Expanding A-F School Grades to Pre-school and Other Very Bad Ideas

When the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores were released, Florida’s Reading scores had plummeted, erasing any gains seen in the previous 10 years. ACT scores for the high school Class of 2019 show that rates of college readiness in English and math have sunk to record lows. At the same time, Florida’s average score on the SAT college entrance exam dropped 15 points to 60 points below the national average. Public Education advocates suggested the results were evidence of the failure of No Child Left Behind-like, test and punish accountability systems. Corporate Ed reformers (who created the mess) doubled down on the need for more rigorous test and punish policies. Florida’s Commissioner of Education agreed: ““Today’s NAEP results make it very clear that unless we start raising expectations for students, we will continue to see stagnant growth.” Their lack of self reflection is astounding. They have been fully in charge of public education policy in Florida for 20 years. Did they consider the possibility that their policies might be failing? What if the problem is too much accountabaloney? 

A perfect example is newly filed SB1688. It is possibly the most egregious education bill ever filed in Florida and that says a lot.

SB1688 (and its companion HB1013) will bring Jeb Bush-like high stakes accountability measures to 4 year olds, including an A-F school grade system for preschools participating in the state’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) program, with financial rewards for “high performing schools,” removal from the program for “low performing” schools, and intensive reading interventions for pre-schoolers who exhibit “a substantial deficiency in early literacy.”

Seriously…

In May 2019, the Florida Department of Education released the 2017-18 Voluntary Pre-K (VPK) readiness rates, and claimed 41% of children, who had participated in VPK, were not ready for kindergarten. Rather than question the developmental appropriateness of the standards, the validity of the assessment or even whether “kindergarten readiness” should be determined by academic metrics, Governor Ron DeSantis called on Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to create a plan to ensure Florida families receive “the great start to an education their children deserve.” Corcoran responded, “We must have a real accountability measure for all our school readiness programs. We are highlighting this data to serve as a rallying cry going forward that we will improve our early learning opportunities for students. Our youngest learners deserve nothing else.”

In other words: more tests, more punishment.

State Representative Erin Grall and State Senator Gayle Harrell also weighed in, both vowing to improve Florida’s early learning education. Both were heralded as “Early learning policy champions” by the FLDOE press release. Now they have filed bills: SB1688 and HB1013, which create stricter accountability measures using a new standardized assessments administered three times a year, create A-F school grades for providers and give the state Board of Education the authority to enforce compliance.

What could go wrong?

Harrell’s SB1688 is 148 pages long. Here are a few of its components (Grall’s HB1013 is similar):

• Deletes the Office of Early Learning and creates the Division of Early Learning as a division of the Department of Education.
• The Commissioner of Education shall design a statewide, standardized screening and progress-monitoring program to assess early literacy and mathematics skills for VPK programs.
• Participation in the screening and progress-monitoring program will be mandatory for all students enrolled in the VPK program.
• Assessments/screenings will be administered within the first 30 days after enrollment, midyear, and within the last 30 days of the program or school year.
• “Any Voluntary Prekindergarten Education Program student who exhibits a substantial deficiency in early literacy in accordance with the standards under s. 1002.67(1)(a) and based upon the results of the administration of the final progress monitoring screening in s. 1008.2125 must be referred to the local school district and may be eligible to receive intensive reading interventions before participating in kindergarten.” (Line 3813)
• Beginning with the 2021-2022 program year, will create an A-F School Grade system for Voluntary Pre-K programs based on “a limited number of program performance metric profiles that summarize all programs’ profiles.”
• Preschools with high grades will get increased funding. Those with low scores (i.e. those serving the neediest of children) will get less money and be threatened with removal from the program.
• All of the above will apply to public and privately owned preschools accepting VPK vouchers, placing private businesses at risk if their students underperform on a standardized assessment. 

Needless to say, we believe school grades and intensive reading interventions for preschoolers are ridiculous; Early Childhood experts (like those who testified before the House Education Committee in September and reminded legislators that, more than academics and testing, preschool is about play, collaboration, and other social and emotional lessons) would agree. At the time we wrote:

“Will Florida’s lawmakers heed the advice of these experts and let our young children play and develop their love of learning? Will lawmakers recognize play as more important to young learners than ABCs and 123s?

We have a mental health crisis in our schools. Rather than respond to disappointing “Kindergarten Readiness” test scores by incentivizing academic performance in pre-school, we urge lawmakers to question the current Kindergarten Readiness standards themselves. Consider going back to a time when kindergarten was developmentally appropriate and focused on children’s social and emotional needs. Recognize the needs of the whole child. If Florida’s children are not ready for kindergarten, maybe the problem is with the current kindergarten readiness expectations and not the children.

We encourage early childhood experts and parents to follow VPK legislation closely this session. Stay engaged. Increased funding, for teacher training and compensation or extended hours for working parents, would be great. Beware of more academics and testing. Keep repeating: preschool is about play.”