Florida – Contemporary American Education

Florida Education

By: Ned Dean

Basic Information

2.9 million students attend Florida Public Schools
380 thousand students attend Florida Private Schools
340 thousand students attend 687 Florida Charter Schools
Florida Public Schools have a budget of $28 Billion ????
The average per-pupil expenditure is $9,5000… $3124 less than the national average
- High – 37k → Florida School for Death and Blind
- Low – 5k → Florida Virtual School

(Florida Department of Education and Education Data Initiative)

Student Demographics

As seen in the chart above, of the students who attend Florida schools, 37% are white, 34% are Hispanic, 22% are black, and 7% are of other races.
Florida has a total graduation rate of 90%, broken down by demographic it looks like this:
- - Asian → 98%
  - White → 92%
  - Hispanic → 90%
  - Black → 88%

(Florida Department of Education)

Teacher Data ????‍????????‍????

The average teacher in Florida makes $57,000 (Salary.com)
Teachers and administrators who demonstrate outstanding performance (based upon student achievement criteria measured under Section 231.29, Florida Statutes) could annually earn a bonus of up to 5% of their base pay. (Florida Legislature)
Fifty percent of a teacher’s evaluation is based on a formula called the Value-Added Model. It predicts how students should score on the state’s standardized exam – the FCAT, and rates teachers based on how well their students measured up to the predicted FCAT score. The other 50% of a teacher’s evaluation comes from principal observations by school principals. (NPR)
The Florida Education Association, Florida’s largest teacher union, is home to 145,000 teachers. (STARS)

Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) ????

End of year tests including ELA, Algebra, and Geometry to measure student’s performance and growth
Students can advance to their next grade, or graduate in the case of high school seniors even if they “fail” the FSA, as long as the district can prove the student is performing at a high enough level outside of the FSA. For a student to fail the FSA, they must score below a 350 on the ELA section and below a 500 on the math section.
State boards grade schools (A-F) every term based on their student’s grades throughout the year and on the FSA. If any school receives a grade of D or F they must go through support strategies for improvement. If a school does not receive a grade above a C for 2 years straight it must close the school and reassign students to another school or reopen as a charter school

(Florida Department of Education)

Other Information ℹ️

Governor Desantis plans to fully remove the common core starting the 2022-2023 school year. (FDE)
Florida adopted the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS) for science in 2008 and it the necessity for all lessons to be aligned to these standards. (FDE)
Governor Desantis, in 2021, signed a $200 million expansion for private school vouchers. Some changes that were made along with the expansion were: families of four making $100k are now available to qualify for awards, up from $79k. Also, students who are homeschooled are now available to qualify. (Tampa Bay Times)
Florida now has 5 school voucher programs, the largest uses tax credits to fund scholarships for low-income students. In 2020, the voucher programs spent $1.3 billion to pay for scholarships for 172 thousand students. That amount is roughly 3 times higher than the next highest state, Ohio. (Orlando Sentinel)

Data Analysis

The lack of funding for Florida Schools is a main reason there is so much inequality in the state. First off, Florida consistently ranks in the bottom 25% of states when it comes to average teacher salaries. Paying your teachers such a low amount has a ripple effect of consequences. Not only will there be less interest in joining the profession oftentimes teachers will be less interested and engaged in the material they are teaching, causing the quality of schooling to decrease. Florida also ranks near the bottom when it comes to per-pupil expenditure. In a study done by Education Next they found that “on average, a $1000 reduction in per-pupil spending increases the score gap between black and white students by roughly 6%.” The lack of funding Florida gives to its schools decreases the quality of schooling and increases the inequality gap between its students.

One area Florida is often praised for its large amount of funding is its voucher programs. As stated previously, Florida has 5 school voucher programs that spent $1.3 billion to pay for 172 thousand students. However, when people began to dive deeper into these vouchers and see specifically where the money went, they found that many of the participating schools have policies that discriminate against LGBTQ students (Washington Post). So even though Governor Desantis says he is making opportunities for more students with his expansion of the voucher programs, he is at the same time taking away opportunities for other students.

Current News ????

Discrimination against LBGTQ students and students of color isn’t a thing of the past for Florida either. Recently they have been in the news after banning school books that contain information on critical race theory or other concepts that Governor Desantis calls “woke indoctrination” (The New York Times). Counties have now begun submitting various books from their schools they believe should be put up for review. More specifically, in Polk County, 16 books were put up for review some of which were titled: Two Boys Kissing, More Happy Than Not, and Real Live Boyfriends. It was even the case that some math textbooks were put up for review when they contained problems about the gender pay gap and LBGTQ celebrities such as Megan Rapinoe (The New York Times).

The banning of this language in books comes not long after the singing of the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and critics believe this is just another step in Governor Desantis’s culture war. Governor Desantis was quoted as saying “Math is about getting the right answer, not about how you feel about the problem.” One of the many problems this arises is a vacancy of jobs in the Florida schools. One spokesman stated that there are over 9,000 teacher vacancies and major bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and custodian shortages. Later they say “these kinds of antics and political theater going on over these textbooks is exactly what’s driving people out of the profession” (The Guardian). The quality of education Florida is forfeiting by bringing politics into these important decisions is going to prove to be detrimental.