement in that time. We can do this because now we
have an assessment system that tests grades three through ten.
Stealing a good idea from Texas--I'll
steal them from any state--we're also going to rate how schools
did, no matter what grade, in improving the bottom 25th percentile
of their students, not based on race or ethnicity, but based on
their level of aptitude relative to the other students.
So your test scores could qualify you to
be an A school, but if you're leaving behind kids that are tougher
to teach, then you're not going to be given an A grade after the
rule change occurs in December.
Q: Governor, a local question. I realize
the University at Fort Myers was set up before you achieved office,
but the state of Florida had nine universities for a good many
years, and there was a lot of talk down there that the state could
not afford to fund ten universities. Can you?
A: Sure. We're a fast-growing, prosperous
state, and the university system needs to be expanded. One of the
sad factoids, if you will, in our state is that we have one of the
lowest percentages of people between ages 18 and 25 who are
attending college. While we have an excellent two-plus-two system
that utilizes our community colleges, we need to expand our
university system to meet the needs of the new jobs of the
future.
We're growing. Our unemployment rate is
low, I believe it's below 4 percent, and that's close to full
employment. We have shortages now in the high-skilled areas, and
it's important to be able to provide meaningful jobs for
Floridians. I think the university system is part of that.
Q: Where does home schooling fit into your
reform plans?
A: Although it's a very fast-growing
alternative for a lot of Floridians, it is not part of our plan. We
are looking at ways to provide support for families that home
school their children. But it is not--at least not at the
beginning--part of the plan. It was not possible to have public
support for home schooling pass the Florida Legislature.
Having said that, it is the
fastest-growing part of our education system, and if we want to
move to an achievement- and results-oriented system, from the data
I've seen in our state, home schooling provides the best results in
terms of test scores. The scores are higher than private or public
alternatives.
Jeb Bush, a Republican,
is the Governor of Florida.