Posted on Wed, Jan. 18, 2012

Education Week just released its 2012 Quality Counts rankings. Florida earned a C+, dropping the state from 5 down to 11 overall — the biggest drop of any state. Last year Florida politicians gushed over Florida’s rank of fifth in the nation, forgetting to mention that it was only for data collection, not achievement.

Florida politicians have cut public education funding by $4 billion in three years. We have districts considering four-day weeks. There’s no money to reward great teachers. Our merit pay bill was a $2 billion unfunded mandate.

Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future, the source of every unproven, untested, unfunded reform mechanically repeats the same hopeless motto: Success is never final, reform is never finished.

Florida’s children are caught between these extremes. They are being hurt. Parents know it, and teachers know it.

While Florida politicians drain billions from public school funding, they divert hundreds of millions to lower standard “choice” schools. They invest hundreds of millions in high stakes tests and refuse to pay teachers on par with other professions.

These reforms are pushing Florida public education toward the brink of collapse. Short-sighted and profit-driven, the reformers are limiting our children’s chance for success. An F in spending and a D in college readiness prove that defunding Florida public education, narrowing the curriculum and obsessive, expensive high-stakes tests are policy failures. Quality does count. The problem for Florida politicians and reformers is that quality requires investing in the living, breathing children we know and love, not education industry profiteers.

Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder,

Fund Education Now, Orlando