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Perverse Incentives in Florida’s Middle School Math Acceleration

ByAccountabaloney

Even ExcelinEd’s Levesque Can Smell the Accountabaloney

One of Accountabaloney’s first advocacy efforts involved hand-delivering foam clown noses to state leaders in Tallahassee, urging them to “smell the accountabaloney.” We called on policymakers to review Florida’s test-and-punish accountability system and, rather than layering on new laws, to repeal the harmful ones already hurting students and schools.

At the time, we made one simple request:

“REAL education experts — not just those from the Foundation for Excellence in Education — should be involved.”

Needless to say, that review never happened. Every attempt since to soften the negative impacts of Florida’s accountability system has met resistance — with the Foundation for Excellence in Education ( ExcelinEd, founded by Jeb Bush) involved at every step. Florida’s policymakers dare not touch the golden calf of “accountability.”

Just last year, when faced with a proposal to let parental input influence mandatory, test-based third-grade retention decisions, House Speaker Paul Renner declared he and his colleagues would “light themselves on fire” before changing the current system.

But now — it seems the Foundation’s own CEO, Patricia Levesque, is beginning to smell the accountabaloney.

In a recent Orlando Sentinel op-ed, Levesque called for Florida to “lead the nation in math policy.” She noted that “Florida’s grade 8 math performance ranks near the bottom of the nation,” and proposed adding math coursework to teacher prep programs, mandating 60 minutes of uninterrupted math instruction for students, and investing in “safe AI tutoring platforms.” (Sure — AI chatbots sound like a GREAT solution to a math crisis. NOT. That’s a subject for another blog.)

More interestingly, Levesque urged policymakers to “fix a serious flaw in middle school grade calculation that incentivizes schools to accelerate as many students as possible — even those who might not be ready — into high school coursework.” She described it as a “perverse incentive.”

NEWS FLASH: It was her Foundation that created that “perverse incentive.”

In 2011, HB 1255 established the “Middle School Acceleration” category in school grade calculations, rewarding middle schools whose students passed high school-level EOC exams or earned industry certifications. The bill’s staff analysis explained the goal clearly: to “incentivize middle schools to offer more difficult high school curriculum for students ready for these courses.”

With the Foundation’s blessing, the state began pressuring middle schools to enroll all 7th graders scoring Level 3 or higher in high school Algebra — penalizing schools that didn’t. The accountability formula counted every 8th grader who had scored a Level 3 in 7th grade in the denominator, whether or not they were actually in Algebra, ensuring that schools took a hit for students not “accelerated.” Florida’s Accountability system has always favored the stick over the carrot.

To be clear, there is no state mandate requiring students who score level 3 or higher on the 7th grade Math FSA to be accelerated into Algebra 1 in 8th grade – but middle schools are not able to score 100% of the “Middle School Acceleration Success” points if they are not.

The perverse incentive was by design and Jeb’s Foundation was 100% behind it.

In 2015, I described the problems with the Middle School Acceleration calculation in a post called “Skip Ahead Or Remediate? Compliance Rather Than Commitment.” At the time I noted that many schools recognized some students were not ready to skip 8th grade math and be accelerated to Algebra 1, appropriately placing them in 8th grade math.  Others, chasing school grades, simultaneously placed these students into BOTH Algebra 1 and an Intensive Math “elective” designed to increase the child’s chance of passing the Algebra 1 EOC and scoring Acceleration Success points for the school. Such class placement defied logic.

It was a perfect example of accountabaloney:

“Class placement decisions that are made for the benefit of school grades are accountabaloney. Such decisions are all too common in Florida: where the focus is on compliance rather than commitment and many middle schools focus on the school grade calculations, ignoring the needs of the child.”

I am glad Levesque can finally smell it.

After more than a decade of chasing metrics instead of meaning, could Florida’s accountability system finally be collapsing under all its baloney? The very architects of the system can smell it and are now admitting their system has created perverse incentives.

If Florida truly wants to lead the nation in education, it won’t come from new mandates, longer math blocks, or AI tutors. It will come from listening — really listening — to educators, students, and families who’ve been living with the consequences of this accountabaloney all along and questioning Florida’s myraid of perverse incentives that place systems’ needs before those of students’.

 

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