About

Since the days of Jeb Bush, Florida’s Legislature has created a massive Education Accountability system that is based on the assumption that standardized test scores are an accurate measure of education quality.  The performance of young students on an annual test of grade level proficiency is used to evaluate teachers, administrators, schools and districts. Performance on these tests can result in retention, remediation and, possibly, failure to graduate with little or no input from classroom teachers. The test focused system has led to a significant narrowing of curriculum with some schools being little more than test preparation factories.

This test and punish Accountability system is leading to the destruction of the public education system it was designed to monitor, and has been weaponized to promote privatization – defunding public schools and labeling them as failing while funneling tax dollars to expanded private “school choice” options which are exempt from the same accountability standards. Now, Florida appear intent on privatizing the responsibility for public education and destroying one of our state’s most valuable public assets – our community supported public schools. This is dangerous for our public schools, our communities and our democracy.

Everyone believes there should be accountability in our schools, but the current system is destroying, not evaluating, our schools.