Education Reform in Florida: Diversity and Equity in Public Policy

Education Reform in Florida

This page intentionally left blank.

Education Reform in Florida Diversity and Equity in Public Policy Edited by

Kathryn M. Borman Sherman Dorn

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2007 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384

Production by Susan Geraghty Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Education reform in Florida: diversity and equity in public policy / edited by Kathryn M. Borman, Sherman Dorn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–7914–6983–5 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978–0–7914–6984–2 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Education and state—Florida. 2. Educational change—Florida. I. Borman, Kathryn M. II. Dorn, Sherman. LC90.F6E38 2007 379.759—dc22 2006007121 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

vii

1

Introduction: Issues in Florida Education Reform Kathryn M. Borman and Sherman Dorn

2

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida Deirdre Cobb-Roberts and Barbara Shircliffe

19

3

Education Finance Reform in Florida Sherman Dorn and Deanna L. Michael

53

4

Accountability as a Means of Improvement: A Continuity of Themes Deanna L. Michael and Sherman Dorn

5

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts Tamela McNulty Eitle

6

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools David Eitle and Tamela McNulty Eitle

7

Competing Agendas for University Governance: Placing the Conflict between Jeb Bush and Bob Graham in Context Larry Johnson and Kathryn M. Borman

8

9

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity, and the Blinkered Language of Preference Larry Johnson and Deirdre Cobb-Roberts Florida’s A+ Plan: Education Reform Policies and Student Outcomes Reginald S. Lee, Kathryn M. Borman, and William Tyson

1

83

117 153

185

211

241

About the Contributors

281

Index

285 v

This page intentionally left blank.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors and authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spencer Foundation in carrying out the research presented in this volume under the auspices of the Consortium for Educational Research in Florida housed at the University of South Florida. In addition, we are very grateful to Lisa Chesnel for her encouragement in developing this work and to Susan Geraghty for support during the prepublication process.

vii

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

1

Introduction: Issues in Florida Education Reform

Kathryn M. Borman Sherman Dorn Since 1999, Florida education policy has been dominated by sweeping political initiatives during the administration of Governor Jeb Bush, now finishing his second term. In this book, we and our colleagues discuss both the current and historical context for education policy and education reform in the state of Florida. The first term of Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s administration, 1999–2003, was a remarkable period for any governor. With both houses of the legislature having comfortable Republican majorities, Bush had virtually all his key education policies adopted with very few battles, at least at the outset. That certainly was unprecedented in Florida history, but it is a significant achievement in any state. Bush’s policies affected both K–12 and higher education systems, and his policies embraced a broad range of issues: high-stakes testing with consequences for students, teachers, and school administrators; vouchers tied to high-stakes testing and also available for students with disabilities; alternative routes to teacher certification that bypass formal teacher education preparation; the elimination of affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions; the elimination of a separate board of regents for the state’s universities; and the creation of individual boards of trustees for each state university. By the end of his first term, Governor Bush and education officials in Florida were speaking of a “seamless K–20” system of education to provide efficient education with transparent accountability structures.

1

2

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

In several ways, Bush’s first term included important lessons for the nation’s education policies as a whole. First, Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, who became president two years into the Florida governor’s term, promoted many of the same policies at the federal level. The No Child Left Behind Act (signed in January 2002) imposes high-stakes testing requirements on states in a manner very similar to Florida’s policies. The original bill would have included, as exists in Florida, a “failingschools” voucher for children in schools who did not meet the standards. And the original bill reauthorizing the federal special education law (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) would have created a nationwide voucher program for children with disabilities. Many dynamics in Florida’s higher education policies, from the end of affirmative action in admissions procedures to the reorganization of higher education, will likely be played out in other states. In addition, Governor Bush’s first term coincided with generally good economic conditions for the state. Higher revenues allowed the governor both to cut taxes and also to claim that he had increased spending on education, at least through the first three years of his term and in the very last year. Those relatively good conditions did not mean that Bush’s initiatives were welcomed throughout Florida. Dissenters challenged the Bush agenda. There were several sources of dissenting voices between his first inauguration in January 1999 and his second in January 2003. Teacher unions opposed his grading of schools and what they believed was an undue emphasis on high-stakes testing (the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, or FCAT). Civil rights activists opposed both ending affirmative action and tying high school graduation to more difficult state-administered tests. A significant minority of parents opposed high-stakes testing altogether, a method of assessment that pushed teachers to teach to the test, in their view. The Florida Chamber of Commerce issued a report in 2002 condemning the state government for under-funding education. U.S. Senator Bob Graham opposed the elimination of a central oversight board for the state universities. These voices in opposition demonstrate that Governor Bush was decidedly not the only political actor with Florida interests holding strong opinions about education. Bush pushed his initiatives through the legislature (or through the regulatory process) with legislative leaders who were largely cooperative in his first term, enabling him to overcome opposition to his proposals. Thus, Governor Bush’s first term represented a unique moment in educational policy history: the implementation of one governor’s vision

Introduction

3

for education when the conditions were available for success. With the legislature as well as the governor’s mansion in the same party, with remarkable cooperation between the governor and the legislature for the first several years, and with an expanding revenue base, one could say that Governor Bush had the best of all possible political worlds in his first term. GOVERNOR BUSH’S POLICIES The judgment shared by the authors in this book is that Bush’s firstterm education policies were mixed with respect to their impact on the state’s educational system and its students. On the one hand, the governor deserves credit for arguing that schools should hold all students to high standards. On the other hand, his policies have pushed for equality in a narrow way. We are skeptical about seeing significant and sweeping improvement in how well schools work for all students. Nonetheless, the broad range of education policy changes enacted in Governor Jeb Bush’s first term is startling for its scope. It encompassed both moves toward privatization with a voucher system and also more government control of public education institutions with centralized accountability mechanisms and a “superboard” for all public education. The policies enacted in Bush’s first term include the following: Greater use of standardized testing in accountability. The A+ Plan enacted in 1999 mandated standardized tests in grades 3 through 10, with results used in the state’s labeling of all public elementary and secondary schools on an A through F grading scale. Merit pay. The A+ Plan law also required counties to establish, by 2002, plans to pay teachers for student “learning gains” as a condition for receiving certain categories of state aid. Vouchers. The 1999 bill also created a voucher program for students whose schools were labeled “F” two years out of four. In 1999, the legislature also created a pilot voucher program for students with disabilities, which has been expanded every year since in terms of eligibility and numbers. Public school choice. The 1999 A+ Plan also allowed students in twice-labeled-”F” schools to transfer to another public school rated “C” or higher in the county. Test-based teacher licensing. Beginning in the first Bush term, individuals could earn a teacher license through a regular teacher education

4

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

program at a college or university, through a program run by a local district, or by having a bachelor’s degree and passing a standardized test. Higher requirements for teacher education-based licensing. Beginning in 2001, those wishing to earn licenses through teacher education programs at colleges and universities needed to acquire sixty hours (or approximately twenty courses) in required areas before entering the teacher education program (or academic majors for prospective high school teachers). End of affirmative action in higher education admissions. In 1999, Governor Bush banned public universities from considering race, ethnicity, or gender in admissions decisions. This was part of an executive order that also banned affirmative action in state contracts. Talented 20 plan. When abolishing affirmative action, Bush pushed a requirement that the state university system accept the top 20 percent of each graduating high school class who met minimum course requirements for entrance into Florida’s public universities. Creation of one new law school and one new medical school in Florida’s public universities. In 2000, Governor Bush signed a law creating a medical school at Florida State University and a law school housed at Florida A&M University. Both programs were opposed by Florida State University System Chancellor Adam Herbert and the board of regents. The elimination of the Florida Board of Regents. In the same year that Bush signed into law the creation of two new professional schools, he also signed a law eliminating the Florida Board of Regents as the governing board for Florida’s universities and its replacement by two different structures. The restructuring of the Florida Board of Education as a “K-20 superboard.” One of the replacement structures was a reorganized Board of Education that is now appointed by the governor and, until 2003, had authority over both K–12 and higher education. The creation of individual boards of trustees for public universities. The other structure was the creation of local boards of trustees for each Florida public university. The original legislation gave Bush the power to appoint all trustees who would serve at his pleasure. The revision of Florida’s school laws. In 2002, the legislature entirely rewrote the Florida school code. The exact consequences of this change are as yet unknown.1 THE CONTENTS OF THE VOLUME This volume is the result of the collective effort of scholars from anthropology, history, policy studies, and sociology. We came together

Introduction

5

in 2000 to form the Consortium for Education Research in Florida (CERF), assisted by the generous support of the Spencer Foundation and with the encouragement of John Williams, at that time a vice president of the foundation and director of the foundation’s southern initiative. The Consortium’s mission was to inform educational policy with emphasis placed on advising Florida’s educational policy-making processes. During the course of our work over three years we assembled and analyzed a number of data sets, combed the archives at the Florida State Library, Florida A&M University, and elsewhere in the state, and conducted research in several high schools in Hillsborough County (Tampa). Our principal objective was to analyze the education policies currently put forward in the state during the administration of Governor Jeb Bush. Some of our research appeared in the fall 2004 issue of American Educational Research Journal commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.2 The chapters that follow are the results of this work, research that is both interdisciplinary and collaborative. In chapter 2, “The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida,” coauthors Deirdre Cobb-Roberts and Barbara Shircliffe, both historians of education, demonstrate that civil rights and desegregation politics in Florida markedly affected public education in the state. This chapter sets the stage historically and chronologically for the volume’s remaining chapters by demonstrating that trends, including population growth in the state’s major metropolitan centers, combined with largescale demographic changes and an increasingly diversified economy to shape education policy following Reconstruction. The authors introduce an additional critical theme, namely that White majority interests have dominated education policies since the establishment of a dual education system in 1885. The pursuit of equity in Florida’s education policy has suffered the effects of indifference and hostility in combination with scarce resources and funding inequities. In 1938, Florida became the site of the first NAACP-supported equalization case in the Deep South. In higher education as well, African Americans both supported desegregation of the state’s colleges and universities following Brown and also argued that Florida A&M University (a historically Black university) served a necessary role. Tensions between maintaining quality schools in Black neighborhoods and carrying desegregation forward remain unresolved in contemporary school politics. CobbRoberts and Shircliffe conclude that a sense of loss and disappointment associated with school desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s still pervades the African American community, a community that fought

6

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

for desegregation both as a means to ensure educational equity and quality schools and as a means of strengthening neighborhoods. In chapter 3, “Education Finance Reform in Florida,” coauthors Sherman Dorn and Deanna L. Michael, also historians, describe the policy and its repercussions articulated in the Florida Education Finance Program, a far-reaching, innovative reform debated and framed in the early 1970s. The authors argue that there are at least three critical legacies of the Florida Education Finance Program: the accountability debate concerning what state government should provide and demand from public institutions, specifically, the local schools; how political negotiations shape complex reforms; and, when all is said and done, how programmatic effects are often more moderate than program planners expect. The authors’ documentation of the political story behind financial reforms in Florida illuminates economic and political pressures confronting state lawmakers throughout the past century. Trends toward metropolitan population growth following World War II in concert with pressure brought to bear on education policy by organizations such as the NAACP combined to move reluctant legislators especially when the governor in office possessed vision and political will. Chapter 4, “Accountability as a Means of Improvement,” by Deanna L. Michael and Sherman Dorn, focuses on the development of accountability policy in Florida and the role played by governors in this process since the 1970s. The authors argue that policy makers in the state’s capital drove legislation requiring increasingly greater levels of school district accountability and mandated annual accounts of expenditures, particularly those derived from property taxes and other sources. More recently, this top-down accountability model has served as a rationale for requiring high-stakes, statewide standardized testing and subsequent grading of schools. Throughout the modern period, governors of both major parties have taken several factors into account as education policy drivers: the interests of major business leaders important to the state’s economic growth; the increasing urbanization of the state’s population; the decentralization of responsibility from the state to local school districts; and the persistent retreat from racial equity. The authors conclude that a preoccupation with a narrow set of academic skills and achievements may dangerously affect how well students are able to take on responsibility as active and informed citizens in their future worlds. Chapter 5, “Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts,” by sociologist Tamela McNulty Eitle, considers the

Introduction

7

convergence of policies such as Governor Bush’s A+ Plan in the context of a state student population that has grown larger and more diverse in recent years. Eitle argues that the twenty-first century has ushered in a new period, one she terms the “post-desegregation era,” characterized by the granting of unitary status to many large districts in the state, including Miami-Dade and Hillsborough (Tampa) counties. How the policies of this period will unfold and affect the life chances of poor and minority students in particular is not at all apparent. This chapter examines strategies that school districts throughout the state are now implementing including efforts to increase the number of school-based magnet programs and choice programs as is the case in Miami-Dade and elsewhere. Although it is not clear how these programs will affect racial enrollments and isolation, it is fair to say the state education system as a whole is plagued by large-scale racial and socioeconomic segregation with students of color attending schools having highest concentrations of both poverty and poorest performance on the state’s high-stakes tests. Because trends toward increased student diversity will continue in coming decades and because students are also increasingly likely to be non-English-language speakers from economically struggling families, it is critical for the state’s education policies to address the needs of such students. Chapter 6, “Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools,” by criminologist David Eitle and Tamela McNulty Eitle, examines policies at the school level formulated to address the issue of school violence and disorder. The chapter is organized to address several issues: the problem of school disorder; the nature and extent of school violence and disorder in Florida public schools; types of disciplinary actions taken against students; and connections among disorder, discipline, and school characteristics, including resource inequities. The question of whether segregated learning environments and schools with fewer resources are associated with higher rates of disorder and types of disciplinary actions taken against students is central to the analysis. The authors conclude that policies are largely social control based and aimed at decreasing opportunities for offenders to commit malfeasance. In addition the current policy environment favors increasingly punitive measures to deter offenders from committing future transgressions. Results of their analyses have implications for policy. Because suspensions, expulsions, and other forms of student disciplinary action are most likely to erupt in desegregated settings attended by students who live in highly segregated neighborhoods, it is critical

8

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

to address the negative effects of mixing students from segregated communities. Teachers and others in charge of discipline must be aware of how their actions may prompt the use of suspensions in integrated schools, especially since research indicates that the bulk of disciplinary actions against students are taken by a handful of teachers in most schools. In addition, students must acquire the skills of good citizenship and racial understanding. Chapter 7, “Competing Agendas for University Governance: Placing the Conflict between Jeb Bush and Bob Graham in Context,” by historian Larry Johnson and education policy researcher Kathryn M. Borman, puts the reorganization of Florida public universities in a broader perspective. The battle over reorganization, briefly described earlier, was neither a battle between Bush’s allies and politically disinterested allies of the universities nor a rational policy that flowed from a specific problem in higher education. The destruction of the statewide board of regents in Bush’s first term had both political origins and precedents in the history of the board in several earlier threats. It is more accurate to see the initial reorganization effort as the actions of policy makers who took an opportunity in Florida’s political environment to solve what appeared to them as a problematic structure (the old board of regents).3 Those efforts have been partially reversed by a constitutional amendment in 2002 creating a new statewide structure to govern the public universities. Chapter 8, “One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity, and the Blinkered Language of Preference,” by Larry Johnson and Deirdre Cobb-Roberts, argues that Florida has persisted in maintaining a dual system of higher education, one of only nineteen states to do so. Segregated Black institutions, including Florida A&M University (FAMU), most notably suffered from inequities in funding and facilities. Currently, universities are monitored by the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, and when enrollments of African American students drop, action can be taken. The governor’s sweeping higher education reforms are placed in context by the authors who argue that the campaign against affirmative action in higher education waged by the One Florida legislation has imperiled opportunities for Blacks to attend Florida’s universities. Indeed, the number of African American freshman attending the University of Florida dropped from a high of 829 in 2000 to a low of 461 in the fall of 2001, after implementation of One Florida. In addition, One Florida created a stratified system of higher educational options in the state favoring

Introduction

9

attendance at more prestigious institutions by White majority students and the attendance at less prestigious two-year institutions by minorities, particularly Blacks. The authors conclude by asserting that while One Florida program’s provisions may strengthen education in poor communities, it is not at all clear that access to the state’s higher education system beyond the community college has been enhanced for minorities. Chapter 9, “Florida’s A+ Plan: Education Reform Policies and Student Outcomes,” by educational measurement researcher Reginald S. Lee, Kathryn M. Borman, and sociologist William Tyson, addresses the question of how student achievement on Florida’s high-stakes tests is predicted by school- and district-level features. While the authors examined such school characteristics as poverty and student race/ethnicity in carrying out their analyses, they also considered indicators of institutional and instructional quality such as the educational background of teachers and the percentage of students enrolled in various academic programs. The authors conclude that the student mix within a school is critical. Poverty indicators are a key predictor both of academic achievement within a school early in Governor Bush’s administration (with higher poverty associated with lower proportions of students achieving well) and also of improvement between 1999 and 2004. In that context, the student mix within schools is critical. Resources in the form of funding allocations and curricula are necessary but not sufficient elements for assuring success for all students. In addition to these baseline assets, student achievement is fostered when conditions in schools are such that students’ teachers are well educated, when students are provided high-level academic coursework throughout their educational careers, and when the disadvantages of poverty are not concentrated in a school. OVERARCHING ISSUES Providing a perspective on Governor Bush’s education policies as we have undertaken to do in this volume is important. The combination of political power, economic growth, and little successful opposition to his policies was unusual and provided a base for what appeared to be sweeping changes in Florida education from elementary schools to universities. This book considers three broad questions about Florida education policy:

10

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

• What is truly unique in Bush’s first-term policies and what is a continuation of the history of Florida’s education policies? • What important issues have Bush’s policies omitted from consideration? • What can we say about the success or failure of Bush’s policies? Some of Bush’s policies are truly unique—the voucher program being the obvious example. Others, however, were either an extension of a previous trend (the increasingly high stakes attached to standardized testing outcomes for students, their teachers and their schools) or an idea that had existed at least as a trial balloon if not implemented before Bush’s first term (higher education reorganization). The contributors to this book argue that Governor Bush’s policies embody a narrow view of educational equality. Bush was straightforward in his view of equality in elementary and secondary education: everyone is to be held to the same standards, because anything else underestimates the capacity of poor and otherwise disadvantaged children. In ending affirmative action in higher education, Bush argued that all applicants to college and university programs should be viewed without reference to race or ethnicity. These principles are consistent. But Bush’s stated focus also largely ignores the history of segregation and the politics of desegregation in Florida. As Tamela McNulty Eitle notes in chapter 5, the implementation of Bush’s policies coincided with the cessation of desegregation orders in several of the largest school systems in the state. Is Bush’s set of principles wise in ignoring demographics and the changing judicial landscape in elementary and secondary schools? We conclude that it is not. Finally, the contributors use the analyses in each chapter to offer an initial appraisal of the outcomes of Bush’s policies. They do so in four areas: higher education reorganization; higher education admissions policies; elementary and secondary discipline records; and elementary and secondary academic achievement. Unfortunately, the evaluation of Bush’s first-term policies is limited in several ways. The state makes available school-level data on student achievement in mathematics and language arts (and science starting in 2004), but it is still in the process of creating an individual-level data warehouse that can be accessed more easily by researchers. We are therefore unable to determine which teachers in which schools and school districts made a real difference in students’ subsequent achievement. The state did not

Introduction

11

participate in the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) state testing program, thus making it impossible to understand how Florida stacks up against other states in the very first years of the program. The data gathered since is mixed, as Madhabi Chatterji has described. While reading scores on NAEP have increased at fourth grade, there is no evidence of any dramatic improvement or narrowing of achievement gaps for other tests.4 With regard to the voucher programs, no data are publicly available to allow a judgment about the quality of education provided students who have participated in the voucher programs. There have been a number of financial scandals involving several of the voucher programs, but that does not address the questions about program quality.5 With regard to the failing-schools voucher program (tied to the state’s grading individual schools), the state has not released test data for the students who are in private schools, because the numbers in each grade are so small. The much larger group of students with disabilities using the disabled-student voucher program each might have an individualized education program, but those are not standardized and do not allow easy comparison of progress or status in academic achievement or other student outcomes. And, even if such data were available, it would not allow a credible conclusion to be drawn. As other research on voucher programs has shown, it is difficult to find matches for the students who begin voucher programs, and the high attrition makes many conclusions fragile.6 The most careful study of the failing-school voucher program’s effect on other schools is that the voucher itself—as opposed to the stigma associated with the failing-schools label—has a minimal effect on student achievement.7 Governor Bush’s second term has been significantly different from his first. He was reelected with a comfortable majority in November 2002, but both the voters and the economy have made it difficult to advance Bush’s education agenda. Voters approved three amendments to the state’s constitution regarding education, and the governor opposed two of them. The state’s electorate voted to reduce class sizes in public elementary and secondary schools over eight years. The voters also approved the creation of a single constitutional body to oversee the state’s universities, separate from the Florida Board of Education. Bush opposed both these initiatives. A third, approving state-funded pre-kindergarten programs for parents who want them, passed with no substantial opposition, but the implementation legislation stalled for a year and has been criticized as insufficient to meet the

12

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

constitutional mandate.8 In addition, the recession beginning in 2001 cut state revenues, creating budget problems similar to those in other states. As a result, the legislature during the start of Bush’s second term was unable to increase educational spending and cut taxes at the same time. The political calculus in Florida during Governor Bush’s second term has thus been considerably different. In addition, in January 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the first voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarship Program (or failing-schools voucher). The court ruled in this way because the Florida state constitution required a public system with no parallel private system and also because the treatment of public schools and private schools participating in the voucher program was not uniform.9 From our perspective, the first Bush term in Florida is a unique period, one with ambitious goals that address some of Florida’s educational needs, needs that at this writing have been only partially addressed. FLORIDA AS A NATIONAL TRENDSETTER Many of the issues that Florida has faced since 1999 or before have become far more widespread in other states. Florida’s system of highstakes testing and accountability accelerated what had existed for many years in some states, such as Texas and North Carolina, attaching significant funding rewards for very specific and complex performance criteria. Yet Florida’s state system of accountability is less stringent than the criteria that the state established to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, while the majority of schools in recent years have received A or B grades, the majority of schools statewide also have been judged to have failed the state’s adequate yearly progress standards. Florida is by no means alone, but it is an exemplar of the tension between state and national accountability standards, even when the state government defines the standards for both and the state’s governor is the brother of the president.10 One could probably identify a number of ways in which Florida’s experiences have been at the leading edge of education reform trends across the country. We focus here on four themes that might be considered lessons for the nation from Florida’s recent education reforms: the continuing importance of large, metropolitan school districts and schools; the tensions between governance structures and policy mandates emanating from the state capitol in Tallahassee, on the one hand,

Introduction

13

and the interests and concerns of local districts in retaining a measure of autonomy, on the other; unsettled questions regarding desegregation and educational equity; and the will and capacity of the state to support high-quality programs at all levels of the education system. The importance of urban schools. Despite the universal language of education reform rhetoric, many of the significant problems in the country’s schools, especially in the unequal education offered to children, reside in cities and in the politics of urban schools. In several ways, Florida’s recent school history is a history of metropolitan districts. As chapter 2 explains, desegregation lawsuits disproportionately focused on urban school districts. The lifting of court supervision in most Florida cities over the past decade makes the conclusions of chapters 5 and 7 on desegregation highly relevant to Florida cities. As chapter 3 notes, metropolitan lawmakers crafted the education finance equalization law in the 1970s in part to redress a prior imbalance in the state. In many states, district lines separate urban from suburban schools. Thus, the effects of being in an urban system in Florida are often muted in comparison to other states. The tensions between state governments and local districts. The current political battle at the national level, between individual states and districts against the federal government over the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, are but one example of the tensions between localism and central oversight of schools. We want to stress here that we are skeptical of claims staked to a historical tradition of local control as an argument against central oversight. First, arguments based on local control have been abused in the past to justify continued segregation and inequality in the 1960s and 1970s or more recently. Second, it is difficult to claim that the lack of government centralization is the primary impediment to local control when the private textbook market in essence centralizes control over the curriculum.11 Third, as chapter 7 makes clear, arguments about centralization versus devolution of control are abstract entities when torn from the context of real policy debates. In Florida higher education, arguments about the wisdom of a central governing board for universities have depended on more concrete concerns about the political domination of the system by its two most senior research universities, the independence of judgment by whichever board was in operation at the time, and the political appointment powers of the governor. Without making judgments, however, we can say that the tensions are real. Florida’s history of accountability has often wavered between

14

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

efforts to devolve control onto schools (with 1990s mandate for schools to establish advisory councils that write annual improvement plans) and efforts to centralize control (such as Governor Bush’s A+ Plan). Many of the complaints aimed at the federal government’s early implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act—inflexible application of the adequate yearly progress standards and inadequate funding—have also been raised in Florida. In some cases, flexibility is possible through negotiations with staff members in a state (or the federal) department of education. But many of the features of Governor Bush’s policies have been deliberately inflexible—refusing, for example, to adjust academic expectations by poverty status, race, or ethnicity. One subtle warning from Florida’s education reforms goes beyond the typical centralization-decentralization debate: centralization can elide state responsibility in the name of accountability. While the 2005–2006 Florida state budget includes $263 million for rewarding schools performing well on FCAT, the budget for the last several years has never included more than a few million dollars in direct state support targeted at low-performing schools.12 In Florida, the A+ Plan shifts responsibility for improving schools and providing resources to local districts. The continued legacy of battles over school equity. Most chapters in this book describe a concrete legacy of prior conflicts over school equity in Florida. Governor Bush’s approach to accountability has acknowledged that past primarily as a reason to hold uniform expectations of schools and students and to create new voucher programs. Because much educator opposition to the A+ Plan focused on the reasonableness of these expectations, debate in Jeb Bush’s first term became trapped in the assumption that either teachers or students’ families were to blame for inadequate achievement. Several chapters in this book illuminate one other factor, the role of residential and school segregation, a topic that is currently politically unmentionable in Tallahassee. There are other policy-specific areas that affect educational outcomes, including access to health care. And there is unequal access to social capital in the forms of both institutional and social networks in specific communities. For the administration of Jeb Bush, broader measures of social accounting have been ignored in favor of more narrow measures of student achievement. They are interrelated, and one cannot address the legacy of school inequity without addressing both.13 Doubts over the will and capacity of the state to support high-quality programs. Like many states, Florida has a long history of political battles

Introduction

15

over the adequacy and equitable distribution of educational funding. Once, in the early 1970s, state politicians agreed to a dramatic shift in responsibility up to the state, one that eventually equalized funding among districts. Since those events as described in chapter 3, however, Florida schools have struggled with funding issues through more than three decades of tremendous enrollment growth. One part of the funding debate is the level of responsibility (state or district), as noted earlier in this section. But the funding debate is also over the general responsibility of the public toward education. In this way, the political debate over education in Florida mirrors the national tension between accountability and capacity. While Florida’s courts have generally declined to intervene in funding battles, a new set of constitutional mandates may presage more success if there is a lawsuit in the future.14 Focusing on the political funding debate may distract us from another important issue of capacity: the systemic (in)ability to develop, support, and retain qualified teachers. The federal government mandated “high-quality teachers” in the No Child Left Behind Act, but a mandate is not a solution. As others have noted, Florida is one of many states that have turned the mandate into a paperwork exercise.15 Without careful attention to organizational capacity, the best aspects of this current round of education reform will likely sink under the weight of structural mandates, mandates that do not create deeper changes within a classroom. It is true that some districts and schools respond to structural reforms—such as Governor Bush’s A+ Plan—in productive, functional ways. A former head of state testing in Florida referred to this effect of high-stakes stigma as a justification for high-stakes pressures on schools. While we don’t doubt the existence of a “kick-in-thepants” effect of structural reforms, it is inconsistent. Idiosyncratic responses to pressures can also lead to narrowing the curriculum or to performing a triage on students.16 At the moment, supporting effective changes in the classroom depends on local initiative or relatively narrow networks of educators and institutions that focus on changing classroom practices. At any time, there are always examples of wonderful programs that change children’s lives at the local level or in networks through the country. A critical question is always how sustainable those are. Local initiatives are vulnerable to changing political climates, changing personnel, and the vicissitudes of annual budgets.17 Even national institutions such as the National Science Foundation have discovered that intervening in urban math and science instruction is highly dependent on the effectiveness of

16

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

professional development in a local context.18 We are neither the first nor last researchers to point out the obvious in this area. But repeated warnings that structural reform is insufficient are generally ignored. For better or worse, little of the state or national discussion on education policy is focused on these issues. The next governor of Florida—or any state—has the ability to reshape the education debate in the first year or two of her or his term. This volume documents the limits of structural reform by an activist, conservative state government. Governor Bush attempted to mold education from kindergarten to graduate school in his first term, and in many ways he was remarkably successful. But in establishing his programs at the elementary and secondary levels, and in creatively responding to events of the day in higher education, he was unable to erase the historical legacy of inequities in schools, unable to shake off the institutional dynamics in higher education, and unable to convince voters to let him pilot the state’s schools without additional mandates in his second term. The results have been salutary primarily in elementary school, with little evidence of lasting benefits for adolescents’ academic achievement. The last four years of his administration have been largely defensive, devoted to protecting what he accomplished in the first few years. His successor will inevitably take Florida schools in a different path, but without nearly the political power that Jeb Bush held in his first term. We hope that future state leaders will understand both the importance of pushing for higher achievement and also the narrowness of the approach taken in Florida (and much of the nation) over the past decade. NOTES 1. Florida Statutes, Title 48, Chapter 2002-387. 2. Kathryn Borman, Deanna Michael, Reginald Lee, Larry Johnson, David Eitle, Tami Eitle, Barbara Shircliffe, Deirdre Cobb-Roberts, and Sherman Dorn, “A Half Century after Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka KS: The Impact of Florida Education Policies on Student Outcomes and Equity,” American Educational Research Journal 43 (2004). 3. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: Harper Collins, 1984). 4. Madhabi Chatterji, “Good and Bad News About Florida Student Achievement: Performance Trends on Multiple Indicators Since Passage of the A+ Legislation,” Educational Policy Studies Laboratory policy brief

Introduction

17

EPSL–0401–105–EPRU (April 2004), retrieved February 25, 2005, from http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/epru_2004_Research_Writing.htm. 5. Kimberley Miller, “Seven Charged in Voucher Scam,” Palm Beach Post, June 30, 2004; Florida Department of Financial Services, “Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program” and “McKay and Opportunity Scholarship Programs” (December 10, 2003), retrieved February 25, 2005, from http: //www.fldfs.com/aadir/. 6. For an interesting discussion about the extent of available evidence more broadly on vouchers, see Henry M. Levin and Clive Belfield, “Vouchers and Public Policy: When Ideology Trumps Evidence,” National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College ( June 2004), retrieved February 25, 2005, from http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/ OP95.pdf. 7. David N. Figlio and Cecilia Rouse, “Do Accountability and Voucher Threats Improve Low-Performing Schools?” Journal of Public Economics, 90, 1-2 ( January 2006): 239-255. 8. Jeffrey Solochek, “Advocacy Group Gives an F to New Pre-K Plan,” St. Petersburg Times, January 7, 2005; Jeffrey Solochek, “Pre-K Schools: Funds Too Low,” St. Petersburg Times, January 19, 2005; Jeffrey Solochek, “Catholic Schools May Opt-Out of Pre-K Program, St. Petersburg Times, February 1, 2005. 9. Bush v. Holmes (Florida SC04-2323) ( January 6, 2006), available at http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2006/sc04-2323.pdf. 10. Also see Robert L. Linn, “Conflicting Demands of No Child Left Behind and State Systems: Mixed Messages about School Performance,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 13, 33 ( June 2005), available at http://epaa. asu.edu/epaa/v13n33/. 11. For discussion of the textbook market, see Frances FitzGerald, America Revised (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Diane Ravitch, The Language Police (New York: Knopf, 2003). 12. Florida Law 2005–70, with the version passed by the legislature (prior to the governor’s line-item vetoes) available online at http://www.flsenate.gov /data/session/2005/Senate/bills/billtext/pdf/s2600er.pdf. The governor asked for $6.8 million dollars for the Assistance Plus program in the 2005–2006 budget; see the specific details retrieved September 14, 2005, from http://www. ebudget.state.fl.us/dtlsearchissue.asp?service_id=48250400&pgm_component_id=0304000000&appr_cat_id=&issue_id=4100310. The appropriations bill as passed does not specifically mention Assistance Plus or the Bureau of School Improvement, so it is difficult to trace exactly how much was available for the 2005–2006 academic year. 13. For the germinal work on social capital, see James C. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Soci-

18

KATHRYN M. BORMAN AND SHERMAN DORN

ology 94 (1988): S95–S120. For an example of broader social accounting of resources available to children and the conditions of children, see the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s online Kids Count database, at http://www.aecf.org/ kidscount/sld/databook.jsp. 14. See, for example, Constitutional Accountability Commission, Final Report (Tallahassee: Florida School Boards Association, August 2005), available at http://www.fsba.org/documents/finalcacreport.pdf. Also see the dicta concerning the duty of the state in Bush v. Holmes (2006). 15. Kate Welch and Emma Snyder, Searching the Attic (Washington, DC: National Council on Teacher Quality, December 2004), available at http://www.nctq.org/nctq/images/housse_report_2.pdf. 16. See, for example, David N. Figlio, “Testing, Crime, and Punishment,” Journal of Public Economics, 90 (2006): 837–851. 17. For historical examples, see Sherman Dorn, Creating the Dropout (Westport: Praeger, 1996), chap. 5. 18. Kathryn M. Borman and Associates, Meaningful Urban Education Reform (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).

CHAPTER

2

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

Deirdre Cobb-Roberts Barbara Shircliffe In two ways Governor Jeb Bush’s education policies in Florida in his first term assumed that the primary historical legacy of racism has been low expectations for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. First, his accountability policies for elementary and secondary schools have relied on a single mechanism—high-stakes standardized testing—as the primary tool of school improvement. Second, the elimination of affirmative action in Florida higher education implied that the history of discrimination in higher education should no longer have a role in higher education admissions policies. Chapters 5 and 8 explore those contemporary debates explicitly. In this chapter, we explain how Florida’s educational history has left lasting marks on the current debate. Exploring civil rights efforts in the Jim Crow era, state-supported White resistance, and effects of desegregation on historically Black institutions, this chapter places school desegregation in Florida in a regional context. The civil rights movement and desegregation politics in Florida significantly shaped public education in the state. School desegregation took place in Florida as the state was witnessing significant growth in its major metropolitan areas, rapid demographic change, and a shift to an increasingly diversified economy, an economy increasingly less dominated by traditional agricultural elites. These forces both shaped and complicated Florida’s response to desegregation. Unlike other southern states, pro-segregation demagogues, who closed public schools to evade desegregation in Virginia and Arkansas, did not gain a critical voice in shaping educational policy. Rather, state and local 19

20

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

leaders charted out a course for maintaining segregation and later for implementing desegregation in the name of “good race relations.” In contrast to other education reforms discussed in this book, the state government in Tallahassee did not initiate or implement desegregation. In fact, in Brown II (1955), the U.S. Supreme Court did not hold state governments responsible for planning, implementing, or monitoring desegregation. Although state governments had mandated segregated schooling, the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned that due to variations in local conditions, local school districts under the direction of the federal court would be responsible for working out desegregation plans. In higher education, the story was different; as a state agency, the Florida Board of Control governed the higher education system. This chapter describes the legacy of desegregation efforts in Florida, using case studies from both K–12 public schools and higher education to explore the dynamics involved in desegregation. In each case, we address the power White privilege has had in shaping desegregation policies and debates within the African American community about the legacy of desegregation. In Florida, as elsewhere in the South, desegregation was an uneven and diverse experience and was played out differently in various communities throughout the state. Its legacy for current educational policy includes both the pragmatic issues of isolating students and also the political dynamic of relative newcomers in Florida making policy without acknowledging the continuing skepticism of African American political and community leaders toward educational policies controlled by White politicians. FLORIDA IN THE JIM CROW ERA In 1866, following the Civil War, Florida was one of the first states in the Union to pass a law allowing the establishment of segregated schools for African Americans. This school law resulted from both African American demands for schooling and White efforts to control the African American education movement. During this period, the Freedman’s Bureau, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, and the African Civilization Society began establishing schools to meet demands for education among African Americans. As elsewhere in the South, many White Floridians feared such schools, particularly if headed by northern teachers or federal authorities. To capitalize on these fears, Freedmen’s Bureau Head Colonel Osborn

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

21

wrote Florida legislators and argued that by initiating schools for African Americans, “White Floridians would have control over the freedmen’s education.”1 That argument, in part, led to the passage of the 1866 school law to establish tax-supported schools for African Americans and to give the state control over who could be hired to teach. These schools were financed by taxes paid by African American males and revenue generated from license fees of White teachers working in the schools for African Americans.2 During radical Reconstruction, 1868–1877, legislators began to formalize state control over schooling. African American representatives in the state legislature fought to prevent a provision for segregated schools from being passed. However, the 1869 law permitted segregated schools. Data on the increased numbers of schools established following this legislation are incomplete. What few records do exist paint a bleak picture of the condition of Florida’s public schools in general. At the local level, White hostility toward schools for African Americans persisted. Despite White protests that the state was supporting Black schools at the expense of White children, one analysis of 1870 census data suggests that more White children attended public schools than African American children.3 Rosen argues that the 1869 school law that allowed for segregation, the Peabody Education Fund that prioritized schools for White children, and the lack of provisions for secondary education for African Americans all contributed to the creation of a dual school system that was separate and grossly unequal.4 After the end of Reconstruction, when the Democrats defeated the Republicans in the Florida state legislature and the Black vote was crushed, segregation became the law of the land. In 1885, legislators wrote the dual school system into the state’s constitution, stating that White and “colored” children could not be taught together in the same school whether public or private. A decade later, Florida legislators made it a penal offense for White and Black people to be “instructed or boarded in the same building, or taught at the same time by the same teacher.”5 Subsequent state laws established a dual tax system to assure White Floridians that their tax dollars would not underwrite schooling for African Americans, thus ensuring funding inequities. Also, a law segregated teachers, forbidding White teachers from instructing Black children and Black teachers from instructing White children. A school for African Americans could not employ a White teacher except as a supervisor of African American teachers. In 1916,

22

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

Florida’s governor ordered the arrest of three White Catholic sisters for teaching African Americans in a school in St. Augustine. In 1896, the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a state’s right to mandate segregation. The court declared that separate facilities for the races did not create a “badge of inferiority” as long as equal provisions were made for both races. In this decision, concerning racial separation on rail cars, the court justified the practice by remarking on the legitimacy of school segregation.6 According to the Supreme Court, segregation was constitutional in rail cars because state legislators had instituted it among schools. Segregation in higher education was also sanctioned by state legislation. The first formal attempt to implement a dual education system in higher education occurred eight years after the passing of the 1890 Morrill Act.7 Influential citizens from both the North and South gathered in 1898 at Carpon Springs, Virginia, to address the need of a segregated system for both African American and White students in the South. By the turn of the century, dual systems had been established in nineteen southern and border states.8 Florida represented one of the states that in addition to segregated public elementary and high schools also operated a dual system of higher education for it citizens. Florida State University and Florida A&M University (FAMU) were the two state land grant institutions, one White and one African American. Florida A&M University, an African American land grant university, was founded in 1887. Initially this institution was established by the Florida state legislature as the State Normal College for Colored Students. It experienced several changes (shifting to a teachers college and then a senior college) before becoming FAMU, a full-fledged state university, in 1953. Additionally, FAMU is credited with becoming one of the first state-sponsored historically African American colleges to receive accreditation at midcentury by the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1957.9 This university in vital respects is representative of publicly sponsored institutions of higher education that had developed in America by the late nineteenth century. FAMU, similar to other large public land grant institutions, was established to provide greater access to higher education, especially for African Americans. It is important to note that land grant institutions were developed for the sons and daughters of the common man. However, race relations in the South dictated the development of African American land grant institutions

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

23

in response to segregated higher education in the southern region of the United States. African Americans were not allowed to attend the University of Florida, Florida’s flagship land grant university, until 1958. CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZING IN FLORIDA Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, African American education continued to suffer under the segregated system in elementary, secondary, and higher education. Without local resources, few public schools were built for African American children. According to former school principal and Director of Negro Education J. Irving Scott, it was common for schools serving Black children to be housed in churches, lodge halls, and sawmill camps.10 Under these circumstances, schools often lacked drinking water, sanitary toilets, desks, and adequate supplies.11 In many rural counties, local planters often dictated the parameters of the school term for African Americans, as they wanted African American children as laborers for the winter harvest. As a result, the Black school term in some cases was only three months while schools for White children often operated for eight to nine months.12 Lack of resources, political indifference, and in many cases, public hostility limited efforts to establish and expand schooling opportunities for Black children in Florida. In the 1908–1909 school year, the state of Florida spent $16.62 per capita for White pupils enrolled, and $4.59 per capita for Black pupils enrolled. These inequities existed throughout Florida’s counties. In Dade County, where expenditures per pupil were well above the state’s average for White students enrolled ($50.41 per capita), only $8.26 per capita was spent on Black children attending school. Duval County spent $21.53 per capita on White children enrolled and $8.94 on Black school children enrolled. In Hillsborough County, per capita school expenditures were $21.57 for White pupils enrolled and $8.24 for Black pupils enrolled. And in Orange County, the district spent $21.58 per capita on White children enrolled and $3.94 on Black children enrolled.13 These inequalities do not reflect a lack of desire for education among African Americans. In fact, African Americans’ commitment to education remained strong. At that time, 56 percent of Florida’s school-age White children attended public schools, compared to 51.5 percent of African American children.14

24

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

In addition to differences in per pupil expenditures, inequalities in teachers’ salaries also existed. Though White male teachers were paid more than White female teachers, White female teachers earned more than Black male and female teachers. For example, in 1926, Dade County, one of the highest paying counties in the state, paid an average monthly salary of $227.83 to White males teachers, $158.40 to White female teachers, $139.10 to Black male teachers, and $111.26 to Black female teachers. Duval County ( Jacksonville) paid a monthly salary of $211.30 to White male teachers, $140.22 to White female teachers, $110.64 to Black male teachers and only $54.11 to Black female teachers. Hillsborough County (Tampa) paid an average monthly salary of $193 to White male teachers, $138 to White female teachers, $123.80 to African American male teachers, and $67 to Black female teachers. For African American teachers in rural areas, the disparity was even greater. For instance, Gadsden County paid a monthly salary of $170.37 to White male teachers, $78.81 to White female teacher, $43.54 to Black male teachers, and $37.59 to Black female teachers.15 Secondary and higher education opportunities for African Americans were also lower than for White Floridians. In the 1923–1924 academic year, the state superintendent’s report listed only one accredited high school serving African Americans. According to D. E. Williams, in the 1927–1928 school year, “only eleven counties enrolled Negro children through the Twelfth Grade.”16 By 1930, there were only thirteen public and three private accredited Black secondary institutions in the state. At the time, the four colleges serving African Americans in the state—Florida A&M, Bethune Cookman, Florida Normal Industrial Institute, and Edward Waters—housed high school departments for incoming and prospective students.17 During the first half of the twentieth century, African Americans organized to improve education for Black children and challenge statemandated segregation. In local communities, African Americans challenged the closing of Black schools during harvest season, while African American teachers filed suits for equal pay. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the all-Black Florida State Teachers Association (FSTA) helped provide financial backing for such cases filed in state court, all unsuccessful. Teachers who served as plaintiffs were dismissed, and several, such as Hilda Turney of Tampa, had to leave Florida and seek work elsewhere. Other plaintiffs, such as Noah Griffin, principal of Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, Edward D. Davis, principal of

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

25

Howard Academy in Ocala, and Harry T. Moore, principal of Mims Colored Elementary School in Mims, also lost their jobs and later served in leadership positions in FSTA and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), where they helped organized the Negro Voters League. Though unsuccessful, the pay equalization cases were extremely important to civil rights organizing in the state. In 1938, FSTA organizers such as Moore and John Gilbert contacted the NAACP for legal aid, making Florida the site of the first NAACP-supported equalization case in the Deep South.18 Later, in 1941, the NAACP filed suit on behalf of Vernon McDaniel, principal of Washington High School in Pensacola, against the Escambia County school board in federal court. Thurgood Marshall helped present the case. Realizing the federal judge’s decision would favor the plaintiffs, the Escambia County school board worked out a settlement providing that teacher salaries were equalized over a three-year period. According to Robert Saunders, who became field secretary of the NAACP in Florida in 1951, these equalization cases showed civil rights activists the value of statewide organizing, the importance of the NAACP, and the need for a unified front among the state’s Black leadership.19 Saunders comments: “At that point, the organization of a state conference of the NAACP seemed logical and inevitable, although no other state yet had taken such a step.”20 In 1941, Harry T. Moore had become the first elected president to the Florida state conference of the NAACP. Under Moore’s leadership, the NAACP challenged the allWhite primary; investigated lynchings, cases of police brutality, and wrongful imprisonment; raised money to support the Hawkins et al. v. Board of Control, the case that challenged the racist admission policy of the University of Florida; and protested state laws mandating segregation. In 1951, Moore and his wife, Harriette, a militant in her own right, were murdered in a house bombing. Their murderers were never apprehended or charged. FLORIDA AND THE AFTERMATH OF BROWN The landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education caused panic throughout the country. Most states now faced the dilemma of responding to the Brown decision, especially southern states where separation was the cornerstone of tradition. Some state

26

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

governors closed or threatened to close public schools. Other so-called moderate governors spoke out against immediate desegregation, while devising legal means for maintaining segregation. Florida was in this camp. Despite its image as a moderate state, Florida’s resistance to desegregation was no less formidable than Georgia’s or Alabama’s. And although observers considered post-Brown Florida Governor LeRoy Collins a moderate, he opposed desegregation. Collins’s opposition to desegregation was based on the desires of the majority of voters (White Floridians, generally), as well as Collins’s own political philosophy. In his statement to the press on segregation, Collins made it abundantly clear that he believed the Supreme Court had overstepped its boundaries when rendering the Brown decision. The Court, he averred, “can not reach the hearts and minds of the people; that is beyond its control, change will come when the attitudes of the governed change.”21 He was determined to maintain the custom of segregation and intended to resist any coercive measures without the permission of the state’s majority. Governor Collins considered himself a leader in improving the standards of African Americans even while he defended segregation. In a May 10, 1956, letter to the International News Service, he said that he believed in segregated schools as Florida’s custom and opposed Brown v. Board of Education. He considered it an infringement on states’ rights and would use all the legal powers available to him to stop it. Collins believed most Floridians—of all races—opposed integration. Collins argued that “whatever destroys this [mutual respect] or makes such impossible, whether it is an order of the Supreme Court or the antics of the KKK goblins, is wrong.”22 Collins was also opposed to what he called extremism on either side (integrationist or segregationist) and still wished there to be African American police officers and White citizens to attend vespers at African American churches. He was quite concerned regarding the lack of progress made in “improving health, education and opportunities of the Negro.”23 With respect to school desegregation, however, Collins maintained that states should have final authority. On May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown II that local school districts would be responsible for desegregating schools. The same day, the Florida legislature approved a resolution asking Congress to pass legislation or a constitutional amendment granting states the power to administer the public school system as they saw fit. More significantly, Governor Collins signed the Florida Pupil

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

27

Assignment Law, providing county school boards the power to assign students to schools. This form of bureaucratic resistance was Florida’s first step to establish a “legal” means to stall desegregation. In the following year, Collins appointed a committee of the state’s leading lawyers to develop a plan for maintaining segregation. The Fabisinski committee, named after the retired circuit judge who chaired the committee, recommended the passage of laws that would strengthen the pupil assignment law.24 Collins fully supported and helped ensure the Fabisinski committee’s recommendations were passed by legislature. Under the 1956 Pupil Assignment Law, county school boards could place students in schools based on “sociological, psychological and like intangible socio-scientific factors.” The law stated, in part, that school boards should consider “the scholastic aptitude, intelligence, mental energy or ability of the pupil applying for admission and the psychological, moral, ethical, and cultural background and qualifications of the pupil applying for admission as compared with other pupils previous assigned to the school in which admission is sought.” Clearly designed to maintain racial segregation in schools, in 1966 Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court would describe such pupil assignment laws as “the most effective technique for perpetuating school segregation.” In Hillsborough County, the application for pupil special assignment was six pages long and requested information from the receiving principal about the “compatibility of the student to the education program” and the “psychological effect of [a] prospective student on your local community.”25 Under pupil assignment laws, southern school officials could review requests for school transfers and then “legally” deny Black parents’ requests for their children to attend all-White schools allegedly on grounds other than race. Moreover, many districts argued that procedures developed under Florida’s Pupil Assignment Law constituted “good faith” toward satisfying Brown II. In both Hillsborough and Dade counties, school district administrators argued that African Americans could not file suit in federal court since the Pupil Assignment Law provided an administrative means for desegregation. However, in 1959, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a Dade City case that Florida’s Pupil Assignment Law did not constitute a desegregation plan, remanding the cases back to district courts for trial. This ruling had significance throughout the South as pupil assignment laws were widely being used to evade desegregation.

28

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

FLORIDA AND THE COURTS Throughout the state, county school districts effectively used the Pupil Assignment Law to keep African American children from attending White schools.26 The first White schools to admit Black students in the state were located on military bases. Under orders from the federal government, in 1955, Air Force bases took control of these schools in order to admit Black students.27 The first African American child to attend a formerly all-White public school in Florida was not admitted until 1959 (Orchard Villa School in Miami, Dade County).28 By 1962, only 648 African American children attended desegregated schools. These children lived in five Florida counties (Broward, Dade, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, and Volusia). Almost 90 percent of these children (583) attended ten schools in Dade County, where the first desegregation case had been filed in federal court.29 Desegregation also shook higher education politics in Florida. A week after the Brown decision, the Supreme Court vacated the Florida Supreme Court’s 1952 decision in Hawkins v. the Board of Control. According to attorney Constance Motley, then with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), this Florida case was “our first brush with massive resistance.”30 The case began in 1949, when Virgil Hawkins and five other plaintiffs filed suit in state court to gain admission to the University of Florida’s Law School. In 1952, the State Supreme Court upheld University policy. Florida’s Supreme Court argued that Florida’s Board of Control, the governing body of the university system at the time, provided a substantially equal education at FAMU, where Hawkins (the only remaining plaintiff ) could earn a law degree.31 In 1955, after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the state court ruling, Florida’s Supreme Court stated that the University of Florida could not refuse Hawkins’s admission because of his race but ruled that university officials could delay his admission to avoid campus disruption. Hawkins appealed this ruling, and in 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case to a federal district judge. The district judge, while recognizing the right of qualified African Americans to attend the university, ruled that Hawkins was not qualified for admission because of his low score on the Law School Admission Test.32 Motley later recalled, “Rather than appeal that bizarre ruling, we accepted it as a directive to the state to admit all qualified Blacks who applied.”33 Hawkins, who recognized this ruling as a victory for future applicants, “graciously agreed” to drop the case.34

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

29

The Hawkins case illustrates the efforts of Florida’s justices to circumvent Brown. These efforts, as in other southern states, included federal district judges as well as the state judiciary. Judges winked at the methods schools and universities used to deny admission to African American students. Efforts to desegregate elementary and secondary schools saw little progress until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation with Title VI made federal money contingent on nondiscrimination. In other words, it threatened the withholding of funds from school districts maintaining segregation in both student and faculty assignments. At that time, federal aid to state and local school districts in seventeen southern states totaled $177 million.35 The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 added $590 million to the financial stakes of the desegregation battle.36 According to U.S. News and World Report, the federal government earmarked Florida for close to 40 million dollars in aid for the 1965 fiscal year.37 To continue to receive federal aid, school districts could adopt a federally approved desegregation plan, operate under federal court oversight, or prove they managed a nonsegregated school system. In 1965, the U.S. Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) established guidelines to direct district compliance with the Civil Rights Act and set the beginning of the 1967 school year as the deadline for complete desegregation. Until then, most southern school districts had skirted the burden of Brown II by establishing “freedom of choice plans” where parents could choose to send their child to a school nearest to their home. As a result of HEW’s implementation of Title VI, desegregation increased in Florida. In 1965, 2.6 percent of African American children attending desegregated schools; 9.7 percent did so the next year.38 Federal dollars began to pour into Florida. During the 1964–1965 school year, 4.8 percent of state revenue receipts came from federal sources. This more than doubled in the following year, when 12.69 percent of state revenue receipts came from federal sources. In 1966–1967, Florida Commissioner of Education Floyd Christian reported over 95 million in federal dollars for education.39 After 1965, HEW guidelines required evidence that freedom of choice plans worked by looking at the number of students attending desegregated schools in individual districts. These guidelines also set numerical goals for desegregation based on race ratios. Not surprisingly, some districts protested both HEW guidelines and the fall 1967 deadline. For instance, in Florida, the Pasco County school board filed a suit against HEW. In a Jackson,

30

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

Mississippi, case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the constitutionality of HEW’s guidelines in its 1965 ruling in Singleton v. Jackson.40 The Fifth Circuit stated that HEW guidelines should serve as standards for the courts. Anything less would encourage school boards to turn to the federal courts to undermine HEW requirements. The decision applied to Florida, then in the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit.41 Given the Fifth Circuit’s ruling establishing that school districts “had an ‘affirmative’ obligation to make sure” desegregation plans actually “resulted in significant desegregation,”42 it was no longer feasible for school districts in Florida to maintain segregation “legally.” This ruling forced state school officials to bring school districts in compliance with HEW guidelines or lose federal money. In July 1970, Florida’s Commissioner of Education Floyd Christian reported that eighteen counties were under federal court order, eleven counties were in compliance with HEW, twenty-three counties had acceptable plans, ten counties were being examined under compliance proceedings, and five counties had received notice that federal funds were terminated.43 The questions asked in the late 1960s set the criteria that districts in Florida (and elsewhere) argued they had met by the late 1990s, during Governor Bush’s first term. (See chapter 5 for descriptions of several districts recently released from court-supervised desegregation.) Once it became clear to school and state officials that school desegregation was inevitable, they began to question what constituted a desegregated, or “unitary,” school system. Could a school system be considered “desegregated” even if several district schools remained predominately Black or White? What about schools in racially homogeneous neighborhoods? Were districts obligated to transfer students to schools far from their residence to achieve racial balance? HEW had already established race ratios and numerical benchmarks to measure desegregation. Would the courts do the same? The U.S. Supreme Court answered these questions in two key rulings. The first, Green v. New Kent County School Board, involved a small rural school district. The second, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, involved a large metropolitan school district with urban and suburban communities. In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the school board’s obligation to take affirmative action to desegregate its schools in Green v. New Kent County School Board. Notably, the ruling challenged the constitutionality of freedom of choice plans that did not result in

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

31

racially integrated schools. The application of Green to urban areas where residential segregation made achieving desegregation through geographical zoning ineffective was less clear.44 In North Carolina, federal Justice James B. McMillian used Green to order mandatory busing as a means to desegregate the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina. The local school board appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. Indeed, most school officials condemned busing to achieve desegregation as destroying the “neighborhood school” and detrimental to the well-being of children. Such views seemed to gain support in the White House under President Richard M. Nixon, who vehemently opposed busing for desegregation. By 1970, the “Anti-busing” movement in Florida had gained steam under the leadership of Claude Kirk, the first Republican elected as Governor since 1877. In 1970, Claude Kirk publicly stated his hope that the Supreme Court would overturn McMillian’s ruling in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Kirk argued that significant rulings in Florida as well as an anti-busing provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act reinforced the neighborhood school concept, a concept he fervently hoped would “become in fact the final law of the land.”45 In 1970, Kirk’s campaign to oppose busing for the purpose of desegregation included filing a complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court against forty-nine states and the secretary of HEW (a tactic the court rebuffed). Kirk also intervened in several county cases, issued an executive order directing two counties not to implement desegregation plans, and filed briefs in local county cases opposing mandatory busing. Kirk’s opposition to mandatory desegregation was driven in part by his own personal beliefs and in part by the “political advantages” he thought to gain by taking a strong stance against busing.46 Indeed, the Republican Party’s national strategy for regaining control of the White House had been to appeal to the White, conservative, southern vote. Kirk’s involvement in the Manatee County desegregation case is worth noting. One day before the Manatee County school board’s deadline to implement a court-ordered desegregation plan—a plan that relied on transportation to execute it—Governor Kirk and Lieutenant Governor Ray Osborne traveled to Manatee’s county seat in Bradenton, suspended the superintendent, took over the school board offices, and ordered a delay in the plan’s implementation. Publicly, Kirk claimed his actions were intended to “get the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of ‘forced busing.’”47 Kirk ordered “ninety state troopers and deputy sheriffs to take control of the schools” of Manatee

32

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

County.48 Eventually Kirk backed down, after federal district judge Ben Krentzman charged Kirk with contempt and ordered a daily fine of $10,000 until the governor complied with the court’s order. In April of 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that transportation should be used when necessary to achieve desegregation in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. In a subsequent ruling, the Court declared state laws prohibiting busing for the purpose of desegregation unconstitutional. The Swann ruling was significant for Florida. Residential segregation meant that many southern school districts, including those in Florida, could not achieve racially balanced schools through geographical zoning. In counties with such patterns of residential segregation such as Alachua, Broward, Dade, Duval, Hillsborough, Lee, Leon, Manatee, Orange, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Sarasota, and Volusia, previous desegregation plans left many schools with predominately Black and White school populations. With Swann, the Supreme Court now upheld the discretion of federal district court judges to mandate busing to achieve a unitary school system. A few years later, the Supreme Court would bar school districts from transporting students across district lines to achieve racial balance. However, in states like Florida, countywide school districts meant that any mandatory desegregation plans including the whole district would incorporate urban, rural, and suburban areas. White parents could not move, as did their northern counterparts, to an all-White suburban district to avoid desegregation. Throughout the 1970s, White resistance to mandatory desegregation was strong. As Florida politicians worked on legislation to prevent court-ordered busing, angry and concerned parents wrote letters to their state representatives and other state officials in protest. Discussion of a potential statewide boycott among parents captured media attention. School officials expressed concerns about White flight as well as logistical problems. Most White parents voiced fears for the safety of their children, travel time, and declining academic standards. African American leaders saw such complaints as sour grapes, since the White public had not expressed outrage in the past when school districts transported students to maintain segregated schools. The Fifth Circuit seemed to agree: “Barriers which did not prevent enforced segregation will not be held to prevent conversion to a full unitary system.”49 Florida’s Department of Education (FDOE) records confirm that transportation was widely used during the segregation era. In a memorandum, DOE reported that “the percentage students

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

33

bussed in 1970-71 of 34.6 percent has been equaled at least once previously in Florida schools in 1954–55.” The memorandum continued to note that the “percentage of transported students in average daily attendance (ADA) rose only slightly from 30.3 percent during the 1966–67 school year to 34.6 percent during the 1970–71 school year” (emphasis in original).50 Most of the increase could be attributed to desegregation. Although transporting students to schools on the basis of race had been practiced widely before, most parents, particularly White parents, found busing to be a new and destructive imposition by the federal courts. African Americans’ reaction to mandatory desegregation in both K–12 schools and higher education was complex. Most K–12 desegregation plans accommodated White parents by limiting the busing of White students (thereby increasing the busing of Black students) and closing or downgrading schools in Black neighborhoods that might not appeal to White parents. In higher education, alumni and friends of historically Black colleges and universities worried about the institutions that they had supported for decades to preserve Black history and culture as well as serve as the primary routes for African American professional development. The fate of historically Black institutions, and those who taught in and administered those institutions, was a key issue for African Americans during desegregation.51 The following sections focus on the ambivalent feelings of many involved in two cases— the desegregation of historically Black high schools in Hillsborough County and the desegregation of FAMU to explore these dynamics. DESEGREGATION AND HISTORICALLY BLACK SCHOOLS IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY Recent studies on the importance of historically Black schools to the African American community have led scholars to rethink the legacy of desegregation for the Black community. Scholars have noted that school desegregation plans often resulted in the closing and or downgrading of historically Black schools, the displacement of Black teachers and administrations, and the disproportionate busing of Black children. In Hillsborough and other counties throughout Florida, African Americans actively protested the closing of historically Black schools. In 1969, school protests and boycotts occurred in Lee, Gulf, Sarasota, Orange, Daytona Beach, and West Palm Beach.52 Some protests were

34

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

successful. In Broward County, school officials’ plan to close Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale was fought by school alumni, NAACP, and local parents. In 1971, a district court judged ordered that Dillard would remain a four-year secondary institution as part of the county’s desegregation plan. The closing of historically Black high schools as a result of desegregation occurred elsewhere in the state. Educators Gilbert Porter and Leedell Neyland contend that the downgrading of these institutions was “an outright denial of opportunity for Blacks to continue to provide leadership at the secondary level.”53 In 1976, Everett Abney, then principal of Northwestern Senior High School (Dade County), reported the results of a survey on the closing of historically Black schools, particularly high schools, in the state during desegregation. Only eight of the eighty-nine historically Black high schools Abney surveyed in 1965 were operating as high schools in 1975. Abney also noted a decline in status and position among Black principals.54 One 1973 report indicated a decline in African American principals in Florida from 102 in 1965 to 13 in 1970.55 Less clear is the impact of desegregation on the African American teaching force. In 1971, the Florida Education Association (FEA) reported that school desegregation left 1,000 African American teachers displaced. The Florida State Teachers Association merged with FEA in 1966, after which FEA represented both African American and White teachers. According to the FEA’s report, teacher displacement occurred in most Florida counties. In addition, FEA Assistant Executive Secretary Walter Smith observed that African Americans were no longer head coaches, department heads, or in other leadership positions in desegregated school.56 The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) disputed these findings, suggesting they were compiled in error. The FDOE contested, for example, the FEA’s claim that Hillsborough County lost seventy-five Black teachers between 1968–69 and 1969–70. According to Dan Cunningham of the FDOE’s technical assistance program, the county actually gained forty-seven African American teachers, and those reported by FEA as being displaced had transferred to formerly White schools.57 Hillsborough County provides an excellent case for exploring the dynamics of metropolitan desegregation and its impact on the African American community. Hillsborough County, the third largest school district in Florida, includes the city of Tampa, the rural farming town of Plant City, and several suburban and outlying rural areas. In Hills-

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

35

borough County, African American students and alumni protested the 1971 desegregation plan for disrupting one of the African American community’s most valued institutions—the public school. In 1971, following the Swann decision, a federal judge ordered Hillsborough County’s school board to develop a plan that would result in a desegregated school system with target Black-White ratios of 14:86 in senior high schools (with a target proportion of 14 percent African American in high schools), 20:80 in junior high schools, and 21:79 in elementary schools. The plan ultimately approved by the court achieved these goals through grade reorganization and busing. School officials converted most schools in Black communities into sixth or seventh grade centers. Two of the three Black high schools—Blake and Marshall—became seventh grade centers, while the other, Middleton, became a junior high. In predominately Black neighborhoods, many elementary and high school students would be transported outside their neighborhoods to attend formerly all-White schools. White children, in contrast, would board buses for the predominately Black neighborhoods only for the sixth and seventh grades. Under the 1971 plan, schools in White communities for the most part remained intact, and White children were exempt from busing during most of their school careers—a pattern replicated throughout the U.S. Although some White parents placed their children on school buses to attend schools in predominately Black neighborhoods, most did not. African Americans had few options. If unable to afford private schools, their children would spend their elementary and high school years in schools outside their neighborhoods. In addition, the plan provided few long-term incentives for White families to move into the urban core or central city, since their children would attend school there for so short a time. The plan seemed to accommodate the racism and fears of White parents, sentiments many African Americans had hoped desegregation would transform rather than reinforce. Discussion about phasing out Blake, Middleton, and other schools in predominately African American neighborhoods occurred throughout the planning process leading up to the 1971 order in Hillsborough. The primary reason given by those who advocated phasing out the high schools was that White parents were “reluctant to send their children into Black areas.”58 Previous efforts to zone White children into Blake and Middleton high schools had not been successful, they claimed. School board members and administrators also stated that the two schools were inadequate as high school facilities. Such statements

36

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

infuriated African Americans, who pointed out that any inadequacies had resulted from school board action. Hillsborough school officials made no apologies for the 1971 plan, a plan they felt the court imposed on them. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) formally objected to the 1971 desegregation plan in federal court. While acknowledging that the plan effectively desegregated the system, they objected to the disproportionate busing of African American children, the closing of Ybor Elementary, and the closing of Blake and Middleton as high schools. These aspects of the plan, LDF lawyers alleged, discriminated against Black parents and their children and therefore violated the equal protection clause. Judge Krentzman disagreed. Refusing to change the grade structure, he asserted, would produce “White flight” and “Black flight.” Furthermore, the judge agreed with the school board’s arguments that Blake and Middleton did not meet the capacity requirements of most high schools in the state, typically serving up to 2,500 students.59 In Hillsborough County, as far as many local African Americans were concerned, the plan fully displayed the power of White privilege. Carlton Williams, a 1963 Middleton graduate, recalls his thoughts when he learned the high schools would be closed: I looked at the closure of the two high schools as a slap in the face to the community. It really was, and by definition that they were substandard, or at least they were not up to snuff when the White children were allowed to attend them. I thought that this was rather resentful and hateful on their [White school officials] part. It really did damage the community because these schools were each a focus of community reference for east Tampa and west Tampa, and to close them down like that and to turn them into middle schools, or whatever they turned them into, was a deep insult to my community, a very, very deep insult. . . . for them to close those schools really meant that there was no consultation with students that were affected. It was a decision made downtown without any input. But then in the 1970s in Tampa there wasn’t much input called for or asked for by officialdom, so it was the usual failure of leadership, White and Black, to come to terms with this. It was very, very damaging.

Although the 1971 plan did discriminate against African Americans, it did have the support of several Black leaders, including E. L. Bing, a former high school principal and the director of Special Projects for Hillsborough County School, who led the drafting of the plan. These leaders asserted that ending the dual system would enhance African

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

37

American children’s educational opportunities more than would attending familiar neighborhood schools. Leaders like Bing also challenged the notion of the importance of the all-Black school in educating African American children. Bing spoke of the plan at the beginning of the 1971 school year at the “Opening-of-Schools Teachers Conference”: To the White community, I would say that you got a “good deal, you came out real well.” The plan really is an appeasement to the White majority. If this plan had been developed in Nigeria or Kenya or [t]he Congo, then the Black majority probably would have gotten the appeasement. It so happens that it was developed in an area where the Whites are in the majority and it is an appeasement plan—no question about that.60

Addressing his comments to African Americans, Bing acknowledged the negative aspects of the plan—the closing of high schools in Black neighborhoods, the disproportionate busing of Black children, the minority status of Black children in the schools, and the loss of the allBlack school environment. However, Bing argued it was better than other plans designed to close Black schools altogether (incorrectly stating that no Black school in Hillsborough was closed). He also claimed that the school district plan meant that Black communities would still have schools in their neighborhoods. He also noted that African American principals and teachers, though not a majority in any school, had not been displaced and had increased in numbers. Bing spoke harshly about African American leaders who opposed integration, and he suggested that they are using the lives of African American children for their own political gain. He stated, “Let that Black child learn to compete—not just against Black children, but against the people he will have to compete against in life.”61 He also spoke about his own inability as a principal of an all-Black school and the inability of other educators to close the achievement gap between White and Black children.62 In Hillsborough County, the protests against the closing of Blake and Middleton were unsuccessful. Twenty years later, alumni of the two schools would successfully lobby the county school board to build two new high schools in Tampa near the sites of the former Blake and Middleton. The reestablishment of these schools, Blake in 1996 and Middleton in 2002, testifies to the long-term commitment of African Americans to readdress discriminatory aspects of school desegregation plans written in the early 1970s.

38

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

African Americans challenged segregation in order to fight for equality of opportunity. However, this fight against segregation does not suggest that all segregated schools were inferior or not valued by their communities. All-Black schools played an important function in the African American community. The next case examines the tensions emerging from the desegregation of FAMU, a key historically Black institution in Florida. FAMU was responsible for producing the African American leadership in the state by training African American professionals. As with the historically Black high schools, African Americans fought to maintain FAMU to ensure its vital role would not be lost. DESEGREGATION AND FAMU Florida was among a handful of states threatened with a loss of funds based on the state’s policies supporting higher education segregation. Supporters of Florida A&M University (FAMU) chose to advocate for the continued existence of an African American–controlled institution while arguing for the opening-up of all-White public universities in Florida. As with K–12 desegregation, African Americans who valued historically Black colleges and universities felt ambivalent about the consequences of desegregation for historically Black institutions. In Florida, as elsewhere in the South, advocates of historically Black educational institutions were more successful in making their case in higher education than in elementary and secondary schooling. Florida A&M University was not unique in its supporters’ response to higher education desegregation. In fact, the institution was quite representative of other institutions during the early phases of integration. After the Brown decision, historically Black institutions were faced with the possibilities of closing their doors completely, merging with traditionally White institutions, or attempting to maintain their separate status. The Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education had severe implications for K–12 education and perhaps unintended consequences for higher education. Although there was no legal document that addressed higher education desegregation (Brown only addressed K–12 education), the implications emanating from Brown were clear. Integration was on the horizon for public educational institutions and that was to include higher education. It is critical to note that movements toward desegregating higher education

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

39

occurred prior to Brown (Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma). Technically the Brown decision had no legal bearing on higher education; however, the Brown decision and subsequently Title VI of the Civil Rights Acts forced higher education to address desegregation in significant ways. Higher education in Florida was no different from the rest of the southern and border states. Operating under a dual system of higher education was the order of the era for most of the twentieth century. African American colleges in Florida provided Black people with more than an education. These institutions of higher learning provided emotional, social, and academic support that was not available to them at other institutions.63 African American colleges were responsible for graduating large numbers of students that otherwise would not have had the opportunity to attend college due to racial segregation. The idea that these institutions should be abandoned in light of court rulings and compliance orders was unthinkable for African Americans and the larger society. Florida A&M University supporters maintained that it was distinctive and should continue to serve a needed function in the state. African Americans supported desegregation of educational institutions; however, the African American community was concerned (and expected) that higher education desegregation would move at a snail’s pace and in the meantime continue to disenfranchise African American students. Therefore, many argued, it was necessary to maintain FAMU to ensure postsecondary educational opportunities for African Americans. The Brown decision represented the beginning of a new era in educational equity for K–12 educational facilities; however, it did not provide any real guidelines for dismantling segregated higher educational facilities. It is crucial to note that although the Brown decision was cited in the 1956 Hawkins case, it would be almost a full decade before any attention was paid to desegregating undergraduate education. It would take the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to encourage institutions to consider collegiate compliance issues. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered the government with the ability to bring lawsuits on behalf of African American plaintiffs in addition to restricting federal funds being administered to schools and colleges that maintained segregated facilities.64 In 1970, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund (LDF) filed the Adams case (Adams v. Richardson, 1973).65 The LDF accused the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) of not enforcing Title VI,

40

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

prohibiting the distribution of federal monies to segregated institutions of higher education. The Adams case presented difficulties for federal courts and legal representatives because desegregation issues were delegated to local jurisdictions within the state. Higher education presented a different governance structure. Rules and regulations were generally decided upon by the governing boards of the institutions and not by local jurisdictions. In addition, the Adams case presented challenges because higher education was deemed neither required nor compulsory; thus, the decisions made in the 1954 Brown case were difficult to apply to higher education. Nevertheless, the Adams case produced a court-ordered mandate. The mandate required 1) an increase in minority access to public education; 2) an increase in higher education participation and completion rates for minorities; and 3) the strengthening of historically African American institutions. The Adams mandate called for dual-system states (i.e., such as those maintained by southern states) to desegregate higher education.66 FAMU student, faculty, and alumni responses to higher education desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s are critical in the understanding of higher education desegregation. African American institutions of higher learning were at a crossroads during this period. Years of conflicts over K–12 and collegiate desegregation, student enrollment issues, and fiscal appropriations challenged the historic mission of historically Black institutions of higher education. In 1969, FAMU faced three options that had been looming since the Brown decision in 1954, the Hawkins case of 1956, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The first option would lead to a merger between FAMU, a historically Black university, and Florida State University (FSU), a traditionally White institution. The second option would lead to a segregated African American university with a weak morale and financial foundation. The third option would lead to an independent institution with a distinctive mission and involvement.67 Students, faculty, and alumni chose the third road. The potential demise of FAMU was not a new concern in a wave of closing or downgrading African American institutions. Closures in Florida were not limited to elementary and secondary schools. The journalist John Egerton noted in 1971, “Between 1962 and 1965, the state closed all twelve of the segregated junior colleges it had been operating for Negroes.”68 This approach to desegregation, as we have described in the case of elementary and high schools, was one that had devastating effects on the African American community. With the

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

41

closing of African American junior colleges came displacement of students as well as administrators and faculty. FAMU officials and supporters felt pressed to address the matter of desegregation in a way that was feasible for all parties involved. This included developing a plan that clearly demonstrated to the legislature the continued need for an African American institution with sufficient funding. The legislature seemingly was on the side of maintaining FAMU as an autonomous institution. In fact, the governor, legislature, and regents were on record in support of keeping the doors of FAMU open. However, there were others in the legislature and board of regents who continued to file or support bills that would close FAMU or merge FAMU with Florida State University (FSU). Florida A&M University served a unique purpose in the state. This institution had been responsible for the higher education of African Americans, and key actors at FAMU agreed that to dismantle the institution would have been unconscionable. Administrators, faculty, and staff were not naïve to the fact that change needed to occur; however, they were unwilling to let change occur without input from the African American community. Those community voices were to be heard. A 1971 report by the Race Relations Information Center noted a set of warning signs for American higher education generally and FAMU specifically. The report documented the following facts in addition to the closing of FAMU’s law school: • A proposal in the legislature that a concept of regional universities be developed. It would combine administrative operations of schools close to each other, such as Florida Atlantic and Florida International universities on the east coast and FSU and FAMU in Tallahassee. • The planned closing of the FAMU hospital, built by the state and leased to the city years ago to assure segregated health care. A larger and more modern city hospital on the other side of town is being expanded. FAMU’s hospital has deteriorated, and its use by the university’s nursing and pharmacy schools has been adversely affected. • A legislative proposal to impose limits on enrollment at each university in the system. FSU’s ceiling would be 20,000 students and FAMU’s would be 5,000 and the combined total would equal that of the other major universities.

42

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

• A special formula for allocating funds to the universities that is ostensibly equalitarian, but does not allow for FAMU’s need to have “catch-up” money to improve its instructional programs. FAMU officials say the university has 6.2 percent of the system’s total enrollment but only 3.1 percent of the total budget. State Attorney General Robert Shevin has asked for an examination of allocation procedures, saying “perfectly valid arguments” can be made for catch-up spending at a predominately Black institution.69 Advocates for securing FAMU’s future as an autonomous institution had to address these issues to validate the maintenance of a predominately African American university. Several proposals were set forth to alleviate the FAMU situation, many of which were still not satisfactory to the African American community both inside and outside of the university. The Tallahassee community (academic and governmental) developed these proposals to create a path of least resistance, one they theorized was more palatable to those opposed to closing or merging FAMU: • Give FAMU campus to FSU and transplant FAMU to another part of the state, where it could retain its name and Black administrative leadership but grow as an integrated institution and equal partner in the state system. • Make FAMU a crosstown campus of FSU, under the direction of FSU administration. • Combine FAMU and Tallahassee Community College into a single institution that could assume the campus and character of either school, or even of both. • Make FAMU a specialized residential institution for able but underachieving youngsters of both races whose high school performance, test score, and perhaps income level prohibit them from entering the other universities. • Make FAMU an undergraduate institution concentrating on specialties not offered at FSU. • Continue in the present course, with some desegregation at both schools and exchange programs between the two.70 Clearly these alternatives were not satisfactory to those fighting to preserve FAMU; however, FAMU supporters acknowledged these as alternatives to be discussed.

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

43

In addition to the mounting outside pressure to significantly change the role and status of FAMU, insiders shared a similar orientation. An academic dean was reported as saying that in the changing course of FAMU’s history the institution should consider serving lowincome and underprepared students. In doing so, he suggested, FAMU would maintain a unique role and purpose in the state university system while still remaining autonomous.71 In addressing the issues that threatened to dismantle FAMU, former FAMU President George W. Gore Jr., who had retired in 1968, argued that African American people wanted integration but not at the expense of downgrading, closing, or merging Black institutions. This sentiment resonated with the African American community and reflected ambivalence based upon a deep-seated distrust of White politicians in turn engendered by Florida’s history in combination with the desire for desegregated educational institutions that ensured equitable access and welcoming treatment for all students, staff, and faculty. While the African American community was adamantly opposed to segregation, members of the community supported segregated higher education at FAMU—unless they could be assured that FAMU would be desegregated in a balanced relationship with traditionally White institutions. The common belief was that other state institutions were not prepared to offer what was needed for the continued development of the African American community in the time of segregation, that other state institutions would enjoy more financial support from the state, and that administration, faculty, and staff at FAMU would lose their positions if desegregation occurred. The principle was that African American colleges should not be solely responsible for the desegregation process and the institutions should be equipped to compete in the desegregation era. Many contended that the burden of accountability was placed upon African American and not their White institutional counterparts. Indeed, clear goals and outcomes for higher education desegregation were not outlined systematically by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare at the time. Under the dual system of higher education, FAMU and other historically African American colleges and universities were responsible for producing educated, productive citizens in American society. These were individuals that could go and serve their communities and the larger society if given the opportunity to do so. To decrease FAMU’s educational and career opportunities would have ultimately affected

44

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

the continued growth and success of the African American community and the nation as a whole. Ultimately there was no real conflict; FAMU could continue as an autonomous institution due to its important role in a constantly changing society, and integration could continue to move forward in that same society. The advocates for the maintenance of FAMU were attempting to chart a new course for higher education that would be all encompassing for Florida citizens regardless of race. CONCLUSION There are two connections between the history of desegregation in Florida and recent educational reforms. The first is simply the omission of desegregation issues as a factor in current educational policy. Governor Bush and the Florida legislature have been concerned officially about achievement gaps but discount the possibility of a link between the persistence of segregated schools (highly correlated with indicators of low socioeconomic status) and student outcomes. Gary Orfield notes that in the past twenty years public schools in the South have resegregated. Orfield indicates, as illustrated in Table 2.1, the percentage of white students attending schools with African American students increased between 1970 and 1980 for all except four states— New York, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Connecticut. Between 1980 and 1998, all states except for four—Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois—experience a decrease in the number of white children attending schools with African Americans. In Florida, the percentage of white children attending schools with African Americans went from 43.2 percent in 1970 to 50.6 percent in 1980. However, by 1998, the percentage of white children attending schools with African American children had declined to 37.2 percent. In many ways, Bush’s insistence on equally high expectations for all children represents a huge victory for civil rights activists. But we fear that ignoring the historical record otherwise is a poor basis for public policy. Florida’s history is one of segregated schooling. As a former state of the Confederacy, Florida history is clearly part of the Deep South. Following the Civil War, Florida’s Jim Crow laws were some of the harshest. Public education developed in this context and resulted in a dual system. Though Florida was initially considered a moderate voice during desegregation, the state’s politicians and school officials

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

45

TABLE 2.1 Changing Patterns of Black Segregation by State, 1970–1998: Changes in the Percentage of White Students in Schools Attended by Typical Black Students72

State

1970

1980

1998

Change 1970–80

Change 1980–98

Alabama Arkansas California Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Mississippi Missouri New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee Texas Virginia Wisconsin

32.7 42.5 25.6 44.1 46.5 43.2 35.1 14.6 31.7 49.4 30.8 30.3 47.5 21.9 29.6 21.4 32.4 29.2 49.0 28.4 42.1 27.8 NA 41.2 29.2 30.7 41.5 25.7

37.9 46.5 27.7 40.3 68.5 50.6 38.3 19.0 38.7 74.3 32.8 35.4 50.4 22.5 29.2 34.1 26.4 23.0 54.0 43.2 57.6 29.3 65.8 42.7 38.0 35.2 47.4 44.5

31.1 38.9 24.0 33.5 55.7 37.2 31.8 19.1 44.5 67.8 27.8 24.9 40.7 19.3 26.6 35.9 26.2 18.1 45.4 34.2 44.5 30.2 43.4 39.8 32.2 30.1 43.1 30.5

5.2 4.0 2.1 -3.8 22.0 7.4 3.2 4.4 7.0 24.9 2.0 5.1 2.9 0.6 -0.4 12.7 -6.0 -6.2 5.0 14.8 15.5 1.5 NA 1.5 8.8 4.5 5.9 18.8

-6.8 -7.6 -3.7 -6.8 -12.8 -13.4 -6.5 0.1 5.8 -6.5 -5.0 -10.5 -9.7 -3.2 -2.6 1.8 -0.2 -4.9 -8.6 -9.0 -13.1 0.9 -22.4 -2.9 -5.8 -5.1 -4.3 -14.0

Source: Gary Orfield, “Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Desegregation” (Cambridge: Harvard University, July 2001). Available online at http://www. law.harvard.edu/civilrights/.

worked consistently to maintain segregated schooling. It was only after the threat of losing federal funds and under orders by the federal courts that African American children began attending schools with White children in many Florida counties. One governor led an antibusing

46

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

campaign, and desegregation orders in K–12 districts and higher education consistently placed a higher burden on African Americans to maintain effective ties to educational infrastructures. Desegregation may have been implemented more in the Southeast (including Florida) when compared to other regions, but it was a partial rather than a complete victory. As continued migration to Florida has erased community and political memories of segregation, the new Floridians (including Governor Bush) have not had to face the fact that the era since 1971 has been one of ameliorated segregation, not complete desegregation. The second link between this history and current educational policy is the legacy of distrust that many college-educated African American Floridians have toward White politicians. As described in chapter 8, the hostile reaction to Governor Bush’s end to affirmative action in higher education was a continuation of this distrust rather than something entirely new. By ignoring Florida’s history, the governor reawakened powerful antipathies toward school policies that many perceived as controlled by White politicians. The ambivalence African American activists had toward both K–12 and collegiate desegregation grew not from a disapproval of integration but from desegregation’s disproportionate burdens. With desegregation, many African Americans found federal desegregation orders to be ironic as they found themselves fighting to maintain historically Black schools and colleges. The tension between maintaining quality schools in Black neighborhoods and desegregation remains an unresolved dilemma in contemporary school politics. There still exists a sense of community loss associated with the execution of desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s. Both Black and White parents attribute declines in parental involvement and poor discipline in schools to these inadequate policies. As this chapter reveals, African Americans fought for desegregation both as a means to ensure educational equity and quality schools in their neighborhoods as a means of bolstering the community. The dilemma maintaining strong community school relations in a desegregated setting is underscored by the economic and racial segregation present in the central cities of metropolitan areas. The use of magnet programs as a desegregation strategy may hold promise but also raises questions about the legality of race-based admission policies on one hand and the potential of second-generation segregation on the other.73 As Mickleson suggests, magnet programs can result in the resegregation of students within schools.74 In metropolitan areas throughout Florida, particularly in districts where court oversight has ended, school officials

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

47

and community leaders must grapple with ways to insure equity and quality education despite trends toward resegregation. Although there was no direct legal mandate to desegregate higher education institutions, the Brown decision provided a foundation for dismantling a segregated dual system of higher education, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided the vehicle to begin that process with the implementation of desegregation compliance orders monitored by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Historically Black colleges and universities in Florida, particularly FAMU, provided African Americans with academic, social, and emotional support not available to them at other institutions in the state. FAMU had fewer resources, when compared to other state institutions, but it was responsible for graduating large numbers of African American students. For this reason FAMU supporters insisted on the state’s maintaining it as a segregated facility, because the alternative, either merger or complete closure, would have resulted in fewer African Americans prepared for the professional demands of a democratic society. Desegregation in the last three decades of the twentieth century represented increased access to traditionally White institutions. This change was considerably better than the closed doors of segregated schooling. But there was a cost—the actual and threatened loss of African American institutions and access to leadership positions in K–12 schools in the 1970s. The legacy of desegregation for current educational policy includes both the consistent practical problems that chapters 5 and 6 describe and the political legacy that chapter 8 explores. NOTES 1. Quoted in Jerrell Shofner, Nor Is It Over Yet: Florida in the Era of Reconstruction (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1974), 53. 2. Kathleen S. Howe, “Stepping into Freedom: An Analysis of the African American Community in Hillsborough County, Florida during the Reconstruction Era” (Tampa: M.A. Thesis, University of South Florida, 1997), 95. 3. Frederick Rosen, The Development of Negro Education in Florida during Reconstruction: 1865–1877 (Tampa: Ed.D. diss., University of Florida, 1974), 247. 4. Ibid., 248. 5. As quoted in Joseph Arron Tomberlin, The Negro and Florida’s System of Education: The Aftermath of the Brown Case (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1967), 10.

48

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

6. As quoted in Harry Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 11. 7. M. Christopher Brown, “Collegiate Desegregation and the Public Black College: A New Policy Mandate,” Journal of Higher Education, 72 ( January/February 2001), 46–62. 8. J. E. Browning and J. B. Williams, “History and Goals of Black Institutions of Higher Learning,” in C. V. Willie and R. R. Edmonds (eds.), Black Colleges in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1978). 9. B. L. Perry, Jr., “Black Colleges in Florida Past, Present and Future,” Journal of Black Studies, 6 (September 1975), 69-78. 10. J. Irving Scott, The Education of Black People in Florida (Philadelphia: Dorrance &Dorrance, 1974), 1. 11. D. E. Williams, A Brief Review of the Growth and Improvement of Education for Negroes in Florida, 1927–1962 (Atlanta, GA: Southern Education Foundation, 1963), 11. 12. Maxine Jones and Kevin McCarthy, African Americans in Florida (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1993), 95. 13. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Florida (Tallahassee, Fla.: T. J. Appleyard, 1910), 428. 14. The average daily attendance of White children in public schools was somewhat higher (44 percent) compared to African American children (40 percent). Private school enrollments accounted for 12 percent of the total school age population with 1,903 White pupils and 334 African American pupils in Tampa attending private schools; see Biennial Report 1910, 82. 15. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Florida (Tallahassee, FL: T. J. Appleyard, 1926), 298. 16. Williams, Brief Review, 43. 17. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Florida (Tallahassee, FL: T. J. Appleyard, 1926), 163–165. 18. Robert W. Saunders, Sr., Bridging the Gap: Continuing the Florida NAACP Legacy of Harry T. Moore, 1952–1966 (Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 2000), 17. 19. Ibid., 18. 20. Ibid. 21. 11/19/56 “Statement on Segregation ,” November 19, 1956 (Governor T. LeRoy Collins Manuscript Collection, Administrative Correspondence, Box 33, 1955–56, record group 102, series 776A, file folder 2, Florida State Archives). 22. 5/10/56 Letter of Governor Leroy Collins to Milt Kaplan, May 10, 1956, International News Service (Governor T. LeRoy Collins Manuscript Collection, Administrative Correspondence, Box 33, 1955–56, record group 102, series 776A, file folder 2, Florida State Archives).

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

49

23. “Statement on Segregation,” (Governor T. LeRoy Collins Manuscript Collection, Administrative Correspondence, Box 33, 1955-56, record group 102, series 776A, file folder 2, Florida State Archives). 24. Tomberlin, The Negro and Florida’s System, 174. 25. Application for Pupil Special Assignment, Hillsborough County Schools, September 21, 1960, copy in the possession of Barbara Shircliffe. 26. Tomberlin, The Negro and Florida’s System, 221. 27. Ibid., 152. 28. Joseph J. Ceros-Livingston, The History of the Survival of an Elitist Black High School in South Florida from 1907–1981 (Ed.D. diss., Florida Atlantic University, 1982), 35. 29. Ceros-Livingston, The History of the Survival, 209. 30. Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice, under Law: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 112. 31. Tomberlin, The Negro and Florida’s System, 154. 32. Motley, Equal Justice, under Law, 116. 33. Ibid., 116-117. 34. Ibid. 35. Tomberlin, The Negro and Florida’s System, 235. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 236. 38. Ibid., 242. 39. Biennial Report of the Commissioner of Education, State of Florida, for the Fiscal Years Beginning July 1, 1966 ending June 30, 1968 (Tallahassee: State Department of Education, 1966–1968), 288. 40. Couch, A History of the Fifth Circuit (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), 126. Davison Douglas, Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of Charlotte Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 125. 41. Couch, A History of the Fifth Circuit, 126. 42. Couch, Ibid., 127. Douglas, Reading, Writing, and Race, 125. 43. Floyd Christian to State Board of Education, “Report on Civil Rights Compliance Status of Florida School Systems July, 1970,” Associate Commissioner’s Administrative Files, 1956–1971, Florida State Library and Archives, Series 253, Box 18. 44. Douglas, Reading, Writing, and Race, 128. 45. Claude R. Kirk, Florida’s Opposition to Forced Busing (Tallahassee: State of Florida, 1970), 5. 46. Edmund Kallina, Jr., Claude Kirk and the Politics of Confrontation (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993), 127. 47. Ibid., 173. 48. Ibid. 49. Henry v. Clarksdale Municipal Separate School District, 433 F.2d 387 (5th Circuit, 1970).

50

DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE

50. Earl H. Wright to W. C. Golden, Memorandum Regarding Length of School Bus Routes in Florida, March 6, 1971, in T. Terrell Sessums Papers, Box 12, file 1. Special Collections, University of South Florida. 51. See David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994); George Noblit and Van Dempsey, The Social Construction of Virtue: The Moral Life of Schools (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 52. “School Split by Boycott,” Tampa Times, October 7, 1970; Clay Harris, “Blacks May Join Boycott,” Tampa Times, August 30, 1969, 12-A; “Negro Pupils Boycott Schools,” New York Times, March 1, 1969. 53. Gilbert Porter and Leedell Neyland, History of the Florida State Teachers Association (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1977), 173. 54. Ibid. 55. John W. Smith and Betty M. Smith, “For Black Educators: Integration Brings the Axe,” Urban Review, 6, 33 (1973), 7. 56. As quoted in Robert Hooker, “Displacement of Black Teachers in Eleven Southern States,” Race Relations Information Center, U.S. Office of Education, November 1970, 30. Associate Commissioner’s Administrative Files, 1956–1971. Florida State Archives, Series 253, Carton 18. 57. Dan Cunningham to Bob Martinez, January 11, 1971, Associate Commissioner’s Administrative Files, 1956–1971. Florida State Archives, Series 253, Box 17. 58. Kathy Craddock, “2 Mothers Offer Mix Plan,” Tampa Times, May 20, 1971. 59. Opinion and Order re: Plan of School Board of Hillsborough County, Florida, for Desegregation fined on June 15, 1971. Manning v. The Board of Education, No. 3554 Civ T., (U.S. District, July 2, 1971), p. 6. 60. “Opening-of-Schools Teachers Conference: Remarks by Hugo Schmidt, Raymond O. Sheldon, and E. L. Bing,” August 20 , 1971, in T. Terrell Sessums Papers, Box 12, File 1, Special Collections, University of South Florida. 61. “Opening-of-Schools Teachers Conference,” 13. 62. “Opening-of-Schools Teachers Conference.” 63. B. L. Perry Jr., “Black Colleges in Florida Past, Present and Future,” Journal of Black Studies, 6 (September 1975), 69–78. 64. Brown, “Collegiate Degrees Desegregation.” 65. Gail E. Thomas, ed., Black Students in Higher Education, Condition and Experiences in the 1970s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 329. 66. Ibid., 330. 67. Benjamin L. Perry, Jr., FAMU at the Crossroads (Tallahassee: Florida A&M University, 1969), 4–5.

The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

51

68. John Egerton, “The Black Public Colleges, Integration and Disintegration,” 1971 ( Joseph Gibbs Manuscript Collection, “FAMU Integration Plans Correspondence Gibbs, Joseph (misc.)” Box 1, file folder 4, Florida A&M University Black Archives). 69. John Egerton, Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Gary Orfield, “Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Desegregation,” (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University, July 2001). Available online at http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/. 73. Roslyn Mickelson, “Subverting Swann: First- and Second-Generation Segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,” American Educational Research Journal, 38 2 (Summer 2001): 215–52. See Eisenberg v. Montgomery County, 197, F.3d 123, (4th Circuit, 1999) from Maryland on race as a factor for student placement in magnet programs. 74. Roslyn Mickelson, “Subverting Swann: First- and Second-Generation Segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,” American Educational Research Journal 38, 2 (Summer 2001), 215–52. See Eisenberg v. Montgomery County, 197, F.3d 123 (4th Circuit, 1999), from Maryland on race as a factor for student placement in magnet programs.

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

3

Education Finance Reform in Florida

Sherman Dorn Deanna L. Michael Upon his reelection, the man who has successfully campaigned twice for Florida’s governorship on a platform of tax cuts and competition for public dollars faced a constitutional requirement to significantly reduce school class sizes. When voters reelected Jeb Bush in 2002 for a second term in Tallahassee, they also approved a constitutional requirement mandating class size reduction. This mandate requires that schools and school districts hire teachers and construct new classrooms and schools, and it would cost between $8 billion and $27 billion to implement, according to the governor and others who opposed the proposal. The approval of the class-size mandate undermined the governor’s basic principle to limit the size of government. Governor Bush’s desire to empty Tallahassee’s state offices contrasted with the voter’s desire to enhance educational outcomes.1 Florida voters thus backed an “accountability” governor while also supporting a constitutional requirement for building capacity in Florida’s public schools.2 In one day, voters shifted the debate away from accountability. This rebalancing of priorities continues a debate within the state (and across the country) that revolves around both the resources needed to provide equal educational opportunities and the accountability necessary to ensure appropriate outcomes. This policy debate is over whether states can increase funding to improve student achievement and, in Florida, whether the state should reduce class sizes.3 Ignored in the current debate over class size and accountability is the long history of similar struggles in Florida. As chapter 4 describes, Governor Bush is not the first governor to want schools to be accountable. 53

54

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

And, as this chapter describes, Florida also has a history of debates over increased and reformed state funding of schooling. Many politicians (not just Governor Bush) tend to link the two issues together. Legislators have often wanted a quid pro quo for the money they devote to public schooling. School officials want more money to build the capacity of schools; legislators have been skeptical of schools’ using that money wisely. That debate has been a consistent theme in the minds of Florida legislators in the last three decades. The legislature passed both accountability and funding reform laws in the early 1970s. Since Governor Reubin Askew signed those laws, that debate has continued in the legislature and Florida’s courts.4 What has remained constant throughout that contest has been a funding system in Florida, a system that many identified as a model for other states in the 1970s. The main ingredient of Florida education reform in the early 1970s was a new system of funding public elementary and secondary schools, the Florida Education Finance Program (or FEFP). This program evolved from a national movement to equalize school funding and from power shifts in the state legislature in the late 1960s, bolstered by then governor Reubin Askew’s political commitment to funding equalization. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the question of school funding simmered in Florida and finally jelled as a funding reform mandate in 1973. That reform shifted more funding from the local school district level to the state level and reduced subsidies of wealthier rural counties (or districts). Despite challenges from those wealthy counties (and some others), the system has survived. The survival of FEFP to the present day is evidence of how important politics are in the fate of technically complex education reforms. As a remarkably stable reform, the system of funding education in Florida reveals the political recipe needed for reform survival. Compared to the evanescent reforms in state education policies across the country in the past few decades, Florida’s school funding law has been remarkably stable. Because FEFP has lasted, we can judge its long-term effects on Florida schools, effects that were more equal in the long term than they were in the short term. In the first few years after implementation, FEFP benefited urban counties more than poor rural counties. The metropolitan legislators who wrote the new policy made certain that it worked to the benefit of their constituents. Those constituents included many—but not all—of Florida’s poorest students. Poor students in general did not benefit from the law’s equalizing effects until years later. Over three decades, demographic changes

Education Finance Reform in Florida

55

have turned some rural counties of the 1960s into densely populated metropolitan areas (such as Pinellas County, on the Gulf Coast). The law has remained in place while the legislators retired and populations changed. Now, Florida’s financing generally fulfills the explicit promises of the law. If one looks at spending differences between Florida’s counties, there is a small “wealth effect.” However, the correspondence between wealthier counties and higher spending is weaker than other factors. When considered at the school level, there is little evidence that total funding benefits wealthier districts.5 With all sources of funding added in, schools with high-poverty populations have, on average, higher spending, and those effects easily outweigh effects associated with county (district) property wealth. This equalization is not complete. Florida’s school funding is unequal in several ways that FEFP does not affect. The three most important factors in spending are neither county wealth nor school income indicators. Instead, the most important factors are the cost of living in the county, the level of school (elementary, middle, or high school), and idiosyncrasies of county-level funding not accounted for by other indicators. Only the first of those factors (cost of living) is a rational basis for funding differences and included in the Florida funding formula. (It remains a target of significant debate as we write this chapter.) Beyond cost of living, counties often spend more or less money than their peers on schools at different levels. With the resources available, some counties spend a disproportionate amount on elementary schools, while others emphasize secondary education. These differences are important and will have lasting legacies for how the state addresses the new constitutional requirement for lower class sizes. In addition, individual schools spend different amounts of money that are tied to their counties but not to any of the other information we have available, differences that appear idiosyncratic. There are three legacies of the Florida Education Finance Program: the debate over what the state should provide and demand from local schools, the role of political negotiations in a complex education reform, and the moderate effect of the program in achieving its goals. First, the history of contests over funding and accountability should overshadow the conflict that emerged in Governor Bush’s second term, between his education priorities and the class-size amendment. The conflict began long before his election in 1998 and will certainly continue long afterward. His first term, therefore, was a window of opportunity for him unusually free of the long-term arguments over funding

56

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

in Florida’s schools. In addition to the historical perspective on the current debate, the legacy of FEFP includes the explicit role of politics in its survival. It has survived in part because it is now a complex formula that counties have finally mastered in predicting funding. This complexity is a form of technocracy, the creation of a mechanism to solve a problem without additional political negotiations. But that supposed technocracy hides considerable politics in the early implementation of FEFP. Legislative leaders could and did tinker with the basic mechanism of FEFP to reach consensus on its initial passage and a huge expansion of state education funding in 1974. In this way, FEFP’s history shows that there may not be any such thing as a purely technocratic education reform. The third legacy is FEFP’s mixed effect on spending patterns in Florida. On the one hand, spending in Florida today is more equal and less dependent on community wealth than in many other states such as Illinois. On the other hand, that equalization did not begin right after implementation and does not affect spending patterns within Florida’s counties (or districts). As a result, the survival of Florida’s educational funding system is a bittersweet legacy of legislative activism in the 1970s: a politically astute reform with few visible concrete achievements. School spending is remarkably equalized in Florida in terms of wealth and income but remarkably unequal depending substantially on whether the student is in elementary or high school and in which county a student lives (beyond assessed property in the county). THE MINIMUM FOUNDATIONS PROGRAM: FLORIDA’S FIRST SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM The Florida Education Finance Program created in 1973 replaced the Minimum Foundations Program that the state had established in the 1940s. In 1946, Governor Millard Caldwell appointed a blue-ribbon committee to make suggestions about changes needed in Florida’s educational policies. The legislation that came from the committee’s report, the Minimum Foundations Program (MFP), was to equalize educational funding among districts by distributing state funds based on a county’s ability to support its schools.6 The method for distributing funding was the teaching unit, and the legislature set the funded class size in early grades at twenty-seven students per teacher.7 The legislature also set a minimum statewide property tax level so that each

Education Finance Reform in Florida

57

county could raise a certain percentage of the funds needed for each teaching unit. Finally, MFP included the expansion of the school year to 180 days and a teacher salary schedule.8 Unlike the funding legislation in the past, the MFP guaranteed funding whether the school served African American students or White ones. The explicit reason given by Caldwell and his supporters for increasing state support for education was to attract more businesses in the postwar period. While Florida prospered during the industrial boom brought by World War II, after the war Florida remained largely an agricultural economy. Because most wartime industry left in the late 1940s, attracting new industries while maintaining those already in Florida was important for the economic life of the state—or so argued some state politicians. (Whether key legislators from rural areas would cooperate is a different question.) According to this argument, the state could attract businesses by increasing the state-level commitment to education. There were, however, other reasons for the increased support. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People raised pressure on state governments through their successes in court.9 By increasing funding for the poorer school districts and pressing for equal distribution of state monies, many White Florida politicians hoped to prove that African American children were provided an education equal to that provided to the state’s White children, even if in separate schools. As chapter 2 notes, Florida’s response to the legal efforts to desegregate schools was important in the context of the region, and the development of the Minimum Foundations Program was no different, as other southern states likewise tried to demonstrate fiscal equity in education in the late 1940s.10 The development of minimum foundations programs in the first half of the twentieth century nationwide provided substantial statelevel support of school operations. They made no pretense at equalizing school funding, because local school systems had to provide significant support from their own tax bases and also because they had the freedom to tax themselves more heavily to provide better funding. Thus, as others have pointed out, wealthy school systems were still provided significant state support, even when such support would lead to demonstrably unequal educational funding.11 In addition, in Florida, the “required local effort” under the MFP system was often fictitious, as tax assessors in wealthier counties under-assessed properties, thus underestimating what the county could afford to contribute to the education of its children. Finally, the use of the teaching unit provided an

58

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

extra reward for counties that started programs on their own—generally, the counties with more resources. As a result, the MFP system was more equalizing than a system with primarily local funding, but it still left opportunities for local variation. It did not equalize funding, and it certainly created a funding system that benefited wealthier counties. MOVES FOR A NEW FUNDING SYSTEM The impetus for changing Florida’s public school funding came from electoral politics, the nationwide movement to change educational funding, and state discussions focused on education. First, the reapportionment of Florida’s legislative districts in 1967 shifted power from rural counties to metropolitan counties experiencing rapid population growth following World War II, counties that had experienced inadequate proportional representation in the legislature. The Supreme Court decision of Baker v. Carr (1964), requiring apportionment by population (the one-person, one-vote rule), effectively overturned Florida’s county-based apportionment and required reapportionment. Before 1967, a small coterie of rural Florida legislators known as the Pork Chop Gang had controlled state politics. In the years after 1967, a new generation of legislative leaders, concentrated in metropolitan counties, reformed Florida government by revising the state constitution and by expanding public services and the role of the state government. The post-1967 legislature was an activist body.12 The second impetus was a growing effort to use both federal and state courts to declare educational funding based on property taxes unconstitutional. In many states (as in Florida), minimum foundations programs provided limited state aid to schools as a supplement to local property taxes. Wealthy districts could raise funds more easily than less affluent and impoverished districts. Legal advocates saw discrimination based on wealth as subject to legal challenge in the same way racial discrimination had been. In Texas, a dispute over the distribution of funds became the U.S. Supreme Court case of Rodriguez v. San Antonio, a case that considered whether using property taxes violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the laws. On a parallel track in the early 1970s came lawsuits in state courts. In 1971 (before the arguments in Rodriguez before the U.S. Supreme Court), legal advocates of funding equalization won their first battle in a state court, as the Serrano v. Priest decision in California overturned local property

Education Finance Reform in Florida

59

tax funding of public schooling. State governments around the country had to consider both the Rodriguez and Serrano cases as threats to their own funding systems. In 1972, for example, Florida’s Orange County school system filed a lawsuit against the state in federal court, arguing that the state’s Minimum Foundations Program was unconstitutional.13 Florida, like many other states in the 1970s, quickly confronted a legal challenge to its system of funding public education. Third, a governor’s task force in Florida explicitly considered the question of funding equalization between 1971 and 1973. Reubin Askew, who had defeated his predecessor Claude Kirk, appointed a Citizens Education Committee in his first year in office to study and recommend education reforms over a two-year period. In its deliberations, the committee secured a foundation grant to hire several education policy faculty from around the country, including Walter Garms and Michael Kirst, to study Florida’s funding system and recommend changes.14 In 1972 and 1973, Florida’s school officials were confident that the Minimum Foundations Program could survive court scrutiny. The general counsel for the department of education assured incoming House Speaker T. Terrell Sessums that the state would beat back Orange County’s assault.15 The consultants likewise assured the Citizens Education Committee that Florida’s school financing program would not be vulnerable to the type of lawsuit won in California. Instead, the consultants suggested simplifying the Minimum Foundations Program by eliminating the direct funding and setting of teacher salaries and basing state aid on student populations rather than classroom units.16 In early 1973, when the federal Supreme Court turned away the constitutional challenge to school funding based on local property taxes, the challenge from Orange County became irrelevant. Florida could have continued with its Minimum Foundations Program intact, without any reforms. Despite the opportunity to avoid reform, the legislature revolutionized Florida’s system of funding schools over the next two years. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Rodriguez, Governor Askew called on the legislature to change the funding system even without pressure from the courts: As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed the local property tax as a constitutionally legal way to finance public schools. Nevertheless, Florida can and should continue to lead the way in assuming a greater share of school costs at the state level and insuring equal educational opportunities for all children, regardless of where they happen to live.17

60

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

Askew was working with a political consensus in favor of funding changes for several reasons.18 First, his calls for funding equalization promised to improve education for a broad section of Florida’s children. As such, it was a savvy political strategy that finessed both his opposition to court-ordered busing and also his disapproval of resistance to those orders. Funding equality would make genuine educational opportunity possible, he repeatedly claimed. In addition to using funding to stake out a claim to broad education reform, Askew’s call for greater state aid to schools fed into the Florida legislature’s goal of making wealthy counties pay a greater proportion of public services (including schools). A state Supreme Court ruling in the middle of the 1973 session showed legislators’ distrust of county tax assessment policies. The court overturned a law authorizing a tax ratio study, requiring low-assessment counties to adjust their assessments upward to raise more local revenues for schools. The court argued that an agency created by the legislature (the Department of Revenue) could not overturn the judgment of county assessors, who are constitutional officers in Florida. This decision benefited some of the more wealthy rural districts, and legislators were irate.19 House Speaker T. Terrell Sessums threatened to derail any budget increase “without assurance of its fair and proper allocation, even though such a moratorium will be more painful for me than others.”20 While one set of legislative leaders, led by House Finance Committee Chair Ralph Turlington, worked on a compromise over the tax ratio study, the members of the legislature also worked on educational funding reform. They used the short funding plan proposed by the Citizens Education Committee as a basis for a new funding law. As recommended, the legislature eliminated direct funding of teacher salaries and funding based on classroom units. The new Florida Education Finance Program calculated a county’s total funding based on the number of students (an adjusted figure called the full-time equivalent number), subtracted a required local taxation, and gave the rest as state aid to the county. In theory, the new funding program was simple.21 A COMPLEX FORMULA The program, however, became progressively complex as the legislature worked with it in the 1973 and 1974 legislative sessions.22 Eventually, the law was given several adjustments to the basic formula. First, the

Education Finance Reform in Florida

61

new funding plan adjusted the official funding level based on the grade level of the student. The lowest grades were assumed to be less costly to fund than intermediate grades, in turn funded at a lower level than high schools. Second, the state adjusted funding based on special programs including special education, so districts would be able to spend money based on the number of students in a special program. Third, the state adjusted funding based on a cost of living factor for each county. Fourth, the state adjusted funding based on a “sparsity” factor, officially recognizing that rural counties did not have economies of scale that larger districts had for offering various programs and for arranging transportation. This sparsity factor was created in the early 1970s when, as was noted in chapter 2, federal courts required all counties to bus students longer distances on average for desegregation. (Legislators assumed that rural counties had a larger transportation burden without asking whether desegregation orders made that presumption outdated.) As a result of the various cost factors in the new Florida Education Finance Program, the 1973 bill was much more detailed than the measure proposed by the Citizens Education Committee. Moreover, these cost factors were the subject of extensive political negotiations. While the FEFP had a provision allowing the Florida Department of Education to establish cost figures, the legislature had the power to change those cost figures in the annual budget. In the mid-1970s, the legislature used that power. In 1974, an amendment to FEFP changed all the cost of living factors and raised the per pupil funding in the state from $572 to $745, adding $190 million to state funding of education in a single year and increasing the per pupil state aid by 30 percent.23 The legislature was taking advantage of an opportunity for activism in creating a new system of educational funding and then using that new system to expand state aid. The state Department of Education staff had been relatively uninterested in the revolution of education financing, and the legislature filled the vacuum in the 1970s with its preferred mode of policy-making: wheeling and dealing.24 When the architect of the tax ratio study compromise, Ralph Turlington, was appointed as Education Commissioner in the spring of 1974 to fill the unexpired term of his predecessor (who had resigned in a scandal), the legislature had a commissioner who understood the political nature of policy making. In the conference committee’s revision of the FEFP in 1974, legislators frankly discussed the funds their home counties were receiving (and whether the new bill would be sufficient for their constituencies) and had Turlington in the room with them

62

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

discussing the bill.25 The resulting funding program was politically negotiated rather than technocratic—a feature that helped it survive over the next thirty years. REQUIRED LOCAL EFFORT AND “RIDING ON THE GRAVY TRAIN” So far, we have described the way that FEFP defined acceptable (and subsidized) educational spending. The other crucial component of FEFP was the adjustment of state aid based on the wealth of school districts. As educational finance observers have noted, Minimum Foundations Programs often have given wealthy districts considerable state aid even when they could afford to use more local resources to fund schools. For example, before a 1990 state Supreme Court decision in New Jersey, small suburban districts like Cherry Hill and Princeton often received sizable state aid even while they were raising much higher revenues locally using property taxes than inner-city districts like Camden.26 If FEFP was going to subtract from state aid what each county could provide based on its own wealth, legislators had to examine the basis for that “required local effort” (as Florida lawmakers called it). The mechanism for required local effort was the calculation of how much money a school district could hypothetically raise if it taxed local property at a uniform statewide rate. If, for example, the per pupil assessed property in a county were $50,000, and the required local effort was seven mills (or seven-tenths of a cent per dollar of property), then the state would subtract the hypothetical revenue from that local tax, $350 per pupil, from state aid. If the per pupil assessed property were $25,000, then the required local effort would be $175 per pupil. (These illustrative examples are in line with mid-1970s property values and educational costs, not today’s values.) There were two political problems with a required local effort. One was setting the required local effort millage (or property tax rates). The legislature could not force a school district to raise property taxes at a set level, but it could reduce the amount of state aid a county received, and counties did not want to either receive less state aid or have to raise taxes. As a result, the legislature agreed to raise the required local effort millage gradually over a few years, starting at 6.25 mills in 1973–1974 and moving to 6.34 mills in 1974–1975.27

Education Finance Reform in Florida

63

The second problem with required local effort was the wide variation in how counties assessed the value of property. In Florida’s constitution, each county had an elected tax assessor who had the authority to assess the value of property. In some wealthy rural counties, assessments had historically remained much lower in comparison to sales prices than in metropolitan counties. As a result, when the older Minimum Foundations Program had calculated required local effort, those counties had received more state aid than the metropolitan counties. Metropolitan legislators, who had come to power after the reapportionment of the legislature in 1967 ended the reign of the Pork Chop gang, saw these counties as freeloaders, receiving far more than their share of state aid in education and other public services. One member of Askew’s Citizens Education Committee, in December 1971, noted the history bluntly: [The legislature has tried] to get every local district to provide as much money for the educational program as they were capable of doing. Some of you may know that over the years you had a situation in which tax assessors were assessing the property in every county at a percentage less than 100%. We still have that problem today. If you compute the total cost of the program and then you subtract from that total cost the amount which the local school district can contribute, and if the state takes on the rest and if a local tax district is sandbagging, so to speak, that is saying we can provide x number of dollars but in reality is applying its worth to a roll which is substantially less than 100%, then the state is in the position of rewarding low [property] assessment in making up the difference.28

The first attempt to reduce state aid to wealthy counties was the tax ratio study. The legislature required the state Department of Revenue to conduct a study of the ratio between assessed value and market value for each county. Where the tax ratio was very low (i.e., where counties had assessments so low that they were receiving what key legislators thought was too much aid), the Department of Revenue was to direct the reduction of state aid to those counties. Several county tax assessors sued to overturn the tax ratio study. When the Supreme Court agreed with them in 1973, the legislature had to face the political dilemma of tax assessors. While they were constitutional officers, each depended on a county commission for his or her budget. In addition, if tax bills rose as a result of assessment changes, county commissioners would blame the tax assessor for raising taxes. Thus, the tax ratio study threatened the local political position of

64

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

tax assessors. The compromise, wrangled by House Finance Chair Ralph Turlington (a year later to become Florida’s Education Commissioner), addressed those problems squarely. The legislature created a pool of state funds for county tax assessors, so they would be more independent of county commissioners. It also created a mechanism to release tax assessors from political liability for raising assessed value. After annual assessments, the county government was to publish the property tax rate that would create a revenue-neutral budget for the next fiscal year. If a county commission wanted to increase the budget, it would have to vote on a higher tax rate in a public meeting. Thus, commissioners could not blame tax assessors for raising taxes just by raising assessments: they had to vote to expand a budget, as well. Finally, the legislator provided a two-year window for counties to adjust assessments in response to Department of Revenue complaints about low assessments. However, that provision was primarily a way for both sides to save face. The other components of the compromise formed a political safety valve for county tax assessors.29 Resolving the controversy over tax assessments was necessary before legislative leaders could be confident that required local effort would be meaningful. Without assurances that assessments were fair, they would never be sure that their home counties would be receiving a fair share of state revenues. Thus, the relatively arcane task of assessing property was inextricably linked to school funding reform in Florida. But with the law passed, the distribution of resources changed, as Pinellas County’s Associate Superintendent Charles Smout acknowledged after asking the state to provide the same amount of aid to the relatively wealthy county: “They all laughed at me. They said we’ve been riding on the gravy train because of low tax assessments.”30 RESULTS OF FEFP More than thirty years later, an evaluation of FEFP today suggests that its most important effects have been long-term. The immediate results of the new funding system were short on equality and long on state aid. Three studies completed in the first ten years after the establishment of FEFP indicated that the redistribution of funds as a result of the new system was small at best, with some favoring of urban districts as a result of the various cost factors.31 This evidence that FEFP did not equalize school funding between districts is not surprising, given the

Education Finance Reform in Florida

65

political considerations that led to FEFP. Metropolitan legislative leaders were as interested in changing the redistribution of power (and funding) away from rural counties as they were in redistributing funding to poor children. However, redistribution was only one part of the story in the first few years after the establishment of FEFP. In 1974, legislators increased the per-pupil funding from the state by 30 percent. That move shifted funding substantially from a local to state basis. One consequence was the confirmation for legislators that the state had a major role to play in guaranteeing the quality of education, because they wanted to make sure that the state’s investment was a sound one. Thus, FEFP solidified Florida’s longstanding efforts to mandate accountability in public schooling. Chapter 4 explores that effort in more detail. Since the new class-size mandate requires that the state government pay for the reductions in class sizes (not local districts), the state government will become even more prominent in funding Florida’s public schools over the next decade. In the long term, the changing demographics of Florida meant that FEFP did result in substantial equalization of educational resources between counties. Since the passage of FEFP, the population of Florida has more than doubled, with dramatic changes in the distribution of the population and poverty within the state. Chapter 5 describes these changes in greater detail, but two examples will illustrate the issues for metropolitan counties. Pinellas County, for example, had substantial rural tracts in the early 1970s, but is now one of the most urban counties in the Southeast. Continuous immigration to Miami-Dade, in combination with a stagnant economy, made the city of Miami one of the poorest cities in the country in 2000.32 A system of educational finance created under one set of circumstances is now applicable to an entirely different one. The result is substantially greater equity, at least according to reported expenditures. According to three studies published since 1992, Florida’s state system results in moderate equality in resources available to county school systems. It does not completely eliminate inequality (for counties can raise a small additional amount), but it evens out resources available to different counties.33 Table 3.1 shows the simple correlations and multipleregression statistics for regular-student expenditures at the county level for Florida’s public schools: There is a mild wealth effect at the county level, with a correlation of .38 between regular education per-pupil costs and per-pupil assessed property value, but the multiple-regression coefficient for assessed

66

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL TABLE 3.1 Florida Regular Education per-Pupil Spending, 1999-2000 by County

Variable

Mean

Bivariate Correlation (R) with Per-pupil Regular-class Spending

Regular education spending Lunch program participation rate Percentage of minority students in district County cost of living index, 1999 County index of dissimilarities (White vs. minority students), .1 rise 1998 property value per student (per $100,000) R2 N

$4195 38.0% 31.7% 94.48

.39 .39 .30

19 0.019 6.8

0.254

.33

59

2.344

.38

80 0.48 66

Multipleregression Coefficient

Note: One county (Volusia, with 16,000 students in October 1999) did not produce valid spending statistics for 1999.

property is relatively low: a $200,000 increase in per-pupil assessed wealth results in increased predicted per-pupil spending of only $160. In contrast, there is a stronger association between spending and either the county-level segregation index of dissimilarity (between White and minority students in public schools) or the federal lunch program participation rate. An increase in predicted per-pupil spending of $160 is associated with an increase of 0.271 in the index of dissimilarity (approximately half the range among counties in Florida) and an increase of 8.6 percent in lunch program participation. In part because of federal Title I funding to schools with concentrated poverty, the main school poverty indicator (lunch program participation) more than compensates for the advantages in wealth. (The correlation between the county’s wealth and lunch program participation was –.27 in 1999-2000.) But what about individual schools? Counties receive funding from the state, but the FEFP does not specify how counties distribute those funds internally. Tom Owens and Jeffrey Maiden’s 1999 analysis of funding equity in Florida, based on cost-accounting data, found that per pupil inequality in spending among schools was considerably

Education Finance Reform in Florida

67

greater than inequality among counties (when all schools within a county are aggregated). There is a mild positive correlation between all basic education spending and the main poverty indicator for individual schools, the percentage of children eligible for free and reduced lunch programs. However, when the federal compensatory education funds are removed, there is a mild negative correlation between poverty and the resources funded at the state and local level. (The same shift is true if one looks at the percentage of students who are African American, according to Owens and Maiden. We agree with them that the reason for the parallel is the correlation between percent on free and reduced lunch programs and the percent of students who are African American.) What they suggest is that school systems substitute federal compensatory education funds for state and local dollars, enabling them to shift the resources around.34 The statistics provided by the state to the public look very different from Owens and Maiden’s analysis. The regular education spending per pupil reported in 1999-2000 for elementary schools show a meaningful positive correlation between poverty and officially reported spending. For the 1,507 elementary schools reporting spending, for example, the correlation between total per-student costs and the percent of students eligible for free and reduced lunch programs is .52, while the correlation between regular education per-student costs and the percent of students eligible for free and reduced lunch programs is .55. As Owens and Maiden notes, these positive correlations are largely due to federal funding of compensatory education through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. One can sort out the effects of that program by restricting analysis to schools that are ineligible for Title I funding. If one looks just at the 612 elementary schools reporting costs in 1999-2000, where fewer than half of the students were eligible for the free or reduced lunch program, the correlation of poverty with total per-student costs was .27, and with regular education per-student costs, .21. These bivariate relationships each account for approximately 7 and 4 percent, respectively, of variance in spending at those 612 elementary schools. At face value, according to publicly reported figures, state and local funding in Florida combined appear to be distributed without a meaningful relationship to poverty.35 A multiple-regression approach to school spending in Florida confirms that a county’s wealth and the poverty among a school’s students are not the most powerful predictors of school spending, and in general spending does not necessarily benefit the most wealthy. Table 3.2

High schools1 Middle schools Special education schools2 Vocational secondary schools Other schools Percent African American (per 1% rise) Percent Latino/a (per 1%) Percent lunch participation (per 1%) Percent Limited English Proficiency (per 1%) Mobility rate (per 1%) Percent in special education (per 1%)

Variable 172.6 -228.7 — 2681.6 288.1

School Level 723.3 -136.2 — 2772.9 647.5 10.2 2.6 8.5 7.1 -0.8 13.0

Plus Student Demographics 888.1 -130.1 — 2729.3 779.2 6.6 -2.0 11.9 4.2 -0.4 16.2

Plus County Data

Regular-Education per-Pupil Costs

-165.1 -413.5 12699.5 2692.3 224.1

School Level

748.1 -320.3 7018.6 2034.5 800.0 5.3 1.5 11.3 6.1 1.2 74.2

Plus County Data

(continued on next page)

515.7 -330.2 7421.0 2062.4 607.8 10.9 8.4 6.6 9.6 0.7 69.3

Plus Student Demographics

All Operating per-Pupil Costs

TABLE 3.2 Florida Regular education and Total Cost per Pupil Spending, 1999-2000, by School Regression Coefficients and Summary Statistics by Model and Dependent Variable

2700 0.29 0.29

Plus Student Demographics

28.2 2796 0.48 0.48 2796 0.46 0.46

22.9 2700 0.32 0.32

2796 0.36 0.36

47.6

Plus County Data

71.5

Plus Student Demographics

44.6

School Level

29.3

Plus County Data

All Operating per-Pupil Costs

Elementary schools are the omitted category of school level. The regular education multiple regression runs were conducted without the special education schools.

2700 0.12 0.12

School Level

Regular-Education per-Pupil Costs

Data source: Florida Department of Education, 1999-2000, databases and information on 1998–1999 FEFP calculation.

Note: The percent of students who are Latino or Latina and the percent labeled as having limited English proficiency are highly correlated, so the reversed coefficient signs in model 3 of the equations on regular education costs would be misleading if interpreted in isolation.

2

1

1999 county price index 1998-99 county assessed wealth per student (per $100,000 rise) County White-minority index of dissimilarity (per .1 rise in the index) N R2 Adjusted R2

Variable

TABLE 3.2 (continued)

70

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

shows results of six regressions, three each on regular education costs per pupil and total operating costs per pupil, by school, using the level of school, demographic data per school, and county-level variables. Even considering the large range of assessed property values, the coefficient for county wealth is relatively low when contrasted with all the other factors included. The coefficients related to county price index and school-level student demographic information are more powerful considering the range of the variables. The weighted interquartile range for the percent of students who were African American in October 1999 was 25 percent; for Latino students, 18 percent; for the county price index, 11.1; for assessed value per student in counties, $101,000; and for the index of dissimilarity, .14.36 The interquartile ranges are associated with the largest changes in regular education and total operating costs per pupil for the county price index (a difference of $326 per pupil in regular education costs and $495 per pupil in total operating costs), the percent of students in special education programs ($541 in total operating costs), and the percent African American ($164 in regular education costs and $134 in total costs per pupil). The continuing role of wealth is minor in comparison to the other factors. In many ways, the multiple regressions reported in Table 3.2 show the direct effects of the FEFP, giving explicit weight to the level of schooling, students who require extra services (including students with disabilities), and the cost of living in each county. What remains after these statewide factors, however, is considerable variation that is not explainable by demographics, county-level information, or cost factors that FEFP explicitly includes. First, middle schools spend less money per student than elementary schools, after accounting for the factors in the regression, even though FEFP weights middle school students more heavily in state aid to counties. Second, the association between spending and the county-level index of dissimilarity (for White vs. minority students) is troublesome. Why would schools spend more when they are in more segregated counties? Finally, the proportion of variance explained (under 50 percent with both regular education and total operating costs per pupil) is low when school spending theoretically flows from factors that should, by and large, be captured in the school- and county-level information available. Not explained by the factors explored above are two sources of variation that are extraordinary: remaining deviations from predicted spending at the county level and different variations within a county by level of schooling. Table 3.3 summarizes the results of 264 multiple

Education Finance Reform in Florida

71

regressions, each one considering one county as a dummy variable. For example, for regular education operating costs, we conducted a multiple regression with all the factors included in the full model in Table 3.2 and, in addition, added a dummy variable coded 1 for schools in Dade County (Miami) and 0 for all other schools. The regression coefficient for Dade was $579, or the amount that a school was predicted to spend per pupil if it was in Dade County, beyond all the other factors under consideration. According to FinFacts’ 2002 urban cost of living survey, Miami has the twenty-fifth highest cost of living in the world, for metropolitan areas, at 82 percent of New York City’s cost of living. No other Florida city is in the most expensive one hundred cities to live in.37 However, obvious cost of living factors do not entirely explain the inter-county differences here, for the regression coefficient for Dade represents predicted spending after already taking cost of living into account. Four of the six columns in Table 3.3 report the county-bycounty regression coefficients for separate regression equations using an individual county as a dummy variable in the multiple regression, as in the example for Dade regular education spending explained previously. We chose to examine regular education and total operating costs per pupil for all schools and then for elementary schools (the only other type of school permitting us to calculate regression coefficients for each county with financial data). The columns of Table 3.3 reporting the regression coefficients for each county show that there is wide variation in per-pupil spending based on where a student lives. There is no clear pattern by whether the county is large or small, urban or rural, with powerful or weak legislators. What we can best describe as apparently random effects of geography can have meaningful consequences for whole classes (where $500 per child in a class of twenty-five leads to a difference of $12,500 per classroom). What is more, the predicted differences per county vary by level of schooling. If one compares the variation above or below the expected amount for elementary schools and for all schools, there is frequently an implicit shift of several hundred dollars toward or away from elementary schools. We measure that implicit shift in priorities in the two columns labeled “elementary shift” by subtracting the countyspecific deviation for all schools from the county-specific deviation for elementary schools. Florida has at least a nominal restriction on the intra-district inequality among schools. Thus, counties have the most spending discretion in shifting funds among different types of schools, and those choices are evident in Table 3.3. While Alachua County has

TABLE 3.3 Florida County Public School Spending Variations from Multiple Regressions, Predicted Differences, Elementary Schools and All Schools, 1999-2000

County Alachua Baker Bay Bradford Brevard Broward Calhoun Charlotte Citrus Clay Collier Columbia Dade De Soto Dixie Duval Escambia Flagler Franklin Gadsden Gilchrist Glades Gulf Hamilton Hardee Hendry Hernando Highlands Hillsborough Holmes Indian River

Operating Costs per Pupil

Regular-Education Costs per Pupil

Elementary

All Schools

All Schools

Elementary Shift

$ 429 -84 -242 559 117 -542 -153 415 -153 -213 302 239 947 -406 -497 -352 -251 -193 714 -333 -55 -414 40 -132 -688 -180 462 -22 -136 765 151

$ 140 284 -348 54 180 -234 284 44 -40 -60 256 166 579 -180 -302 -293 -227 -262 666 272 80 404 873 -240 41 28 207 131 60 380 113

$ 57 69 247 248 237 290 572 139 380 250 222 294 82 209 476 -469 -260 -340 834 147 559 952 648 -245 369 116 97 53 -159 714 -78

$ 272 -38 116 500 40 51 -419 152 31 -27 324 143 203 -162 -303 100 -75 -165 -374 -721 -764 -843 -722 397 -400 -261 424 -84 -233 -110 156

Elementary Shift Elementary $ 288 -367 106 505 -64 -308 -438 371 -113 -153 46 73 368 -226 -195 -59 -24 69 48 -605 -135 -818 -833 108 -729 -208 256 -153 -196 385 37

$ 329 31 363 748 277 340 154 292 412 222 546 437 286 48 173 -369 -335 -505 460 -574 -204 109 -74 153 -31 -144 521 -31 -392 604 78

(continued on next page)

TABLE 3.3 (continued)

County Jackson Jefferson Lafayette Lake Lee Leon Levy Liberty Madison Manatee Marion Martin Monroe Nassau Okaloosa Okeechobee Orange Osceola Palm Beach Pasco Pinellas Polk Putnam Saint Johns Saint Lucie Santa Rosa Sarasota Seminole Sumter Suwannee Taylor Union Wakulla Walton Washington

Operating Costs per Pupil

Regular-Education Costs per Pupil

Elementary

All Schools

All Schools

$ 63 -622 446 -186 -13 -1 96 359 -572 -123 418 -31 -447 327 581 -15 -359 -382 -4 273 6 197 339 356 55 60 420 52 308 119 -19 -166 -51 -375 199

$ 128 -290 275 -249 -46 78 -176 44 -726 -250 212 231 -209 63 423 -110 -437 -314 111 252 -531 313 196 -417 354 46 660 203 133 193 -75 -242 149 74 89

Elementary Shift Elementary $ -65 -332 170 63 33 -79 272 315 154 126 206 -262 -238 264 158 95 78 -68 -115 20 537 -116 143 773 -299 14 -240 -151 175 -74 56 76 -199 -450 110

$ 116 -215 453 94 -112 176 271 573 -230 155 169 -363 -631 134 587 385 -383 -107 -211 44 -184 27 228 236 -218 143 632 -225 181 239 171 -275 215 -433 491

$ 273 103 504 -231 -286 160 308 737 142 105 -108 -292 87 -80 364 254 -406 -109 -48 352 -304 218 85 83 -11 37 867 -24 -22 20 106 -36 0 244 213

Elementary Shift $ -156 -318 -50 325 173 16 -36 -164 -372 50 277 -71 -719 214 224 132 23 2 -163 -308 120 -191 143 153 -206 106 -235 -201 202 219 66 -239 215 -433 247

74

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

above-predicted spending for all schools, it has much higher deviations above predicted spending for elementary schools, suggesting a heavier investment in elementary schools compared with its other schools (when contrasted with the rest of the state’s spending patterns). There are several reasons why one should be cautious about using the publicly reported data, such as those described in the prior paragraphs, as a proxy for resources available to children. First, operatingcost data includes both direct costs (like salaries and benefits of teachers or textbooks) and indirect costs (including services provided at the district level), and those are generally apportioned by a formula rather than actual services provided. As a recent report on school funding from the University of Washington notes, the formal accounting procedures for reporting educational spending often hides real inequalities in spending at the school level.38 Second, direct costs include expenses on different resources that have very different effects on student learning. Many schools use Title I funds, for example, to hire aides for teachers rather than additional certified teachers. Thus, the operating costs per pupil for those schools would be very high, but whether there is greater expertise to help children learn academic skills is questionable. There may also be mild substitution effects on official school budgets as those who are often in a position to help out with extra-budgetary resources (parents and teachers) either cannot contribute (such as parents who are poor) or have a demand that is greater than they can meet (such as teachers at high-poverty schools who spend their first dollars on personal needs of students and then shift spending on classroom materials to the school budget).39 The debate over the production value of educational spending suggests, regardless of the position taken by researchers, that total costs are not the best indicator of resources directly accessible to children or of the effectiveness of spending.40 Nonetheless, the data presented here are troubling. At the school level statewide, funding differences appear to exist primarily because highpoverty schools spend more. As the analysis in chapter 9 indicates, those funding variations appear to make little difference in terms of the high-stakes testing and the accountability system. However, when looking at the county level, there are significant differences in operating costs that exist apart from poverty and cost of living factors. The Florida Education Finance Program may not be equalizing funding as much as is reputed. Even if the differences are not strongly related to county wealth, they are inequalities that might become advantages or disadvantages for students solely because of their counties of residence.

Education Finance Reform in Florida

75

FEFP’S SURVIVAL The Florida Education Finance Program has survived for thirty years with little structural change. In the last third of this century, virtually no other education reform has survived intact for that long at the state level. Thus, FEFP is an object lesson in reform survival—and an intellectual puzzle. How did finance reform borne of redistricting and the early movement to equalize school funding last in a state with such demographic changes, political shifts, and demands for accountability during that time? Four factors explain FEFP’s survival, for the most part: the political origins of the new funding structure; the county system of schools in Florida that distributes risks and resources; the reluctance of Florida’s courts to rule on educational finance issues; and the overshadowing of FEFP by other educational finance and accountability issues. Most of these factors are political in nature and unconnected with the question of whether FEFP is a wise policy (or even one that substantially equalizes funding, as claimed). Political origins of FEFP. As noted earlier, the final formula adopted in 1973 and the amendments and funding increase passed a year later illustrate how legislators shaped FEFP as the result of a thoroughly political process. The metropolitan counties won the battle because redistricting had put power in the hands of their representatives, by and large. But the process also secured FEFP’s future as Florida became more metropolitan and less rural through the past three decades. As the population grew rapidly, the funding system became a part of the existing infrastructure, something that—like chalkboards— was easily institutionalized.41 As the various factors could be negotiated in legislative sessions or mediated through the more recent setting of cost differentials by economic surveys, the cost of changing the whole system became much higher than tinkering with it through the political channels that had shaped the structure. Florida’s countywide school systems. Florida’s school districts are contiguous with its counties. As a result, because the state sends money down to counties rather than individual schools, all children in the county share the same risk of being short-changed by the state. Unlike many states where suburban schools receive substantial funding from a small community’s property taxes, Florida’s suburbs share taxes with the poorest parts of the county. If the state changed the funding system and forced counties to rely more heavily on local taxes, such an

76

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

arrangement would not necessarily benefit many wealthy children, because they often live in counties with a mediocre tax base in general, even if the property wealth in a specific community is higher. Legislators who represent wealthy communities in tax-poor counties, therefore, have little incentive to change a funding system that provides their constituents with greater state aid. Thus, legislators from wealthy communities across the state do not share a common interest in changing FEFP.42 Court inaction. Florida’s Supreme Court has been very reluctant to intervene in the state’s funding scheme. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rodriguez (1973) that education funded by local property taxes does not inherently violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, litigants have relied on state courts for relief. Florida’s courts have rebuffed that effort in all cases. Litigants who have wanted the courts to intervene to make funding more equitable have been denied by reasoning that the constitution provides relatively low-level requirements for funding equity. Likewise, litigants from high-wealth counties have also been denied relief when they wanted to raise higher local taxes than permitted by the statutes.43 An amendment of the state constitution in 1998, however, may open up litigation in the future, not on the basis of inequality but on the adequacy of educational funding. This amendment, approved by voters, changes the first section of Article 9 to read as follows (with deletions crossed out and additions underlined): System of Public education.—The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education and for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require.44

The additional language may push the Florida courts into recognizing adequacy as a concern under the state constitution. How it may do so is uncertain: it may also give considerable deference to the legislature as long as the legislature is active in crafting plausible ways to provide for a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.”45

Education Finance Reform in Florida

77

FEFP overshadowed by other issues. One final factor in FEFP’s longevity is the overshadowing of funding distribution as an issue by questions about funding adequacy (in lay, not legal, terms) for Florida’s population growth, on the one hand, and school accountability, on the other. The growth in population in the 1970s and 1980s strained the state budget in a way that was entirely unanticipated in 1970. Florida’s voters allowed the creation of a lottery in the late 1980s as a hope of funding social service growth to match the population.46 The ensuing debate over whether the legislature used lottery funds to supplant general revenues instead of supplementing them was one issue that was the magnet for funding discussion in the 1990s.47 More importantly, the debate over accountability shifted the question of the most important target of reform away from the basic infrastructure (funding) and student assignments (desegregation) to the major expectations of students. This shift had started in the 1970s, with the passage of the first accountability statute and minimum-competency testing for high school graduates, and gained momentum in the 1990s. The next chapter describes that shifting ground in more detail. The survival of FEFP, after thirty years, is a story of both political stability and autopilot reform. Unlike accountability, there has been no political zeitgeist equating a deeper purpose of education to the moderate equalization of state aid to county school systems. Governor Reubin Askew made that link temporarily when in office. However, while there was the political momentum in 1973 and 1974 to create a new system of funding, that momentum did not translate into any broader ideas of how to link funding to academic outcomes or broader ideals of public education. The use of school funding as a method of asserting Florida’s equal educational opportunity was an experiment that lasted, in a curious way, but without the dramatic results that the legislators and governor at the time hoped for. Ever since, the distribution of educational funding has been mildly equal across counties, with a legacy that avoids the harms of extremely unequal funding but does not promote better outcomes through a deliberative policy. The dead-end of funding reform in Florida, at least through the two terms of Jeb Bush, contrasts dramatically with the dabbling in accountability that grew and came to dominate educational politics and policies in Florida. Those dynamics have changed, however. In future years, Florida’s politicians will face renewed interest in funding issues as they implement the class-size cap approved by voters. Since the fall 2002 election,

78

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

state politicians have debated and confronted the assumed and real costs of both the class-size and prekindergarten mandates. Only part of the issue is the total cost. The greater long-term issue that remains unresolved is the relative responsibilities of the state and local school systems in implementation. While the class-size amendment set the responsibility for funding firmly at the state level, what that means in practice may require court decisions. Once again, the distributional equity of funding will become a significant part of educational politics in Florida. NOTES 1. “Historic Inaugural Focuses on Family,” St. Petersburg Times, January 8, 2003, p. 1A. 2. One of the other constitutional amendments approved in 2002 also created publicly supported prekindergarten programs, another expansion of capacity. 3. A good summary of the literature that places the debates in the larger context of the politics of education is in Timothy A. Hacsi, Children as Pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 4. See Carolyn D. Herrington and Victoria-Maria MacDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy: A 30-Year Perspective on Florida,” in Carolyn D. Herrington and Katherine Kasten, (eds.), Florida 2001: Educational Policy Alternatives ( Jacksonville, Fla.: Florida Institute of Education, 2001), 7–34, as well as the next chapter that follows in this volume. 5. These differences are also much smaller in the school system than inequalities that exist in other resources available to families such as housing stock, health care, income, and retirement resources; see Martin Carnoy and Henry Levin, Schooling and Work in the Democratic State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), for a more complete description of how schooling compares to other social institutions. 6. David R. Colburn and Richard K. Scher, Florida’s Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century (Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1980), 244-246. 7. The Florida MFP did not set a cap on class sizes but created a fictive “unit” it would fund. The new constitutional language sets absolute caps, including a maximum class size of eighteen in grades K–3. 8. Arthur O. White, “State Leadership and Public Education in Florida: The Evolution of a System,” in Ronald K. Goodenow and Arthur O. White (eds.), The Education and the Rise of the New South (Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1981), 242.

Education Finance Reform in Florida

79

9. Ibid., 377. 10. See Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Random House, 1976), for the classic account of the legal battles over segregation. 11. For broad discussions of school finance issues, see James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, DC: United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966); Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds., On Equality of Educational Opportunity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972); Helen F. Ladd and Janet S. Hansen, eds., Making Money Matter: Financing America’s Schools (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999); Julie K. Underwood and Deborah A. Verstegen, eds., The Impact of Litigation and Legislation on Public School Finance: Adequacy, Equity, and Excellence (New York: Harper & and Row, 1990); Donna L. Terman and Richard E. Behrman, “Financing Schools: Analysis and Recommendations,” Future of Children, 7, 3 (Winter 1997), available online at http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubsinfo2825/pubs-info.htm?doc_id=73347; James W. Guthrie, “School Finance: Fifty Years of Expansion,” Future of Children, 7, 3 (Winter 1997), available online at http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info.htm?doc_id=73347; and John G. Augenblick, John L. Myers, and Amy Berk Anderson, “Equity and Adequacy in School Funding,” Future of Children, 7, 3 (Winter 1997), available online at http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info.htm?doc_ id=73347. For a popular version, see Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991). 12. For one perspective on the change, see Harris Mullen’s interview of T. Terrell Sessums, August 22, 1996, USF Oral History Program, Special Collections, University of South Florida Tampa Library, available at http: //www.lib.usf.edu/spccoll/index2.html?f=13750. 13. Charles E. Miner to Sessums, September 27, 1972, in T. Terrell Sessums Papers, Box 20, in University of South Florida Tampa Library, Special Collections; Jonathan Kozol, Ibid., 213–22. 14. Executive Order 71–40, 27 July 1971; “Status Summary of the Finance Project,” August 11, 1972, in Reubin Askew Papers, Florida State Archives, Record Group 402, Series 126, box 12; Memo, William L. Maloy to Hugh MacMillan, June 28, 1972, in Askew Papers, Series 78, Box 4. 15. Miner to Sessums, September 27, 1972. 16. “Interim Report: Florida School Finance Study,” January 15, 1972, in Askew Papers, Series 126, Box 12. 17. Address to the legislature, April 3, 1973, p. 12 of MS draft in Askew Papers, Series 126, Box 20. 18. See “An Educational Finance Study by the Taber Management Company for the Florida Education Association,” February 1972, in Citizens Committee on Education Papers, Florida State Archives, Record Group 100, Series 768, Box 1.

80

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

19. Martin Dyckman, “Corpse of School Ratio Study Gives Legislature Nightmares,” St. Petersburg Times, 7April 7, 1973, 6-B; “Tax-Ratio Winners Dispute Clarification,” St. Petersburg Times, May 10, 1973, 2-B. 20. Sessums to Askew, April 16, 1973, in Askew Papers, Series 78, Box 4. 21. One draft bill was only twelve pages long; see October 1972 draft bill in Askew Papers, Series 126, Box 14. Also see materials on January 21–23, 1973, meeting of the Citizens’ Citizens Education Committee, Citizens’ Citizens Committee on Education Papers, Box 3. 22. Florida Chapters 73-345, 74-227. 23. Florida Senate Committee on Ways and Means, “Fiscal Analysis in Brief Based on 1974 Passed Legislation,” July 1974, pp. 10-11, in Florida Senate Education Committee legislative files, Florida State Archives, Record Group 900, Series 18. 24. The Department of Education’s Associate Commissioner for budgeting, Herman Myers, testified to the Citizens Education Committee in December 1971 but largely avoided issues of funding equalization. See partial transcript of December 16–17, 1971, meeting of Citizens Education Committee, Citizens Committee on Education Papers, Florida State Archives, Record Group 100, Series 768, Box 1. 25. Handwritten notes from the education conference committee meeting, May 30, 1974, in Florida Legislative Committee Materials, Record Group 900, Series 18, Box 131. 26. Abbott v. Burke 575 A.2d 359 (1990). 27. Florida Senate Committee on Ways and Means, “Fiscal Analysis in Brief Based on 1973 Passed Legislation,” July 1973, p. 13; “Fiscal Analysis in Brief Based on 1973 Passed Legislation,” June 1975, p. 13, in Florida Senate Education Committee legislative files. 28. Partial transcript of December 16–17, 1971, meeting of Citizens Education Committee, p. 12, Citizens Committee on Education Papers, Florida State Archives, Record Group 100, Series 768, Box 1. 29. Tax Assessors Association of Florida, Tax Views in the News, June 1973, in T. Terrell Sessums Papers, Box 20, in University of South Florida Tampa Library, Special Collections. Florida’s assessors still publish “TRIM” notices annually as part of the institutionalized protection begun thirty years ago. 30. Martin Dyckman, “Pinellas Stands To Lose $7-Million in $920Million School Compromise,” St. Petersburg Times, June 6, 1973, 5-B. 31. S. J. Carroll and R. E. Park, The Search for Equity in School Finance (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1983); L. A. Shiver, “A Historical Review of the Development of Florida’s School Finance Plan and the Fiscal Equalization Effects of the Florida Educational Finance Program” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1982); D. Vaughan, “The Impact of Florida’s 1973 School Finance Reform on Poor and Minority Children,” in Robert Brischetto, (ed.),

Education Finance Reform in Florida

81

Minorities, the Poor, and School Finance Reform (Washington, DC: National Institute of Education, 1979). 32. U.S. Census Bureau, “Percent of People Below Poverty Level in the Past 12 Months (2000),” retrieved February 25, 2005, from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2000/R01T160.htm. 33. J. Maiden and R. C. Wood, “An Examination of the Discretionary Elements of the Florida Education Finance Program,” Journal of Education Finance, 21 (1995): 271-90; J. M. O’Loughlin, R. C. Wood, and D. S. Honeyman, A Study of the Effects of the Scarcity Supplement on the Equity of the Florida Education Finance Program (Gainesville, Fla.: UCEA Center for Education Finance, 1992); S. D. Stark, D. S. Honeyman, and R. C. Wood, “The Florida Lottery: Its Use as a Substitute for Existing Funds and Its Effects on the Equity of School Funding,” Journal of Education Finance, 18 (1993): 231-42. 34. “A Comparison of Interschool and Interdistrict Funding Equity in Florida,” Journal of Education Finance, 24 (1999): 503-18. Any such substitution violates at least the spirit of Title I, which requires schools to use federal funding to supplement, not supplant, existing resources. 35. Data from the 1999-2000 Florida Schools Indicator Reports and School Advisory Council reports, available online at http://www.firn.edu/ doe/. The mean (weighted) reported per-pupil operating expense was $4,888; the mean (weighted) regular education per-pupil expense was $4,224. The analysis excluded eighty-nine schools and administrative units that failed to report operating costs or reported zero regular-student operating costs; most were charter schools or units for homebound instruction. 36. The interquartile range for lunch-program participation, 62%, percent, is misleading because high schools have 0% percent lunch-program participation by administrative fiat, in state statistics. 37. FinFacts, “Worldwide 2002 Cost of Living Survey,” available online at http://www.finfacts.ie/costofliving1.htm. 38. Marguerite Roza, Larry Miller, and Paul Hill, Strengthening Title I to Help High-Poverty Schools: How Title I Funds Fit into District Allocation Patterns (Seattle, Wash.: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2005), available at http://www.crpe.org/workingpapers/pdf/TitleI_reportWeb.pdf. 39. Our appreciation goes to several public school teachers for pointing out some of these issues; also see Roza, Miller, and Hill, Strengthening Title I. 40. Eric A. Hanushek, “Throwing Money at Schools,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1, 1 (1981); Eric A. Hanushek, “The Impact of Differential Expenditures on School Performance,” Educational Researcher, 18, 4 (May 1989); Larry V. Hedges, Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald, “Does Money Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School Inputs on Student Outcomes,” Educational Researcher, 23, 3 (April 1994); Eric A. Hanushek, “Money Might Matter Somewhere: A Response to Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald,” in Educational Researcher, 23, 4

82

SHERMAN DORN AND DEANNA L. MICHAEL

(May 1994); Larry V. Hedges, Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald, “Money Does Matter Somewhere: A Reply to Hanushek,” Educational Researcher, 23, 4 (May 1994); Rob Greenwald, Larry V. Hedges, and Richard D. Laine, “The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement,” Review of Educational Research, 66, 3 (Fall 1996): 361-86; Eric A. Hanushek, “A More Complete Picture of School Resource Policies,” Review of Educational Research, 66, 3 (Fall 1996): 397-408. 41 See David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), for an explanation of the differences between cyclical and institutionalized reforms in education. 42. In the 1970s, legislators were elected from multiple-member districts by county. Thus, until the 1980s, the legislators who created the FEFP never represented single communities such as wealthy suburbs. 43. Barbara J. Staros, “School Finance Litigation in Florida: A Historical Analysis,” Stetson Law Review, 23 (1994): 497-519. 44. Constitutional Revision Commission files, online at http://www. law.fsu.edu/crc/ballot.html. 45. The analysis in this paragraph omits the new language on class sizes approved by voters in 2002, as the focus is on the earlier language. For an analysis of these issues, see Doug Harris, “Funding Florida’s Schools: Adequacy, Costs, and the State Constitution,” Policy Brief EPSL-0401-110EPRU (Tempe, Arizona: Educational Policy Studies Laboratory, 2004), available at http://www.edpolicy.org; and Doug Harris, “Class Size, Pre-kindergarten, and Educational Adequacy: Costs and Funding Options for Florida,” Policy Brief EPSL-0401-108-EPRU (Tempe, Arizona: Educational Policy Studies Laboratory, 2004), available at http://www.edpolicy.org. 46. Carolyn D. Herrington and Peter J. Cistone, “Educational Reform in Florida: Context, Substance and Politics,” International Journal of Educational Reform, 3 (1994): 264-78. 47. For examples of newspaper editorials and articles on the use of the Florida lottery, see “End the Lottery Lie,” St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 1995; “Redirect Lottery Funds,” Lakeland Ledger, May 2, 1996; Stephen Hegarty, “10 Years Later, Lottery Is Political Punching Bag,” St. Petersburg Times, November 4, 1996; or, more recently, Tom Lyons, “Lottery Dollars Afford an Education on the Ways of Florida,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 28, 2002; and Kimberly Miller, “Cash Crunch Chalked Up to Broken Promises, Palm Beach Post, October 27, 2002.

CHAPTER

4

Accountability as a Means of Improvement: A Continuity of Themes

Deanna L. Michael Sherman Dorn The importance of education as a campaign issue in contests for the governorship loomed large during the twentieth century throughout the United States, but was especially powerful in the South. Florida was no exception. Once elected, governors used the power of their office to influence educational policy. Some aspired to be “educational governors” by appointing blue-ribbon committees and making fundamental changes in state educational structures. In addition, national trends including the “back to basics” movement and accountability practices as well as analyses linking education to business growth and economic prosperity have heavily influenced gubernatorial decisions and priorities in funding.1 The programs developed from the vision of the governors, and the national trends have emphasized increased funding for schools and universities and have sought ways to make systems more efficient. Since 1970, however, accountability has played an important role. Over the last decade, the development of the ability to follow students through the system has given the policy makers in Tallahassee the capacity to link specific schools and classroom teachers to student achievement. This ability has brought the state government closer to the local government and has made state policy the center of local district policy. This chapter focuses on the development of accountability as a set of policy practices in Florida and the roles governors have played in this process since the 1970s. Politicians in Florida centered their programs

83

84

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

on mandating accountability at the school district level by requiring districts to make annual accounts of expenditures, particularly those derived from property taxes and other sources. While few would argue against this necessity, a top-down accountability model ultimately has been a major force driving statewide standardized testing of public school students and the subsequent grading of schools.2 This centralized model of accountability was likely created after the state became primarily responsible for funding local public schools, as described in the prior chapter. At first, accountability meant accountability for funds used. The focus of these policies during the years from 1970 onward, however, shifted from educational programs and their costs to educational outcomes. The recent national history of accountability in many ways mirrors Florida’s trends, with expected outcomes of schooling embedded in the federal reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (2001) and in the legislation of many other states. One way to understand these shifts is to examine the historical context of accountability in Florida, where policy makers’ actions have often been on the forefront of national trends in education. One important feature of accountability in Florida has been the displacement of responsibility away from the center, even while the central state government controls accountability. This displacement creates consequences primarily for local school districts, schools, and students. To illustrate this pattern, consider the state requirement that third graders pass a state standardized test in reading before promotion to the fourth grade. Although elementary schools throughout the state are graded based on the performance of each school’s third, fourth, and fifth graders’ test scores, each individual third grader is also held accountable for how well she or he performs on the third grade examination, given in late winter. If a child does not pass this exam, the required response is retention in grade (unless the student successfully completes summer school work or has completed a portfolio providing evidence of literacy).3 This response changes the child’s school career forever. With considerable justification, advocates of the retention policy point out that children who cannot read well at age 8 or 9 have a much more difficult time handling middle and high school courses. Our point here is not to debate the wisdom of retention but to point out that the policy is one-sided: there is no reciprocal obligation of the state to provide appropriate interventions. In other words, the Florida child bears the primary consequences for the state’s failure to provide an education.4 More generally, only those at the bottom who have had

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

85

the policies imposed upon them—third grade students and their schools in this case—are evaluated. An analysis of accountability is timely because federal policy now mandates states to use specific teaching methods in language arts, for example, along with standardized tests to measure the achievement of children from third to eighth grades. This mandate is through the power of the purse—federal funds made available to local schools. The reauthorization of the largest source of federal funds, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title I (targeted at improving education for poor children) became the vehicle for this mandate in the No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President George W. Bush in January 2002. Federal legislation includes sanctions for districts and schools that do not meet mandated progress goals, including the use of 20 percent of Title I funding to provide transportation and support for students to attend another public school if schools currently attended by students are designated as “failing” three years in a row.5 This “failingschools” public choice plan is similar to sanctions developed in Florida under Governor Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan, allowing students in failing schools to move to a public or private school through the provision of vouchers.6 Currently, accountability in Florida includes setting state goals for academic progress that local schools must strive to achieve and must measure through standardized testing purchased by the state. Individual schools and students are held accountable for their performance on these tests and either gain the rewards of meeting the goals or suffer the consequences of failing. While supporters compare this accountability method to business efficiency procedures, means exist other than a carrot-and-stick policy. Accountability policies existed in Florida for more than a quarter-century before Jeb Bush became governor. Politicians called them accountability measures and enacted them with many of the same reasons that Governor Bush and President Bush have used in advocating the accountability policies they have proposed or signed into law. This history within Florida shows that educational accountability can include a broad range of measures and consequences. While these options include the carrot-and-stick approach of Governor Bush, based on standardized testing, Florida had written policies that emphasized multiple measures of educational outcomes or emphasized decentralized accountability at the local level. One lesson of Florida’s history of educational accountability is the fact that many options have survived and continue to exist.7

86

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

The other lesson of the accountability history of Florida is how Governor Bush fits in well with common themes in the state’s educational history. This history contains three themes that have been consistent in three decades of accountability policy. First, accountability policy has included a strong metaphor linking accountability to business or businesslike practices. Second, accountability policy in Florida has generally displaced responsibility away from the state and onto the county (district) level and school level. Third, accountability policy in Florida has consistently ignored the history of past discrimination in schools. In all of these ways, Governor Bush’s accountability policy has fit well within the state and national trends in accountability policy. If his voucher policy was new, the larger context is not. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF ACCOUNTABILITY How and why accountability has become so important in education policy at the state and national levels can be explained in a number of ways. Some suggest accountability springs from a conservative response to the civil rights movement, while others see it as related to both the economic shift following the cold war and the economic slump of the 1970s.8 Heavy criticism of the public schools began in the 1940s and took flight in 1957 with the launch of the Soviet Union’s satellite Sputnik. This event began a campaign by two sets of opinionmakers—national leaders including Admiral Hyman Rickover and James B. Conant urging high schools to focus on sorting students for academic achievement and southern politicians lobbying governmental agencies and legislators for federal educational funding.9 Simultaneously, governors in many southern states felt pressure from the federal government to desegregate school districts in their states. The 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education declared that segregated schools were by their nature unequal. During the 1960s, pressure to desegregate the public schools increased until most southern states began to comply. As described in chapter 2, Florida was segregated both socially and politically as were its neighbors. To maintain the status quo, many southern cities, including ones in Florida, used voluntary desegregation plans to slow the pace of desegregation. This situation changed after the United States Supreme Court ruled that school systems with official segregation policies had to integrate their schools rather than offer “freedom-of-choice plans” to African

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

87

American students. This decision undermined the local resistance to desegregation in the southern states.10 Beyond this period and into the 1980s and 1990s it was clear that central cities, those locations closest to downtown areas in cities such as Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami, remained largely segregated, reflecting housing patterns that isolated impoverished Black (and to some extent Latino) families. Throughout the South (and also the North), educational strategies for carrying out desegregation were often developed without measurable goals. Indeed, it was assumed that by infusing an assortment of resources such as classroom aides, additional textbooks, and sophisticated computers, even without a plan or unifying theme, districts would be complying with the intent of most desegregation orders.11 Some have argued that the creation of a system for monitoring student progress and for assessing the gap in performance between White and Black students was a way to ensure that equity in achievement outcomes was monitored.12 In Florida, once desegregation was underway, the state began to develop and implement a statewide testing program. Whether the creation of the testing program is related to an attempt to monitor the effects of desegregation is not clear; however, it did occur during the same decade as Florida’s attempt to dismantle its dual educational system. In examining accountability in the Florida educational system, it is necessary to address the question of why business metaphors and models of accountability were adopted by school leaders as a means to measure school performance. There were three distinct but interrelated reasons for this move. First, during the early part of the twentieth century, urban reformers pushed for expert and professional control of the schools. During this period, in most areas, voters in their neighborhoods or wards elected members of school boards. Members of the urban social elite, business, and educational experts believed that democratic governance of the urban schools allowed corruption in decision making. To clean up the process, they believed that educational professionals should be in charge of the schools without interference by the voters.13 Second, during the 1920s and 1930s, urban school systems expanded at a dramatic rate. In 1912, there were 1,105,360 high school students reported in the United States. By 1920 that number had increased to 2,200,389 and by 1930 it was 4,399,422, a mere 47 percent of those fourteen to seventeen years old.14 This sharp increase in services caused politicians, taxpayers, and business leaders to demand that schools use their funding the most efficient way possible. Third, the

88

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

advent of intelligence testing promised to allow school professionals to place students according to their natural talents and abilities.15 The use of intelligence tests in schools developed because of the rapid growth of those attending schools from the passage and enforcement of compulsory school laws and the belief in science by educational experts in the 1920s. After the First World War, intelligence tests became readily available to urban schools and were justified by their ease of administration and cost effectiveness. Through these tests, educational experts believed that students could be placed in programs that suited their needs rather than wasting their time in classes where they had no talent or ability. In theory at least, the schools gained the ability to assign teachers according to the needs of the students, and society gained because the public educational system was producing students who knew their abilities and could contribute them to society.16 Proponents of the tests and their use by the schools asserted that schools could differentiate curriculum by the needs and talents of the students rather than trying to teach them all the same information. Critics like Chicago’s Federation of Labor claimed that the test scores did little more than reflect the social class of the students’ families; students from low-income families scored low and those from highincome families scored high. While this was not always the case, test scores did reflect the social class of the students more often than not. Race and ethnicity were also reflected in test scores. African American and immigrant students scored lower on the tests than middle-class, native-born white students.17 These results caused some to question the validity of the scores, including psychologists who favored the tests, but accepted the limitations of intelligence measurement. Educational philosopher John Dewey described his perceptions of this use of science: “Our mechanical, industrial civilization is concerned with averages, with percents. The mental habit which reflects this social scene subordinates education and social arrangements based on averaged gross inferiorities and superiorities.”18 If taken too far, the use of the tests could hinder rather than help a student in intellectual attainment. Despite the criticisms of the test, the public accepted them as a valid measure of student ability. It was the public acceptance that began what one historian refers to as the political legacy of testing.19 This tendency toward the use of intelligence testing for the placement of students moved slowly to rural areas. Because of the economy of the southern states was agricultural, most of the population lived in rural areas until after 1940.20 Education, however, remained a luxury.

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

89

Through most of the period between the First and Second World Wars, Florida was an impoverished state with little incentive to expend large amounts on education. Also, the governors of Florida had little power over educational policy. The commissioner of education was an elected official with his own constituents.21 He was independent of the governor and could afford to be an obstacle to the implementation of policies that rivaled his own. The state board of education, which consisted of the governor, the commissioner of education, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the treasurer, also presented a potential obstacle for the governor. In order for a governor to push for educational legislation, he had to gain the political support of his independent, and often incumbent, cabinet. Economics proved to be even more of a problem, and most Florida governors before the Second World War were fiscally conservative. For them, business techniques offered the means for educators to run their schools efficiently and to stretch their dollars. During the Depression, Governor David Sholtz advised educators, “Put business management into operation of the school system, see that the teachers are paid regularly fair living salaries, collect your taxes and I tell you there will be no school problem in Florida.” The next year, six thousand teachers in Florida were on public relief.22 Despite such rhetoric, business methods were useless in the face of the downward economic spiral during the 1930s. Education became a chief concern of the governors and the legislature after World War II when the threat of war with the Soviet Union and the civil rights movement both dominated policy making. A move from efficient management of resources to expanding opportunity occurred in large part when the federal government became involved in implementing policy.23 On the national level, accountability was bandied about as a means to make sure schools did their job of preparing compliant and capable future members of the workforce. Southern states, with their dual school systems, focused on achievement in the schools for the white population and extending facilities for African American students. To expand educational access, it was necessary to fund schools equally within states. Florida led the South in the implementation of legislation to equalize school expenditures and curriculum among all school districts to maintain segregation in schools. In 1946, Governor Millard Caldwell appointed a blue-ribbon committee to suggest changes in Florida’s educational policies. Legislation, the Minimum Foundations Program

90

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

(MFP), resulted from the committee’s report and was intended to equalize educational funding among districts by distributing state funds based on a county’s ability to support its schools.24 The MFP reform of Florida’s educational funding preceded Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) by almost thirty years. A minimum property tax level was set for the state to allow each county to raise a certain percentage of the funds needed to support education.25 MFP gave all teachers, both Black and White, with the same experience and degree level the same state-supported salary. It also equalized state funding among the districts, allowing Florida to claim that its segregated school system was moving toward equity.26 The acceptance of responsibility for education by the Florida legislature was an important step in equalizing opportunity for all students in the state. This legislation also encouraged policies tying education to economic productivity. Because many industries that moved to Florida during World War II were now leaving, Governor Caldwell saw an important and critical need to support education as a means to attract businesses back. He was also aware of increased pressure by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) in other states to desegregate graduate schools and gain equal pay for African American teachers.27 Caldwell and other white politicians were committed to maintaining a segregated school system, although this dual system cost twice as much to maintain. Accountability through the measurement of achievement was left to local districts. Local districts, however, had other concerns at this time. From 1950 to 1960, the population of Florida increased 78 percent and with that came increasing pressures on the schools.28 Also, the United States Supreme Court ruled on the Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas (1954) decision, in which segregated schools were declared unequal. During the 1960s, southern state legislatures and school administrators paid increasing attention to expanding educational opportunities for students who had suffered discrimination in the past due to their race or ethnicity. With the addition of federal funding through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, states could afford to shift their focus away from spending efficiency and toward student opportunity. Title I of ESEA, which funded special reading and mathematics programs for impoverished students, also brought a new form of standardized testing into the schools. In order for schools to accept Title I funding, they had to assess students in the program annually and report the results.29 These tests also

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

91

brought classrooms into focus. The individual school principal and classroom teachers were increasingly viewed as having primary responsibility for providing opportunities to all students because many students, who had been divided by race and, thereby, offered different levels of opportunity, began to attend the same schools. The state, through the intervention of the federal government, now faced the responsibility of providing poor and minority students equal access to education. These social and political stresses manifested themselves as education reform under the gubernatorial administration of Reubin Askew. His approach to educational policy began the series of reforms that continued for the next thirty years. REUBIN ASKEW (1971–1979) AND THE FLORIDA ACCOUNTABILITY ACT30 State Senator Reubin Askew became governor of Florida during a period of educational reconstruction. A teachers’ strike under predecessor Claude Kirk had brought education to the forefront of the political debate.31 Familiar with educational issues confronting the state from his legislative experience, Askew committed himself to improving public education during his eight years as governor. One of his first decisions was to appoint the blue-ribbon Citizens Committee on Education to evaluate education in the state and to make recommendations. The suggestions made by the committee and its consultants became the origins of a new finance system for education. As the prior chapter explains, the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) addressed the growing inequities in the distribution of state funds through MFP and increased the level of funding for education. To pay for it, Askew did what few Florida governors have been able to do; he pushed the legislature to raise taxes. The pressure for this change was the 1971 Serrano v. Priest court decision that declared California’s school finance program unconstitutional because of the unequal distribution of property taxes and Askew’s belief that the state had an obligation to educate Florida’s poor children, Black and White. Even after the Supreme Court of the United States eventually declared property taxes a constitutional means for financing education, the Florida legislature passed FEFP and reformed the property tax structure.32 This finance reform was accompanied by the Florida Accountability Act, a justification by Florida politicians for the increased funding

92

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

they made available for public education. Accountability became an important aspect of the educational changes pushed by Askew. In his first speech to the legislature, he stressed the importance of education by declaring, “Of all the services of Government for the people, education is without a doubt the most important.” To fulfill this charge, the state had to guarantee that the public school system “reflect programs of accountability and techniques of assessment. It must more fully predict the needs and prescribe the programs for each individual as an individual.”33 What he meant by accountability was not clear in his speech, but the joining of prediction with assessment implied that the system would be diagnostic in nature. Within two years, the process became clearer when the Citizens Committee on Education asserted that student performance in schools should be measured rather than the process of education. They wrote: We are concerned with the number of hours that they [students] spend in the classroom. What we should be concerned about is results. To get those results we must recognize that each child needs an individualized learning program. To assess results and to assist in identifying the learning problems of each student, we need a program of statewide testing. The emphasis, at least in the beginning, should be on basic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic.”34

The committee interpreted accountability as focusing on the outcomes of education rather than what was spent on the different programs. They also believed that basic skills needed to be emphasized and that these skills should be tested. The schools also had to be responsive to the needs of the communities. To increase communication between the community that supported the schools and the school administration, the committee suggested the creation of advisory boards made up of parents and community members and annual reports from the districts that included spending and test scores. Accountability had begun in Florida. Askew’s purpose behind a statewide testing program was not apparent in his speeches, but that he supported equal educational opportunity for all students was. In a speech before the Southern Governor’s Association in 1973, he explained the new educational finance system in Florida, his reasons for supporting the changes, and the means for accountability. He told his audience: As a politician, I know the value, indeed the necessity, of providing all of the people equal educational opportunities. . . . I know, in short, that

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

93

the education of the people is a guardian of our freedom, and the master key to our future. I know that public education has, indeed, been the best hope for certain children to escape the cycle of poverty and fear in this country. . . . For these reasons, it is my belief that equality of educational opportunities [sic] must be assured to every student.35

He followed this political justification for his educational reforms with an explanation of how Florida had introduced a new finance program intended to provide all students the educational services that they needed individually despite their geographic location within the state. Both the justification and the finance system were explained in some detail. The accountability plan was vaguely referred to as “a comprehensive management information, cost accounting and educational assessment system” that would be available to the public in annual reports.36 More significant was its purpose. “If accountability in education means visibility of what schools are doing, this [annual reporting] should assist greatly in accomplishing the kind of educational accountability that will make our education system more responsive to the real needs of our people.”37 To his audience of governors and policy makers on the state level, Askew defined accountability as “visibility” that offered the public information about the schools as well as the students’ test scores. Through the reporting of the information about student performance and the district management, the needs of the students, and perhaps those of the communities, would be visible. Although Askew’s description of the accountability system was rather vague, the legislature soon mapped out a plan for holding schools, districts, students, and preservice teachers accountable. From 1972 through 1976, the legislature added and removed provisions of the Florida Accountability Act. Preservice teachers were required to take a state examination before they could be certified. Districts and schools were required to gather accounting information beyond the usual expenditures. To justify their budgets, the legislature required principals and superintendents to account for the effectiveness of their expenditures in annual reports. The State Student Assessment Test, Part One (SSAT1) was developed to measure student achievement in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11. An additional test, State Student Assessment, Part Two (SSAT2), shortly became necessary to graduate from high school.38 The number of students who passed and failed these tests would be part of the district and school annual reports to the public. These tests reflected the national push in the 1970s for schools to go “back to basics” by centering on reading, writing, and mathematics.39

94

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

Education policy analysts Herrington and McDonald describe the Florida Accountability Act as “a new conceptualization of the functions of state aid.”40 The finance reforms had equalized funding among districts, given local officials more discretion, and had compensated for differences in student and program costs. All of these changes allowed Askew and the legislators to hold the individual districts accountable for how they spent appropriations and the results. What the implementation of accountability omitted was, however, compensation for past injustices. While this plan seemed equitable, the only group held accountable in a punitive manner was high school seniors. If students in grades 3, 4, 8, and 11 failed the SSAT1, they would receive remedial help and the school would receive additional funding from the state. Those who failed the SSAT2, however, would not receive a diploma. The students most likely to fail the test were from minority groups who had not had access to the same curricula or even the books that the students in the all-White schools had experienced. This approach to accountability held the schools, administrators, and policy makers harmless in the process, and the legislature failed to accept responsibility for the problems that it had created in the past for minority seniors. The failure to acknowledge state responsibilities followed the decadesold pattern of displacing responsibility for K–12 educational equality from the state to the county or district level in Florida.41 This shifting of responsibility is an important aspect of decision making that, to this day, remains a dominant theme in Florida’s educational politics and in the educational politics of many other states. Once Florida implemented testing requirements, civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit challenging the denial of a high school diploma based on their failure of the SSAT2. In Debra P. v. Turlington (1979), the plaintiffs charged that the test contained culturally biased materials and that withholding a diploma based on the SSAT2 discriminated against minority students. The federal court concurred and charged the state with creating a test based on information that the students were not taught. The judge also decreed that the test could not be administered until the students who had experienced the segregated education system in Florida had graduated. The court delayed the implementation of the tests until the 1982–1983 school year.42 This delay settled the fate of the Florida Accountability Act. By the end of Askew’s second term, the accountability system had fizzled out. Accountability reports remained annual reports of expenditures. Testing in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11 continued, as did the funding for

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

95

schools where students failed, but there was no requirement for programmatic changes or acceptance of responsibility by the state, the legislature, or the district. Florida’s first attempt at accountability had unveiled the results of past discriminatory practices, but it offered only a limited avenue for school improvement. BOB GRAHAM (1979–1987) AND RAISE Daniel Robert (Bob) Graham followed Askew as the governor of Florida. Like his predecessor, Graham believed that education was important for the future of Florida. His experience in educational policy making began when he chaired the Subcommittee for Higher Education while he was in the Florida House of Representatives.43 After he was elected to the state senate in 1970, he remained involved in educational policy. As a state senator, Graham was known as a liberal that supported education, social programs, and environmental legislation, even if it meant increasing taxes. As governor, he continued his commitment to these issues and increased taxes but also became known as a friend to business.44 When Graham became governor, he considered the educational reform legislation completed. What was left for him was the implementation through innovative programs.45 His administration developed the Raise Achievement in Secondary Education or RAISE program, which increased course requirements for high school graduation and increased funding for education from kindergarten to the university level. His program also included graduation testing. To develop RAISE, Graham turned to business leaders in Florida. In a presentation at the Urban Schools National Task Force, Graham explained that in Florida, “we intend to rank in America’s upper quartile—in the top one-fourth of the states. Our goal of reaching the top 12 states can be measured by many yardsticks, but the measure we consider most important is student performance.”46 He believed that the solution to Florida’s education problems was in three areas: attracting and retaining the best teachers through a career ladder and merit pay for “exceptional performance,” raising high school graduation requirements, and lengthening the school day to seven periods.47 To achieve these changes, Graham formed a coalition between political leaders and business executives from companies in Florida like Honeywell, Bendix, and Westinghouse. He described the political message from

96

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

this group as “education means business, both today and in the future, for Florida. Better schools mean better jobs, a better future, and a richer economy for all of us. The payoff is a better quality of life.”48 He also included one of the teachers’ unions in the state, the Florida Education Association (FEA-U), in the planning to gain its support for merit pay. The teacher merit pay plan included a career ladder with master teachers, loan-forgiveness for mathematics and science majors, and increased funding for computer, mathematics, and science programs.49 New requirements for high school graduation included four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of science, and a year of world history, American history, American government, economics, performing arts, and vocational education. Students who exceeded these expectations were eligible for the Florida Academic Scholars Program.50 Vocational education also experienced new standards. Each program had to place at least 70 percent of its graduates over a three-year period or the program would be canceled. Graham and the legislature intended to make sure that schools met the requirements in RAISE (as well as those in the elementary and middle school programs). Budgets were allocated by categories and educational decision making became centralized in Tallahassee.51 The mandate established in Debra P. v. Turlington that the state only test students on material they had been taught was supported by the state-mandated curricula. Local boards and schools resisted these changes because they resented state imposition of curricula and categories. The merit pay plan, which teachers and local districts also resisted, only lasted for a year. By 1990, the next governor, Bob Martinez, and the legislature had abandoned RAISE and its programs for the lower grades. Decentralization rather than centralization had become the way to reform education by the end of the decade.52 During the 1980s, Graham was not alone in his focus on education. Education had moved to national prominence in the political world, and this time the whole country’s educational debate tied education to the economy. When A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, the report by the National Commission on Educational Excellence became the most visible call for education reform in the United States. The economic justification for supporting public education was prominent in its pages. For the Commission, only through educational institutions could the United States keep its position as a global economic leader. The report claimed that the complaints of business leaders

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

97

about the level of literacy among their workers and the direction of future employment all added up to a mediocre educational system in the United States.53 Graham’s proposals for accountability in Florida were developed before A Nation at Risk was published, but they still mirrored each other. The similarity between Graham’s reform package and the recommendations proposed by the report’s authors reflects the larger reform trends in the country and the emphasis on higher graduation requirements in high schools. Notable, once more, is the displacement of responsibility from the policy makers (and, again, generally onto students). The concentration on the development of the future worker, or human capital, again placed the responsibility of accountability on the individual student. What had begun as accounting for the use of educational funding became accountability for the human capital produced in the schools. This human capital, in a perfect policy world, became the human resources for business in the United States.54 While this model was problematic in terms of accountability in funding and curricular support by governors and legislators, many state policy makers have used it to explain the function of the schools to the taxpaying public.55 LAWTON CHILES (1991-1998) AND BLUEPRINT 2000 The next round of reforms in Florida depended heavily on human capital theory and on the educational goals set by President George H. W. Bush, business leaders, and the National Governors’ Association in 1989 in America 2000. The first set of six goals were intended to address the problems in the economy of the United States through increasing educational standards: 1) all children will start school ready to learn; 2) American students will be first in the world in math and science; 3) students will be held accountable in grades 4, 8, and 10 and they will be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment; 4) a 90 percent high school graduation rate; 5) every American adult will be literate; and 6) schools will be free of drugs and violence.56 A guiding assumption of those who drafted America 2000 was that these goals would serve the interests of the country as a whole. To many critics, the human-capital rhetoric implied that the future interests of businesses dominated the goals.57 The educational policies during Governor Chiles’ administration renewed the commitment to testing as a means for accountability and

98

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

incorporated the business goals of America 2000. Like the other governors, Chiles used the recommendations of a blue ribbon committee to support the changes that he and Education Commissioner Betty Castor promoted. Recommended by the Governor’s Education Task Force and known informally as Blueprint 2000, the School Improvement and Accountability Act rejected the centralization and categorical funding of the 1980s.58 Instead, it concentrated on workforce preparation and local control. The focus on the labor market was explained in terms of the risk that the state and national economies faced as well of the quality of life of Floridians. As in A Nation at Risk, Florida’s own Blueprint 2000 pointed out the stiff competition of the global economy, and how it was a threat to Florida and the cause of education reform.59 As with America 2000, and later with the Clinton Administration’s Goals 2000 law, Governor Chiles and Commissioner Castor developed eight goals for the year 2000: 1) all children will be ready to start school; 2) high school graduates will be prepared for work or college; 3) students will be competitive nationally and internationally and will be able to make wise decisions; 4) local “stakeholders” will make decisions about budgets and programs; 5) schools will be violence free; 6) school personnel will be professional;7) adults in Florida will be literate; and 8) parental involvement will be encouraged in schools.60 Of the eight goals, only the fourth one concerning “stakeholders” differed from the final version of the national goals. Local control consisted of giving the school personnel, parents, and community members responsibility for the budget and programs in the school. These “stakeholders” would sit on the School Advisory Committee (SAC) and make decisions about how to address the needs of the students and the community. They would also design a program to achieve the goals established by the state and be held accountable for student progress, which would be measured through test scores.61 This creation of the SACs expanded accountability to include both the students and the school. The legislature, the budgetary body, was still immune from sanctions beyond election results. The idea behind the SACs was that local people understood the needs of their districts and could design a more effective plan than the bureaucrats in Tallahassee. A problem inherent in their creation was that the SACs might also reflect the traditional marginalization of African Americans and other minority groups in Florida. In 1993, Leon Russell, first vice president of the state NAACP, sent Governor

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

99

Chiles and his cabinet (who also made up the state school board) a letter outlining the organization’s concerns. In the letter, Russell described how minority students were prevented from attaining the same knowledge as white students by the curriculum in the schools that they attended. Russell explained that in areas where minority students are the majority, the schools “have less extensive and less demanding science and mathematics programs available to them.”62 The absence of opportunity to take advanced courses would compromise the ability of minority students to pass the standardized assessment and gain a high school diploma. Russell’s doubts were reflected in the performance of African American students on the tenth grade test in 1992. Of those who took the test, 79 percent scored below average on the math section and 83 percent scored below average on the reading section.63 Russell argued that if African American parents were left out of the local decision-making process, their children would fare no better under Blueprint 2000 than they had in the past. As in the other reforms, the neutral objectives of the state’s accountability policies ignored the history of unequal education. Five years later, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) published a report that mirrored Russell’s words. In its examination of Blueprint 2000, OPPAGA found that about one-third of the SACs did not contain members who represented the ethnic and racial diversity of the schools where they served and around half were dominated by teachers and other school employees.64 Throughout the state, representation of those who had been habitually underserved by Florida’s educational system was lacking on these critical decision-making bodies. The legislature responded by mandating that the majority of the members could not be school employees and that if the school board “determined that the makeup of the council is not representative of the school community, the board shall appoint additional members.”65 The penalty for not following this mandate was the loss of lottery funds for the school district. The state intended to coerce the local districts and schools into compliance on local control. The assessment package for Blueprint 2000 was based on statewide tests to be developed by the Department of Education. The state chose to concentrate on three areas, reading, writing, and mathematics and four standards from the Sunshine State Standards (approved by the legislature in 1996). The wording of the standards was important because of the complexity of the tasks involved.

100

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

(a) Florida students locate, comprehend, interpret, evaluate, maintain, and apply information, concepts, and ideas found in literature, the arts, symbols, recordings, video and other graphic displays, and computer files in order to perform tasks and/or for enjoyment. (b) Florida students communicate in English and other languages using information, concepts, prose, symbols, audio and video recording, speeches, graphic displays, and computer-based programs. (c) Florida students use numeric operations and concepts to describe, analyze, disaggregate, communicate, and synthesize numeric data and to identify and solve problems. (d) Florida students use creative thinking skills to generate new ideas, make the best decisions, recognize and solve problems through reasoning, interpret symbolic date, and develop efficient techniques for lifelong learning.66

These lofty standards were to be measured by Florida Writes! and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), a criterion-referenced multiple choice tool that the Florida Department of Education created in a contract with a private testing company. In the package description, assessment was described as much more complex than student scores on tests. First, the SACs were responsible for the school improvement program. Once the program was written, the assessment of the state goals and standards was to take place. Instruction in the classroom would be interdependent with the evaluation process. That the legislature, Chiles, and his cabinet saw nothing contradictory in this process is evident in the wording of its statement, “Assessment programs which are carefully designed and skillfully implemented can have a positive influence on the process of teaching and learning.”67 Teachers who understood the procedures would use the assessment to guide their instruction. Assessment had moved from a diagnostic tool in the 1970s to the dominant outcome for both students and teachers. Rewards and sanctions for schools were also decided by the state. If schools made adequate progress, they could receive financial rewards, special school designations, and publicity. It was up to the district and eligible schools to decide the rewards. The state developed the Florida School Recognition Program to recognize school performance and to publicize schools’ accomplishments. If schools did not show adequate progress what would happen the first year was unclear, but after three years, a given school would be subject to actions by the state

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

101

board of education, the governor, and the cabinet. These actions could include allocation of additional resources and pairing of staff members with those of a successful school, implementation of a plan that resolves the problems in the school, reorganization of the school under a new principal who could hire new staff, or permission for students to transfer to another school in the district. The final option was for the state board of education to engage in “other action as deemed appropriate to improve the school’s performance.”68 The last alternative was vague enough to support any action by the state, including pressure on local districts to reorganize the school and reassign staff, allowing students to attend private schools, or contracting services of a private company to run the school. None of these sanctions were used from 1992 to 1995. In 1995, the policy changed because of new leadership of the Department of Education. Throughout his first term, Governor Chiles had depended on the assistance of Commissioner Castor because of the relatively weak historical role of Florida governors in setting state education policy. As described earlier in this chapter, neither the governor nor the education commissioner officially set policy. Instead, the governor and six elected cabinet members formed the state board of education. Beginning in 1995, four of the seven cabinet members were Republicans while Governor Chiles was a Democrat. These numbers made leadership by Chiles difficult, especially with Republican Education Commissioner Frank Brogan.69 Chiles and Brogan disagreed on many matters and most significantly about the role of state government. In an exchange in March 1995, Chiles demanded that Brogan explain where he intended to find funds for his proposed increased expenditures. Chiles’s concern was about his current focus in education, the prekindergarten program, and the social services for impoverished mothers. He desired that the state control spending on these programs to ensure their continuation while Brogan wished to see the prekindergarten program’s budget controlled at the local level.70 The conflict between the governor and commissioner of education was important because of the ramifications for Blueprint 2000. If the program was to continue as Chiles and Castor had originally intended, the governor needed to lead his cabinet and the legislature in that direction. However, because of the state board of education’s structure, Brogan and the commissioners could effectively oppose policies that the governor supported. Another problem for Blueprint 2000 was Chiles’ attention to prison construction and to the pre-kindergarten program. Budget

102

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

increases were small—3.1 percent per pupil in 1998-99—and subsequent budget woes led to chronic problems including textbooks shortages and overcrowded classrooms and schools.71 Leadership in educational policy and funding was left to the commissioner of education and the legislature, both with plans to control public education in Florida through incentives aimed at compelling better outcomes on the state’s high-stakes tests. To increase the incentive for schools and students, Commissioner Brogan began to publicize lists of the lowest performing schools in 1995.72 The publication of the schools’ names served as the beginning of sanctions against schools that did not make adequate progress on the FCAT. At the end of his term, Chiles’s attention returned to Blueprint 2000, and he and the Cabinet set the passing rate for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), which would increase over time. They also accepted the standards for schools to be labeled high achievers, adequate, and low performers set by a committee of teachers, administrators, and educational officials.73 While the budget did not improve for education, the standards were set and described before the next governor took office. Because of the flexibility in its rhetoric, Blueprint 2000 continued under the next governor. Its language was vague and ambiguous and, therefore, allowed different interpretations of its application. Its rhetorical purpose was specific: the preparation of future workers for the global economy. Under the next administration, Blueprint 2000’s focus on local control was overwhelmed by the growing emphasis on assessment. JEB BUSH (1999–2007) AND THE A+ PLAN When Jeb Bush was elected governor, a constitutional amendment to change the structure of the state school board and the selection of the commissioner of education were approved by the voters. Along with Bush’s proposed educational program, the amendments bolstered accountability politically and centered educational policy in the governor’s office. During his campaign, Jeb Bush promised Floridians educational change, and before taking office, he and new Lieutenant Governor Frank Brogan announced the A+ Plan for education, which added to existing accountability policies by rewarding and sanctioning schools based on student performance on the FCAT, requiring that

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

103

third graders pass a reading test before promotion, and tying the state’s first voucher program to student performance on the FCAT.74 This version of the 1990s reform package is best understood as a technocratic accountability plan with rewards and punishments. The school assessment scale combined numerical ranking of 1 through 5 for student performance with an A-F scale of school “grades,” which the state department of education first assigned to the schools in the summer of 1999 based a variety of measures. This simple presentation of results was politically appealing, because most adults assumed that they understand what a grade means and that grades based on a standardized test were objective measures of a school’s effectiveness at teaching academics. The policy, however, was sufficiently complex that few educators and members of the general public understood the details, especially as they changed almost every year since the policy’s inception. In this model of accountability, responsibility expanded from the individual student to individual schools with sanctions focusing on the schools, third graders, and students seeking to graduate from high school. Because of their public appeal, the assignment of single-letter grades became the focus of the A+ Plan; however, the measures were much more complex. Between 1999 and 2001, the grading of Florida’s public schools was based on a set of threshold tests: a school earned grades based on a set of criteria it met. To pass the FCAT, students had to score 3 or above based on a scale of 1 through 5. The minimum for an elementary school in 2000 to avoid an F, for example, was that at least half of its fourth grade students earn a level 3, 4, or 5 on the state writing exam, have at least 60 percent of its fifth grade students earn a level 2 or above on the state math exam, or have at least 60 percent of its fourth grade students earn a level 2 or above on the state reading exam along with meeting the other criteria. A grade of C required that the school met all of the requirements described in the prior sentence. Grades of B or A required that at least 50 percent of fourth grade students earn a level 3 or above on the reading exam and 50 percent of fifth grade students earn a level 3 or above on the math exam, and that students in each subgroup population (members of different ethnic/racial categories or students in federal lunch programs, if the numbers were over 30) met the criteria stated earlier for the whole school population for the schools earning a C.75 The civil servants in the Florida Department of Education wrote the rules in this way as a transition between the Blueprint 2000 testing

104

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

program and the modifications that the A+ Plan law required beginning in 2002. Between 1999 and 2002, the state continued to use the criterion-reference tests from Blueprint 2000 in reading, writing, and mathematics in grades 4, 5, 8, and 10. Though the officials knew that the state would begin testing in grades 3-10 in 2001, new tests for grades 3, 6, 7, and 9 would not be ready the first few years of school grading. So they devised a set of threshold tests including attendance, graduation rates, and suspension statistics. As the first set of grades came out in 1999, local superintendents pointed out that the 1999 grades held them accountable not just for test results in the spring of 1999 but also for attendance, graduation rates, and suspension statistics from 1997–1998 (because the statistics would not be available for 1998–1999 until the late summer). Superintendents complained to the legislature that the law could not simultaneously claim to hold schools accountable for the students “gaining a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time” and include data for other years and for children who attended that school for only a small portion of the year.76 The legislature then rewrote the accountability provisions of the law to eliminate attendance, graduation, and suspension statistics from the criteria and to require that a student be in the school between October and February, not be in special education, and not be in the first two years of English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes in order for the students’ test scores to count for the grades. Beginning in 2002, Florida’s school grades were linked to a point system that combined the percent of students reaching various threshold levels in different subjects with the percent of students maintaining those achievement levels across two years. This strategy met the spirit of the law that required measurement of learning gains and a focus on students who were in the bottom quartile in reading.77 It was still impenetrably complex for most educators and the general public, but for the public the visible face remained the same: grading each school on an A to F scale. Teachers we have spoken with generally know that the same grade meant different things from 1999 through 2002, but most adults in Florida do not. Through the A+ Plan, the state has rewarded and punished schools according to their grades. The exercise of grading each public elementary and secondary school in Florida is not just for public information. As rewards for Florida schools earning certain grades, money flows from the state. Since 1999, Governor Bush has consistently highlighted three ways that the grades have concrete consequences. First,

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

105

money flows to schools who earn A’s and schools whose grades improve from the prior year. These rewards have generally been close to $100 per student, and each School Advisory Council is free to decide how to spend the reward money. Second, money is supposed to flow to schools who receive F grades in terms of both individual school improvement plans and technical assistance to improve instruction. Third, money flows to schools (both public and private) where parents of failing schools send their children. This last feature, and especially the failing-schools voucher program, is the most visible feature of the A+ Plan among observers in other states. If a school receives an F two out of the prior four years, families of children zoned for that school have several options: to stay in that school, to move their children to another public school graded a C or better in the district (with the district covering transportation costs), or to move their children to a private school that is willing to accept a state voucher as tuition (with the family covering the transportation costs).78 The use of the vouchers has been the most controversial part of the A+ Plan. Once Governor Bush’s educational program began to offer vouchers for students to attend private schools, groups of parents and teachers sued the state to prevent the use of vouchers. In August of 2002, Leon County Circuit Court Judge P. Kevin Davey ruled that the voucher program violated the Florida Constitution and prohibited the use of vouchers for students to attend private schools. Governor Bush declared that the state would appeal the decision.79 Three days after his decision, Davey affirmed that the state could continue to issue vouchers as long as it put money aside to repay schools forced to pay for the vouchers if the state law was found unconstitutional.80 In the summer of 2004, an appellate court upheld Davey’s 2002 decision, and as of the writing of this manuscript, the decision is again on appeal. Another avenue for vouchers was organized the same year of the court decision. Contributors to the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program receive a dollar for dollar tax deduction. As with the vouchers from the state, students who attended a school given an F by the state for two out of four years may apply for a set amount from the fund to pay the tuition to a private school or to transfer to another public school. In 2003, the fund distributed funds to seven thousand students in Florida. This approach to vouchers has caused complaints from public school foundations because donors to their foundations do not receive the same tax benefit.81 This involvement of business directly in the funding of vouchers has brought corporations directly into the business of school.

106

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

While the vouchers received most of the spotlight in the media, the distribution of funding due to grades through the School Recognition Program and the focus on failing schools reflects the theme of Bush’s A+ Plan most accurately. As in the Blueprint 2000, schools that receive A’s or show improvement from one year to the next are eligible for school recognition rewards. Under Governor Bush, these rewards have been small, and this relatively small flow of money at the margins of the educational system has been the carrot to change the behavior of the school systems as it looms large in the minds of administrators and some teachers (and, from newspaper reports, with considerable divisiveness after schools receives those rewards). They have also become the charge of the School Advisory Councils, which gives these small rewards a larger public impact than they would have had if only the administrators and teachers were involved in spending them. Governor Bush has been the spokesman for the A+ Plan, and the 1998 changes in the state constitution have cemented the power of the governor over educational policy. One of the problems that all the governors until Bush faced was that the Commissioner of Education was an elected constitutional officer with his or her own constituency. Another area of concern for making educational policy was that the Florida State Board of Education consisted of the cabinet members. The 1998 constitutional amendment changed both the makeup of the state board and the status of the commissioner. The state board became appointed by the governor with staggered four year terms and this board, in turn, appointed the commissioner of education.82 Bush, as the first governor to exercise this power, had the opportunity to appoint a like-minded board to support his educational policies. The governor took the amendment a step further by advocating the abolition of the board of regents, which governed the state university system, to create a kindergarten through higher education system to be governed by the state board of education. Because the board of regents was not a constitutional body, the legislature could and did abolish it. Each university and college would be directly governed by a local board of trustees, appointed by the governor, which answered to the state board of education. As chapter 7 in this volume explains, for a few years education policy in Florida now revolved completely around the governor.83 In 2002, these changes to the board of regents and of the governing structure of the state university system were challenged by former governor, U.S. Senator Bob Graham. Through a constitutional

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

107

amendment, a new governing body, the Board of Governors, was created to “operate, regulate, control, and be fully responsible for the management of the whole university system.”84 This board also gained the authority to govern the local boards. Although the new board has many of the same powers as the one that had been abolished, the governor still has the power to appoint the members. While the current board may support the kindergarten through higher education system, in the future, the seventeen members with seven-year staggered terms has the ability to become autonomous to the governor. The full story of higher education reorganization is told in chapter 7 of this volume. CONCLUSION During the period covered in this chapter, Florida has experienced massive changes from a segregated society to a desegregated society, from an agricultural economy to one that looks to global markets, and from a rural and agrarian culture to an urban one. The governors elected throughout these years have responded to change by looking to the schools to increase their role from the socialization of the middle class to feeding the economy and stabilizing society. In Florida, the demographic shifts since World War II have been dramatic. In 1950 the population of Florida was 2,771,305 including 21.8 percent who were people of color and 65.5 percent who lived in urban areas. By 2001, the population had increased to 16,396,515 including 22 percent who were people of color and 84.8 percent who lived in urban areas.85 With this population increase came increased demands for educational institutions and for services from those institutions. Coupled with this demand is Florida’s tradition of low taxes.86 Thus, governors have had substantial support for increasing services, but little for raising revenues for those services. These pressures have resulted in increased calls for accountability in Florida’s schools. High standards for all students are a necessity in an equitable educational system, and standardized tests are here to stay as a measure of those standards. Accountability serves five purposes: judging schools as institutions, judging teachers and other educators, judging students, building organizations, and marketing.87 Each of these purposes has strengths and weaknesses, but all are essentially political in nature. To judge schools as institutions, the public and policy makers

108

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

must assume that all schools are basically the same with respect to inputs. While this image is convenient for the media, it does not address the reality of the school systems in the United States where schools may differ in funding and population although only separated by a few miles.88 The second category, judging teachers, offers the public the assurance that they are doing their jobs, but at the cost of the trust of the educators. Judging students by focusing on their achievement is one of the oldest uses of testing. One reason that intelligence testing became popular during the twentieth century was that it placed the burden of a child’s deficit on the child. Standardized tests place the same burden on children who may attend schools with unqualified teachers and poor leadership.89 On a different level, judging the effectiveness of public policy through accountability testing, rather than teachers and students, would offer the public a means to hold policy makers accountable for their funding decisions, level of standards, and regulations. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was considered a means for making this kind of evaluation. Until the No Child Left Behind Act, NAEP was a low-stakes test with no consequences for students and their teachers. Through these test scores, the public could see a sample of student achievement in different states and compare funding and policies. Another strategy for judging the effectiveness of public policy is academic research. One example is the current idea of joining higher wages to higher test scores for teachers. Henry Levin’s research shows that test scores reflect little variance in subsequent earnings. Years of education and experience are much better predictors.90 Disseminating research results such as these to educate and inform the public demands relaying information to explain how the study was conducted as well as its findings. The final two purposes, building organizations and marketing, refer to the creation of a testing industry and the use of test scores to attract parents to schools and neighborhoods. Florida governors intended neither of these purposes, but both are real consequences of the current use of accountability in public education.91 As stated earlier, high standards for all students, teachers, and policy makers is of the greatest importance in a just society. How then do we address the need for accountability in the schools? The best means would be to examine more complex methods of accountability, such as those used by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in their systemic initiatives and programs and to give more attention to research spe-

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

109

cialists. The NSF systemic initiatives in math and science education began in 1991. These programs consist of curriculum and assessments that are aligned from the beginning. NSF’s programs also demand that fiscal resources, instructional materials, and community support all converge within the program. Finally, accountability is measured through the “Accumulation of broad and deep array of evidence that the program is enhancing student achievement through a set of indices.”92 In this system, standardized tests may be used as a measure of student achievement in mathematics and science, but they will serve as one component of many. Jay Heubert gives three principles for appropriate test use: measurement validity, attribution of cause, and effectiveness of treatment.93 In measurement of validity, the educator, policy maker, or parent asks if the test is valid for the purpose used and if it measures the student’s knowledge in the area being tested. Attribute of causes consists of an examination of the barriers that students face in reaching high standards. Teachers without training, language barriers, low school funding, and lack of preparation by the student are all competing potential causes of poor performance and all should be examined. The third principle, effectiveness of treatment, asserts that students only receive consequences and placements that benefit them educationally. An example is grade retention policies, which sounds very appealing to the public, but results in a dramatic increase in the probability that the student will drop out.94 These principles address the academic integrity of the tests and their use. While the push to use them may be political, their usage must be intellectually viable. The complex system that public schooling has become over the past hundred years must be reflected in any accountability system if it is to be considered just and fair by those who function within it. It is important, even critical, for their future successes that students achieve strong literacy and mathematical skills; however, students must also learn to be part of a society that values them. That message may be lost in our desire to measure their skills. Historian David Tyack puts the matter simply: “To create urban schools which really teach students, which reflect the pluralism of the society, which serve the quest for social justice—that is a task which will take persistent imagination, wisdom, and will.”95 The commitment to social justice cannot be measured, but it can be seen and felt by the students we ask to trust us with their futures. The true measure of accountability, politics aside, may be how well we keep that trust.

110

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

NOTES 1. Examples are Governor’s Commission for Quality Education in Florida, Toward Excellence: Changing Concepts for Education in Florida, December 22, 1967, 10; Governor’s Commission on Secondary Education, Secondary Education: A Report to the Citizens of Florida, January 1983, 11-13, and The Governor’s Annual Report: An Assessment of the Goals of the State Comprehensive Plan, 1994-95, 62. 2. See the discussion of Florida’s A+ Plan in chapters 5 and 9 of this volume. 3. Stephen Hegarty, “Hard Line on FCAT Will Ease for Some,” St. Petersburg Times, May 11, 2003, http://www.sptimes.com/2003/05/11/ news_pf/State/Hard_line_on_FCAT_wil.shtml. 4. Mary Lee Smith, “Retaining Students in Grade: Consequences for Florida,” Education Policy Studies Laboratory Policy Brief EPSL-0401-114EPRU (Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University, 2004), available at http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/epru_2004_Research_Writing.htm; Lorrie A. Shepard and Mary Lee Smith (eds.), Flunking Grades: Research and Policies on Retention (London: Falmer, 1989); Karl Alexander, et al., On the Success of Failure (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Our reading of this literature is that if one has the choice between retaining a student without intervention and promoting a student without intervention, the marginally better choice is to promote a student without intervention. 5. Executive Summary of No Child Left Behind, accessed 4/15/03. 6. Texas has similar legislation and dependence on standardized tests for accountability, but this chapter will focus on Florida. 7. Also see Sherman Dorn, “Alternatives for Florida’s Assessment and Accountability System,” Policy Brief EPSL-0401-107-EPRU (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 2004), available at http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/ EPRU/epru_2004_Research_Writing.htm. 8. Examples of these analyses are in Joel Spring, The Sorting Machine Revisited: National Education Policy Since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1989), 151–85; and Carolyn Herrington and Victoria-Maria McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy: A 30-year Perspective on Florida,” in Carolyn Harrington and Katherine Kasten (eds.), Florida 2001: Educational Policy Alternatives ( Jacksonville: Florida Institute of Education, 2001), 10. 9. See Barbara Barksdale Clowse, Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981) on the response of southern politicians to the launch of Sputnik. On the criticisms of schools in the 1940s and 1950s see Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953); Hyman G. Rickover, American Education, a National Failure: The Problem of Our Schools and What

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

111

We Can Learn from England (New York: Dutton, 1963); and James B. Conant, The American High School Today: A First Report to Interested Citizens (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959). 10. Gary Orfield, Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1978), 242. For a discussion of desegregation in Tampa, see Barbara Shircliffe, “Middleton and Blake High Schools: The Politics of Race and History in the Closing and ‘Restoration’ of High Schools in Tampa, Florida,” International Journal of Educational Policy 1, 4, (2000). 11. Susan E. Eaton, Joseph Feldman, and Edward Kirby, “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” in Gary Orfield, Susan Eaton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation (eds.), Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: The New Press, 1996), 158. 12. Ibid. 13. David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 126–76. 14. Edward Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 284; and The Shaping of the American High School, Vol. 2 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 42. 15. Tyack, The One Best System, 126–47 and 198–216. 16. Ibid., 199, 206–07. 17. Ibid., 214–15and 217–55. The placement of children from the working class in vocation curriculum continued to be a national concern. See “Community Colleges: Balancing Preparation for Work with Preparation for Life,” in L. Jackson Newell (ed.), Looking Forward: Strengthening Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Throughout the Utah System of Higher Education, Report submitted to Cecilia Foxley, Commissioner of Higher Education, Utah System of Higher Education, (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1996). 18. Quoted from in Tyack, The One Best System, 198. 19. Sherman Dorn, “The Political Legacy of School Accountability Systems,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 6, 1 ( January 2, 1998), 1, http://epaa. asu.edu/epaa/v6n1.html. 20. Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino, “From Dixie to Dreamland: Demographic and Cultural Change in Florida, 1880-1980,” in Randall M. Miller and George E. Pozzetta (eds.), Shades of the Sunbelt: Essays on Ethnicity, Race, and the Urban South (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 164. 21. The chief state school officer in Florida is referred to as the Commissioner of Education. Until passage of the 1968 constitution, the position was referred to as the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The 1968 constitution also changed the composition of the state board of education. Until the passage of the 1968 constitution, the Board consisted of the all the cabinet members, except the commissioner of agriculture and the comptroller. After

112

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

1968, the Board consisted of all the members. See David R. Colburn and Richard K. Scher, Florida’s Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century (Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1980), 239. The 1998 constitutional revisions changed the Board of Education to a body appointed by the governor. 22. Quoted from ibid., 243. 23. Joel Spring, The Sorting Machine Revisited: National Educational Policy Since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1989), 171. 24. Colburn and Scher, Florida’s Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century, 244–46. 25. Arthur O. White, “State Leadership and Public Education in Florida: The Evolution of a System,” in Ronald K. Goodenow and Arthur O. White (eds.), The Education and the Rise of the New South (Boston: Hall, 1981), 242. See chapter 3 of this volume, Dorn and Michael, for a more detailed explanation of the Minimum Foundations Program’s equalization components. 26. David R. Colburn, “Florida Politics in the Twentieth Century,” in Michael Gannon (ed.), The New History of Florida (Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1996), 359. 27. Ibid. 28. Arsenault and Mormino, “From Dixie to Dreamland: Demographic and Cultural Change in Florida, 1880-1980,” 164. 29. National Research Council, High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation, Jay P. Heubert and Robert M. Hauser (eds.), (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 35. 30. Gordon E. Harvey’s A Question of Justice: New South Governors and Education, 1968-1967 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002) highlights Askew’s activism as a New South governor and compares his educational programs with Alabama Governor Albert Brewer (1968–1971) and South Carolina’s John West (1971–1975). Harvey’s portrait of school funding politics is similar to that described in chapter 3 in this volume, but he does not discuss accountability in any significant way. 31. On the teachers’ strike in Florida, see Arthur O. White, Florida’s Crisis in Public Education (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975). 32. See Dorn and Michael, chapter 3 of this volume, on the development and significance of the Florida Education Finance Program. 33. Governor’s Address, April 6, 1971, Journal of the House of Representatives, Series 970, Carton 3, Florida State Archives, Tallahassee, FL. 34. Summary, Citizens’ Committee on Education, n.d., Series 78, Carton 4, Florida State Archives. 35. Summary of Proceeding, Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Southern Governor’s Conference, September 23-26 (Atlanta: Council of State Governments, 1973), 50.

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

113

36. Ibid., 51. 37. Ibid. 38. Ralph Kimbrough, Kern Alexander, and James Wattenbarger, “Government and Education,” in Manning J. Dauer (ed.), in Florida’s Politics & and Government, second edition (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984), 438; Laws of Florida, 1974, General Acts, Volume I, Part 2, 74-288; Herrington and McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy,” 15. 39. White, “State Leadership and Public Education in Florida,” 244–45. 40. Herrington and McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy,” 13. 41. See Shircliffe and Cobb-Roberts, chapter 2 of this volume, on the responsibilities of local districts during desegregation in Florida. 42. Herrington and McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy,” 16, and Paul L. Tractenberg and Laura Kahn, State Minimum Competency Testing Programs: Legal Implications of Minimum Competency Testing; Debra P. and Beyond, Final Report (Washington, DC: National Institute of Education [DHEW], 1980), ERIC Reproduction Document No. ED190658. 43. Interview with Bob Graham by Kathryn M. Borman, Larry Johnson, and Deanna L. Michael via telephone on December 12, 2002. 44. Otis White, “Business Likes Bob Graham Enough to Want Four More Years,” Florida Trend (September 1982), 66. 45. Ibid. 46. Robert Graham, “Education Means Business,” in School Reform and Related Issues: Proceedings of the Conference of the University Urban Schools National Task Force, fifth edition (Palm Beach, Florida, November 11-12, 1983) ED242811, 40. 47. Ibid., 41. 48. Ibid., 42. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 43–44. 51. Herrington and McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy,” 18. 52. Ibid. 53. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk (Washington, DC: The Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). 54. Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 266. 55. For a more recent discussion of educational standards, the economy, and the weak links between the two, see Henry M. Levin, “Educational Performance Standards and the Economy,” Educational Researcher, 27 (May 1998), 4–10. 56. America 2000: An Education Strategy Sourcebook (U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC: 1991), 19.

114

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

57. For a critical view of late twentieth-century school reform, see David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (New York: Perseus Publishing, 1995). Also see David T. Gordon (ed.), A Nation Reformed? American Education Twenty Years after A Nation at Risk (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). 58. Herrington and McDonald, “Accountability as a School Reform Strategy,” 20. 59. Florida’s System of School Improvement and Accountability (Tallahassee: Bureau of Career Development & and Educational Improvement, Division of Applied Technology and Adult Education, Florida Department of Education, 1998). 60. Ibid., 9–32. The goal of parent involvement was also added to Goals 2000 before its passage. 61. The test to be used for Blueprint 2000 would become the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). Until that assessment vehicle was ready, the state continued to use the tests designed in the 1980s. 62. Quoted from Diane Rado, “Cabinet Okays School Reforms,” St. Petersburg Times, February 10, 1993, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/ index.html. 63. Ibid. 64. Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, Follow-Up Report on the Review of the Implementation and Impact of Blueprint 2000 Administered by the Department of Education, Report No. 97-70, April 1998, 2. 65. Florida’s System of School Improvement and Accountability, 36-37. 66. Ibid., 40. 67. Ibid., 50. 68. Ibid., 53. 69. Doug “Tim” Jamerson served as the Commissioner of Education after Betty Castor left the position to become the president of the University of South Florida. Jamerson had been a high school teacher and a state representative before he was appointed by Chiles to the position. He was defeated by Frank Brogan in the 1994 election. 70. Diane Rado, “Chiles Distrusts School Boards,” St. Petersburg Times, March 17, 1995, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/index.html. 71. Diane Rado, “Teach the Children Well,” St. Petersburg Times, February 15, 1998, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/index.html. 72. Stephen Hegarty, “He’s Making Waves in Florida Education,” St. Petersburg Times, December 27, 1995, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/ index.html. 73. Stephen Hegarty, “Florida Raises Passing Grade on State Tests,” St. Petersburg Times, November 25, 1998, 1A, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/36285642.html.

Accountability as a Means of Improvement

115

74. By 2002, there would be three voucher programs: the original Opportunity Scholarships, John McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities, and The Corporate Income Tax Scholarship Program. All three are tied to the grades assigned to schools and the measured achievement of students. 75. 229.57 Florida Statutes is the authority for Department of Education rule on school grades, rule 6A-1.09981. Descriptions of several years’ of accountability grades and the criteria, as well as reports on each school in the state, are at http://www.myfloridaeducation.com/schoolgrades/, and the current rule is at http://www.myfloridaeducation.com/rules/6a-1-11.htm#6A1.09981. 76. For a description of the goals and guidelines of the A+ Plan, see “Did You Know,” Governor’s Office, n.d., http://www.myflorida.com/myflorida/ government/governor initiatives/aplusplan. 77. A layperson’s guide to the point system is available at http://www. myfloridaeducation.com/schoolgrades/guide02.htm. 78. The use of vouchers for private religious schools in Florida has been successfully challenged at the Florida First District Court of Appeals and is currently under appeal. 79. Dana Canedy, “Florida Court Bars Use of Vouchers,” The New York Times, August 6, 2002, A10, http://proquest.umi.com.proxy.usf.edu. 80. The Associated Press, “Florida Voucher Law Struck Down Again, Editor’s Note,” The First Amendment Center, August 8, 2002, http://firstamendmentcenter.org/news. The John McKay Scholarships are for students with special needs whose parents do not believe that they are progressing in the public schools. These vouchers are so specialized that they are not covered in this chapter. 81. Florida Department of Education, Independent Education and Parental Choice, Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships, http://www.firn.edu/ doe/choice/index.html. Lynn Porter, “Pinellas Teachers Union, Utility in NoPower Struggle,” St. Petersburg Times, February 2, 2002, 1, http://proquest. umi.com.proxy.usf.edu. 82. Constitution of the State of Florida, Article IX, Education, S2, S3. 83. Allen Morris and Joan Perry Morris, ed., The Florida Handbook: 1997-1998 (Tallahassee, FL: Peninsular Publishing Company, 1997), 67-68. 84. Constitution of the State of Florida, Article IX, Education, S7. 85. Information from 1980 is from Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino, “From Dixie to Dreamland: Demographic and Cultural Change in Florida, 1880–1980,” 162, 164, 167. Census data on urban and rural population changes were only available up to 1990. Information for 2001 and 1990 are from the United States Census Bureau http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/ states/12000.html and http://landview.census.gov/population/censusdata/ urpop0090.txt.

116

DEANNA L. MICHAEL AND SHERMAN DORN

86. David R. Colburn and Richard K. Scher, Florida’s Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century, 238. Colburn and Schar claim that Florida’s governors up to 1980 gave more verbal than financial support to education. than financial. 87. Dorn, “The Political Legacy of School Accountability,” 9–10. 88. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992). Kozol addresses the differences in funding in several American cities and counties and the consequences for the students attending the schools with less funding. 89. Dorn, “The Political Legacy of School Accountability,” 9-10. 90. Henry M. Levin, “High-Stakes Testing and Economic Productivity,” in Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber (eds.), Raising Standards or Raising Barriers? Inequality and High-Stakes Testing in Public Education (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2001), 39–49. 91. Dorn, “The Political Legacy of School Accountability,” 9–10. 92. National Science Foundation, Division of Educational System Reform, Strategy and Drivers, http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/esr/strategy and http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/esr/drivers. Also see Kathryn M. Borman, Gladis Kersint, Bridget Cotner, Reginald Lee, Theodore Boydston, Kazuaki Uekawa, Jeffery Crommery, William Katzenmeyer, Yvette Baber, and Jessica Barber, Meaningful Urban Education Reform: Crisis in Mathematics and Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004). 93. Jay P. Heubert, “High Stakes Testing and Civil Rights: Standards of Appropriate Test Use and a Strategy for Enforcing Them,” in Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber (eds.), Raising Standards or Raising Barriers? Inequality and High Stakes Testing in Public Education (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2001), 179–94. 94. Robert M. Hauser, “Should We End Social Promotion? Truth and Consequences,” in Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber (eds.), Raising Standards or Raising Barriers? Inequality and High Stakes Testing in Public Education (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2001), 174. 95. Tyack, The One Best System, 291.

CHAPTER

5

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

Tamela McNulty Eitle WHY CONSIDER DIVERSITY? The state of Florida is experiencing concurrent trends in educational policy, the granting of unitary status to school districts that have been under court order to desegregate and the use of high-stakes testing as a means to hold schools accountable for student achievement. Not unlike school districts across the rest of the country, districts in Florida have gone to court to establish that they have eliminated vestiges of prior discrimination and should be declared unitary. At the same time, Governor Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan has been implemented in Florida to improve public education. The A+ plan is a three-pronged approach to improving education and involves commitments to provide greater accountability and improve student learning (as described in chapter 4), to raise standards and improve training for educators, and to improve school safety and reduce truancy. The A+ Plan relies heavily on high-stakes annual testing of students to grade schools and hold educators accountable for improving student learning. The underlying premise of the A+ Plan is that “every child can learn and no child should be left behind.”1 This premise is reflected in the more recent Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed by Congress, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, and popularly known as the “No Child Left Behind” Act. President Bush concludes in his education policy statement that educational testing has the potential to narrow the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their peers.2 The focus on outcomes in the form of 117

118

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

achievement tests assumes that opportunities can and will be distributed equally. While court-ordered school desegregation has monitored the opportunities provided to African American children in Florida and elsewhere, its dissolution should not be seen as a signal that racial differences in opportunity have been eliminated. Chapter 2 describes the longer term history of segregation and desegregation in Florida. In general, studies of school desegregation have documented the nature of its implementation and resultant outcomes. Implementation of school desegregation plans at the school level within districts was seen as necessary to meet the needs of different communities, and the success or failure of school desegregation in a district (or overall) is often measured and interpreted differently depending on the political agenda of those doing the interpreting (lawyers, school officials, academics, students). Any educational reform, particularly in a southern state like Florida, must deal with the aftermath of legal segregation and subsequent efforts to desegregate schools. There is no question that many districts have put considerable effort into moving students to achieve racial balance in their schools, although recently some setbacks in this area have been noted.3 However, in other districts these efforts have met with little success or have been thwarted by educational policies that sort students within schools in ways that result in resegregation.4 Amid all of this, the granting of unitary status to many school districts heralds an entry into uncharted territory, the postdesegregation period. Governor Bush has largely discounted the history of segregation and demographic characteristics of schools as an important factor in public policy. In a July 2002 letter published in the Reader’s Forum of the Miami Herald, Governor Jeb Bush stated that a claim by a Miami Northwestern Senior High teacher that there is a “direct correlation between test scores, income level, and ethnicity” was false.5 Governor Bush also remarked that “while many schools with high rates of minorities are struggling, many are not.” 6 Governor Bush’s unwillingness to acknowledge a correlation between either poverty or minority enrollment rates and test scores seemed to stem from a concern that such a relationship would lead to negative side effects, such as lowered expectations for achievement, for poor and minority students. In fact he concludes the letter by stating his “hope that misinformation about a supposed link between race, income, and achievement does not lead a teacher to expect less from his students.”7 Indeed, it is unfortunate

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

119

that the expectations that teachers have for their students have been documented by research studies to be related to factors including the socioeconomic status and race of students, but ignoring correlations at the school level between minority enrollment rates and test scores or between poverty rates and test scores will not make those relationships disappear. New reform, particularly new reform that hopes to narrow the achievement gap in Florida, must acknowledge the diversity of the population and of its experiences with desegregation to be sensitive to the impact of policy and programs for disadvantaged groups. However, to be sensitive to this diversity, those behind reform must understand it. Currently, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) has paired F schools with better performing, demographically similar schools to both illustrate that all schools can have high-achieving students and to help low-performing schools see how they might emulate their higher-achieving counterparts. While this sort of pairing of schools is not without merit, it is in some cases impossible (no similar better-performing schools exist) and in other cases needs to be done with a considerably better understanding of diversity in schools than the current pairings indicate. For example, a Miami-Dade County high school with 92 percent Black enrollment that was graded F was paired with a better-performing Miami-Dade County high school that had 54 percent Black enrollment and 42 percent Hispanic enrollment and was half the size (two thousand compared to four thousand students). These two schools were apparently considered by Governor Bush to be demographically similar because they both had greater than 90 percent minority enrollment.8 The response by many educators, understandably, has been to assess the governor’s and FDOE’s claims to be political posturing rather than serious policy making. Sensitivity to diversity is critical if the state’s leadership really hopes to provide meaningful assistance to failing schools, and analyses of the implications of educational accountability reform for disadvantaged groups must be done early and often. The needs of different districts are varied, and great diversity exists within districts in Florida (some of the largest school districts in the country) in terms of the experiences of poor and minority students. An understanding of this diversity and a focus on what works for different students populations is especially necessary since growth in enrollment is being accompanied by growth in Limited English Proficient (LEP) and free/reduced-price lunch program participation particularly in certain parts of the state.

120

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

In this chapter I begin by providing a picture of diversity and opportunity in Florida’s public schools, including descriptions of growth in enrollment, recent changes in the racial and ethnic composition of enrollments, participation in LEP and free/reduced-price lunch programs, school and teacher characteristics, and school segregation. I also describe the pattern of test scores from the first years of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests (FCAT) and the more recent system of grading schools tied to the FCAT. Second, I briefly document the desegregation history of several Florida counties that have recently been released from court-ordered desegregation in order to highlight the variation that exists with regard to desegregation and its associated politics in different parts of the state. Third, I explore how the relationship between district demographic characteristics (including segregation/desegregation) and FCAT scores and school grades differ in and within selected districts in Florida. Finally I discuss the implications of these patterns and relationships for the improvement of education for all students. THE BIG PICTURE: DIVERSITY AND OPPORTUNITY IN FLORIDA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS Growth in enrollments. The state of Florida is in the midst of a sustained growth in population that is outpacing national growth (over the last decade) by over 10 percent.9 This population growth has resulted in expanding public school infrastructure and enrollments. The Florida public education system experienced a 31 percent increase in the number of schools since 1991 (or 869 new schools). Yet as of 2000 the size on average of Florida’s elementary and middle schools remains the largest of any state in the nation, and the average high school size ranks second only to Hawaii. The growth in the number of schools accompanied a 26 percent increase (over half a million new students) in school enrollment from 1991 to 2000. Table 5.1 shows the actual growth of school enrollments. As Table 5.1 indicates, the great majority of the enrollment growth is due to increases in the number of minority students during this period. White student enrollment did increase by 10 percent, but as Figure 5.1 illustrates, most of that growth came in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic student enrollments increased 31 and 89 percent during this same period. The growth in minority enrollment

1991 1994 1997 2000 10.34%

1,178,315 1,270,804 1,287,268 1,300,152

White Students Enrolled

30.82%

466,054 539,561 582,056 609,713

Black Students Enrolled

88.86%

248,305 312,414 376,022 468,944

Hispanic Students Enrolled

48.02%

30,539 37,034 41,247 45,205

Asian Students Enrolled

Source: Common Core of Data, “Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey.”

26.16%

1,926,598 2,164,180 2,292,085 2,430,512

Year

change since 1991

Total Students Enrolled

TABLE 5.1 Student Enrollment by Race 1991–2000

91.96%

3,385 4,367 5,492 6,498

Native American Students Enrolled

51.06%

748,283 893,376 1,004,817 1,130,360

Minority Students Enrolled

FIGURE 5.1 Enrollment by Race

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

123

has resulted in a shift in the racial composition of the public school population in Florida from 39 percent minority in 1991 to 47 percent minority in 2000. Of course, these changes have not been uniform across the state, but they do affect a large proportion of the students attending public schools in the state. In 1991 there were five districts with greater than 50 percent minority enrollment and, with the exception of Miami-Dade County, these were small districts in historically Black rural counties. By 2000 there were twelve districts with greater than 50 percent minority enrollment and the districts joining this category were metropolitan counties like Broward (including Ft. Lauderdale), Orange (including Orlando), and Palm Beach. This means that in 1991 only 17 percent of the public school students in Florida attended school in a district that was at least 50 percent minority, but by 2000 41 percent of students were attending school in such districts. Both rural and urban districts joined this category, and most were experiencing rapid growth in their Hispanic/Latino enrollments. Growth in LEP and free/reduced-price lunch program participation. These rapid demographic shifts present a variety of new challenges to school districts, and these are evidenced by the 111 percent increase in the number of students being served by Limited English Proficiency (LEP) programs in Florida districts between 1991 and 2000. The number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch has also increased by 59 percent. As shown in Table 5.2 these programs are not only increasing in size in response to increasing enrollment, but the programs are actually growing faster than enrollments—resulting in a greater proportion of all students being served or eligible for the programs. TABLE 5.2 Percent Students LEP and Free/Reduced Price Lunch 1991–2001

Year

# Total Students LEP

% Students in LEP

# Students Eligible Free/Reduced Price Lunch

% Students Eligible for Free/Reduced Price Lunch

1991 2001

96,999 204,236

5.0 8.2

693,635 1,103,469

35.9 44.1

Change since 1991

111%

59%

Source: Florida Department of Education Report “Change, and Respoinse to Change, in Florida’s Public Schools.

124

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

Efforts to improve education must respond to the fact that these changes in student population are not balanced across districts or schools. Some districts are feeling the pressure of these changes more than others. Hence, school and staffing issues, such as class-size and teacher bonuses for student achievement that have been and continue to be part of either legislation or school reform projects, should be sensitive to changing demographics. When it comes to school and staffing needs, one size does not fit all. School and staff characteristics. One focus of the A+ Plan is a commitment to raise professional standards for educators. These higher standards include raising standards for admissions to colleges of education, requiring counties to reward teachers with annual bonuses based on student achievement criteria, and introducing more market-driven and results-oriented teacher training.10 However, these higher standards must be balanced with the teacher shortage and the need to put teachers in classrooms. In order to better understand school and staff characteristics, I provide information regarding average class sizes, racial composition of the instructional staff, and teacher qualifications. The late 1990s Florida legislation focused on decreasing elementary school class size has had an impact. Figure 5.2 illustrates that class size at the elementary level has decreased from 24.1 students in 1995 to 23.3 students in 2000. However, Table 5.3 shows that during this same time the average class size in middle schools and high schools was increasing in every subject. The size of the increase was the greatest in Language Arts classes where the middle school average class size increased by over 7 percent and the high school by almost 18 percent. This illustrates how gains in one area can mean costs in others. While trade-offs of this kind are necessary given limited resources, they should be monitored and understood in terms of their impact on other outcomes. At the state level teacher qualifications in terms of years of experience and the percent of teachers with a master’s degree or better have not fluctuated much in the last several years. In 2000 the average experience of a Florida teacher was 12.8 years. This is very similar to the 12.6-year average of 1996. As one might expect, at the state level the percent of teachers with a master’s degree differs for elementary, middle, and high schools, with high school teachers being those most likely to have more education.

FIGURE 5.2 Class Size by Grade Level and Subject Area

Math Science Social Studies Language Arts

9–12

25.4 26.7 27.6 22.8

24.7 26.5 26.7 23.2

23.8

1996

26.4 26.9 27.5 25.6

26.1 27.6 27.5 25.3

23.6

1997

26.6 27.1 27.7 25.7

25.6 26.9 26.9 24.6

23.7

1998

25.8 26.7 27.5 25.3

25.4 26.8 26.8 24.5

23.3

1999

25.7 26.9 27.8 25.4

25.5 27.1 27.0 24.8

23.3

2000

Source: School Advisory Council Reports, 1995, Florida School Indicators Report, 1996–2000.

24.5 26.0 26.5 21.6

24.7 26.6 26.6 23.1

Math Science Social Studies Language Arts

6–8

1995 24.1

Subject Areas

K–5

Grade Level

TABLE 5.3 Class Size by Grade and Subject Area 1995–2000

4.9% 3.5% 4.9% 17.6%

3.2% 1.9% 1.5% 7.4%

-3.3%

% change since 1995

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

127

School segregation. Many urban school districts in Florida, as was the case throughout the South, were under court-ordered desegregation throughout the last half century. The trend toward unitary status in Florida started at the end of the 1990s, and hence post-desegregation levels of segregation are not picked up in the trends presented here. However, the patterns of segregation in the state are interesting and reflect the greater segregation present in the large urban districts. The measure of segregation presented is the index of dissimilarity, which varies between 0 when there is no segregation to 1 when there is total segregation. This index is interpreted as the proportion of Black students (White versus Black index) who must be transferred to another school in the district in order for the percent Black enrollment (White versus Black index) to be equivalent to the percent Black enrollment in the entire district.11 Table 5.4 and Figure 5.3 illustrate the trend in the average district levels of segregation in Florida school districts from 1991–2000. I include measures of White versus minority, White versus Black, White versus Hispanic, and Black versus Hispanic segregation. White versus minority segregation remains fairly constant during this period, but when one looks at the more disaggregated measures, one finds that White versus Black segregation is increasing while White versus Hispanic segregation is decreasing. Additionally, during this ten-year period Black and Hispanic students have become less segregated from each other. However, the use of average district levels of segregation likely underrepresents the average level of segregation that students in the state experience, because segregation levels tend to be higher in urban districts where student enrollment is higher. TABLE 5.4 Average District Levels of Segregation 1991–2000 Segregation Type

1991

1994

1997

2000

White vs. Minority White vs. Black White vs. Hispanic Black vs. Hispanic

0.25 0.28 0.32 0.36

0.25 0.30 0.31 0.35

0.26 0.30 0.28 0.32

0.26 0.31 0.27 0.32

Note: These segregation measures were calculated from enrollment data from the Common Core of Data, “Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey.”

FIGURE 5.3 Average Levels of Segregation: 1991–2000

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

129

To account for this, weighted district averages (where each district’s level of segregation is weighted by the number of students in that district) were also inspected. The weighted average levels of segregation (not reported here) are, as expected, considerably higher than the average district levels. This indicates that overall larger districts are experiencing higher levels of segregation than smaller districts. The trend in levels of segregation are also slightly different when looking at the weighted averages, although the overall pattern of increasing Black versus White segregation and decreasing White versus Hispanic segregation still holds for the ten-year period. The difference between the two measures is that, during the last three-year period reported (1997 to 2000), the weighted average level of segregation is increasing for all four measures. The patterns revealed by looking at both weighted and unweighted average levels of segregation suggest that larger districts were actually becoming more segregated during the last three years of the century. They also indicate a diversity of experiences with school segregation in Florida, with smaller districts experiencing considerably lower levels of segregation. Racial/ethnic disparities in performance on the FCAT. We are unable to analyze racial/ethnic disparities in performance directly because data on school-level FCAT scores have not been released by race/ethnic group categories. Instead, this section examines the relationship between the proportion of students passing each exam and schoollevel student characteristics such as the proportion of the student body that is Black or Hispanic/Latino. I examined data from Florida’s 1999–2000 School Advisory Council Reports (SACR).12 These reports provide data on the proportions of students reaching achievement level 3 (out of 5) on various FCAT exams in the fourth , fifth, eighth, and tenth grades and the proportions of racial and ethnic minority students in each school. For the rest of this chapter, I will describe reaching that achievement level as “passing.” Most scores on the FCAT do not have consequences for students in terms of passing a grade, but reaching that level has figured into the state’s grading of schools since 1999. The correlation between the proportion of students passing either the reading or math FCAT at any grade level and the proportion of Black students in a school ranges from -.36 (tenth grade math FCAT) to -.65 (eighth grade reading FCAT). Table 5.5 shows the specific correlation for each grade level and exam. Figure 5.4 illustrates this relationship by showing that there is a wide distribution of the percent of eighth grade students passing the math

130

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE TABLE 5.5 Correlations Between the Proportion of Black, Hispanic, or Free/Reduced Lunch Students in a School and the Proportion of Students Passing Individual Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests (FCAT)

Grade Level

FCAT Exam

4th 5th 8th 8th 10th 10th

Reading Math Reading Math Reading Math

Correlation with Proportion Black

Correlation with Proportion Hispanic

-.64 -.58 -.65 -.62 -.57 -.36

-.13 -.25 -.22 -.21 -.20 -.22

Correlation with Proportion in Free/Reduced Lunch Programs -.77 -.80 -.82 -.79

Number of Schools 1532 1545 470 470 331 331

Note: These correlation coefficients were calculated from data from the Florida School Indicators Report and the School Advisory Council Reports for 1999–2000.

FCAT among schools with less than 30 percent Black students enrolled. However, in schools where Black students account for over 40 percent of student enrollment, the proportion of eighth grade students passing the math FCAT remains consistently below 50 percent. Table 5.5 also provides correlations between the proportion of students passing individual tests and the proportion of Hispanic students in schools. These range from a low correlation of -.13 for the fourth grade reading FCAT to a high of -.25 for the fifth grade math FCAT. The negative relationship is clearly stronger for Black students than for Hispanic Students, but even for Hispanic students the negative relationship extends across each grade level and test category. While we have no direct measure of student family resources available in schools, we do have data available from the SACR indicating the proportion of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches at the elementary and middle school level. These data are used to explore the relationship between the percent passing the various tests at the school level and the proportion of students in the free lunch program. Again, Table 5.5 reports the relationships. Figure 5.5 illustrates the -.79 correlation between percent passing the eighth grade math FCAT and the proportion of students on free/reduced-price lunch at the school level. This clear negative relationship is similar for other tests.

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

133

These school-level analyses of racial composition of schools and free/reduced lunch programs and their relationship to the percent of students passing the various Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests indicate that the burdens of the A+ Plan will fall most heavily on schools that serve minority and poor students. These are the schools that will receive the lowest “grades.” School accountability grades. An integral part of the A+ Plan is the grading of schools based upon performance on the FCAT. Every public school in the state is “graded” at the end of each academic year. (Chapter 4 describes the changing calculation of grades since 1999.) The criteria used to grade schools beginning in 2002 is based on calculations that include the percent of students passing (scoring 3, 4, or 5) the FCAT in reading and mathematics, the percent of students making learning gains in reading and mathematics, and the percent of the lowest 25 percent readers making gains. To determine a final grade for each school other issues are considered including the percent of eligible students tested and whether or not at least 50 percent of the lowest readers made gains. Table 5.6 shows the distribution of grades for the 2001–2002 school year (before appeals by local districts). As illustrated in the table, approximately 57 percent of Florida’s schools received either an A or a B in 2002, although middle schools (68 percent As and Bs) and elementary schools (59 percent As and Bs) fared better than high schools (34 percent As and Bs). A total of sixty-eight schools in the state were declared F schools. Of the sixty-seven countywide districts in Florida, only eighteen had any F schools. Of the sixty-eight F schools, forty-eight (or 71 percent) were located in just five districts: Miami-Dade, Duval, Orange, Palm Beach, and Hillsborough. All of these districts are urban with large enrollments and a large number of schools. Most of these districts are either pursuing release or have recently been released from court-ordered school desegregation. Because of the concentration of F schools in these districts, we need to examine the characteristics of large, diverse districts more closely. THE END OF COURT-ORDERED DESEGREGATION IN SELECTED FLORIDA DISTRICTS During the 1990s, many school districts across the state (Pinellas, Polk, Hillsborough, Duval, Miami-Dade, Lee, and others) were in the

580 36.7% 207 43.5% 48 14.1% 26 22.0% 861 34.2%

Elementary Middle High Combined Total

560 22.3%

22 18.6%

67 19.7%

118 24.8%

353 22.3%

B

707 28.1%

29 24.6%

144 42.4%

117 24.6%

417 26.4%

C

173 6.9%

4 3.4%

35 10.3%

18 3.8%

116 7.3%

D

68 2.7%

1 0.8%

20 5.9%

6 1.3%

41 2.6%

F

22 0.9%

1 0.8%

13 3.8%

0 0.0%

8 0.5%

I

124 4.9%

35 29.7%

13 3.8%

10 2.1%

66 4.2%

N

2515 100.0%

118 100.0%

340 100.0%

476 100.0%

1581 100.0%

Total

Source: Florida Department of Education, School Grade Distribution, retrieved in 2002 from http://www.firn.edu/doe/schoolgrades/pdf/grade_dist0102.pdf. 47

A

School Type

TABLE 5.6 2001–2002 School Accountability Grade Distributions Before Appeals

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

135

process of asking courts to declare them unitary (or no longer segregated by the Green factors, as described in chapter 2) and end courtordered desegregation. Many school districts were declared unitary even as they were experiencing new trends toward resegregation. Increasing school segregation poses a potentially insurmountable challenge to a state that has put a high-stakes testing system in place. National data indicate that most segregated African American and Latino schools serve primarily poor children, while 96 percent of segregated White schools serve middle-class majorities.13 Education research has found a consistent relationship between poverty and many measures of school-level outcomes including lower test scores, higher dropout rates, fewer students taking college prep classes, and fewer students attending and/or ultimately graduating from college.14 While some racially isolated majority-minority schools can and will provide a good education for the students they serve, far more will suffer from a plethora of social ills associated with poverty and related to low achievement. What the governor’s policies have not considered explicitly is whether racial segregation is an academic risk factor. Here I document the release of four Florida districts from court-ordered desegregation and then I present a descriptive analysis of school segregation and the A+ grading scheme. Hillsborough County School District (Tampa). Hillsborough County, whose early desegregation plans are described in chapter 2, joined a growing number of school districts in Florida and elsewhere when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a 1998 District Court ruling and declared the district unitary (free of racial segregation) in 2001.15 The district was under one of Florida’s longest running desegregation orders and had been under court oversight since a 1958 lawsuit. The School District of Hillsborough County faced its first desegregation challenge in 1958. Following this case, there were numerous attempts to end school segregation in Hillsborough County. The school district was placed under a court order in 1971 for continued noncompliance with school desegregation. At that time the courts ordered that a comprehensive desegregation plan be placed in effect. The desegregation plan eventually implemented included extensive busing of primarily Black students and the closing down of two high schools in predominately Black neighborhoods.16 African Americans in the community were upset about the disproportionate burden the

136

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

plan placed on Black students and the negative consequences for Black communities. They protested the closing of the two high schools. Nonetheless, the original plan remained the backbone of the Hillsborough County diversity efforts for three decades. Over time, there were revisions to this desegregation plan (the addition of a magnet program to attract White students to attend schools in Black neighborhoods), but the next large legal action taken was the rejection in 1998 of a petition for unitary status by Hillsborough County. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich ruled that the district had fallen short of doing all that it could to desegregate its schools. However, a three-judge appeals panel reversed the ruling and ordered Judge Kovachevich to declare Hillsborough County Public Schools unitary and bring an end to almost forty years of judicial supervision.17 This ruling was met with protests from the original plaintiffs and other Blacks who pointed out that in a district with 51 percent White enrollment, 23 percent African American enrollment, and 20 percent Hispanic enrollment, Black students make up more than 40 percent of the enrollment at twenty-six schools and less than 10 percent at twenty-four schools.18 The unitary ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court in Manning v. School Board of Hillsborough County. On October 1, 2001, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and the forty-three-year-old desegregation case came to an end. The School District of Hillsborough County is no longer considered legally segregated. While Hillsborough County was held up as having achieved a commendable level of segregation prior to the 1990s, as Table 5.7 illustrates (see Hillsborough under the category 3 districts), Hillsborough experienced a .11 increase (about 25 percent) in segregation (as measured by the index of dissimilarity) during the 1990s—even prior to its release from the order. Under the current plan for maintaining racial diversity within the school system, forced student busing will no longer be used. Instead, a new cluster plan will put an emphasis on controlled school choice and voluntary busing with the formation of additional magnet and neighborhood schools to encourage students from the suburbs to attend central city schools and students from the central city to attend suburban schools.19 If the current trend of increased Black versus White student segregation continues, it could have serious consequences as predominately Black schools20 in Hillsborough are faring considerably poorer than other schools under the A+ accountability grading (see Hillsbor-

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

137

ough in Table 5.7). Thirty-two schools (approximately 21 percent of the schools graded in 2002) were disproportionately Black schools, but these schools accounted for 75 percent of the D or F schools in the district and only 10 percent of the A and B schools. Duval County School District (Jacksonville). Duval’s first school desegregation claim was Braxton v. the Board of Public Instruction (Case 4598 Civ J) filed on December 6, 1960, seeking an injunctive order based on the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.21 The ruling on this case resulted in the first Duval County court-ordered desegregation plan in 1963. This desegregation plan was set as a staged or gradual desegregation of the school system but was largely unsuccessful. In 1967, a revised agreement was put into effect to begin a total unitary system rather than a staged implementation plan. Both parties appealed the decision, but the court remanded the case in 1971 due to the Supreme Court decision permitting student busing as a tool for achieving school desegregation in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg.22 A revised and comprehensive order of desegregation was entered in June of 1971 (Mims v. Duval County School Board)23 and it stood until 1985 when the NAACP filed a new complaint alleging that the School Board was violating the order.24 This new complaint was consolidated with the Mims case, and in 1986, District Judge John H. Moore declared the Duval County School District unitary and the Mims injunctions dissolved. The decision was reversed and remanded by the Eleventh Circuit with particular concerns regarding whether the original Mims injunctive requirements regarding teacher and students assignments had been achieved.25 Hence, the school system was once again placed under a court order for desegregation. In 1989 the case came back to court, but under very different circumstances. The involved parties had engaged in settlement negotiations resulting in a new “Corrected Stipulation and Agreement” that they brought to the court together. This new agreement indicated that both sides wished to end mass busing and replace it with a system of magnet schools and school choice, to end the court order using a measure of unitary status that was agreeable to all parties and to focus future desegregative efforts primarily on elementary schools and only secondarily on middle or high schools.26 The court approved the new agreement in 1990 and the district remained under court jurisdiction. By 1991 the NAACP was back in court with a motion to change the way the school board was implementing the 1990 agreement. The

.23 .24 .26 .27 .29 .33 .43 .45 .48 .49 .51

-.07 -.03 .03 .07 .03 -.05 -.13 .12 -.14 .10 .13

4.7 10.3 8.2 12.6 7.5 9.6 5.4 15.6 3.7 10.5 9.7

3.0 1.0 4.0 3.4 6.0 3.6 1.7 1.5 7.3 2.0 7.1

Indian River Polk Putnam

.14 .20 .27

.02 -.21 .07

17.3 23.5 26.9

9.7 11.9 8.5

Category 2: Between 20 and 40 percent minority enrollment

Citrus Nassau Charlotte Okaloosa Hernando Clay Santa Rosa Bay Pasco St. Johns Sarasota

Category 1: Less than 20 percent minority enrollment

District (County) Name

14974 79463 12624

15199 10212 17169 30335 17215 28115 22633 25743 49607 20050 35504

45.9 50.5 61.1

32.6 33.3 40.4 29.0 39.6 22.6 31.6 44.3 45.0 21.6 36.0

17 100 15

17 10 17 37 17 28 25 30 45 22 31

Change White vs. Black White vs. Segregation Percent # Black 1991 to Percent Percent Total Free Schools Segregation 2000 Black Hispanic Enrollment Lunch Graded

76.5 50.0 13.3

76.5 80.0 94.1 94.6 47.1 85.7 96.0 66.7 51.1 68.2 87.1

% A and B

0.0 4.0 0.0

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 6.7 6.7 4.5 0.0

% D and F

0 12 4

0 1 0 4 0 4 1 8 5 4 5

# Black Schools Graded

0.0 0.0 12.5 40.0 25.0 0.0

50.0 100.0 50.0 20.0 25.0 20.0

8.3 0.0

0.0

75.0

58.3 0.0

0.0

100.0

% A and B

-.18 -.41

-.31 -.42 -.60 -.24 -.73 -.57

-.34

.48

(continued on next page)

-.10 -.46

-.35 -.11 -.38 -.05 -.56 -.50

-.43

.03

Correlation, Correlation % Pass % Pass FCAT FCAT Reading Math and % and % % Black in Black in D and F School School

TABLE 5.7 Racial Composition, Segregation, and School Grades for Florida Districts with Greater Than 10,000 Students Enrolled

.32 .33 .34 .36 .37 .38 .39 .42 .46

-.01 .04 .04 -.05 .06 .03 .03 .02 .06

21.6 19.1 15.7 14.1 16.3 14.3 15.7 17.5 11.0

7.9 4.9 16.0 12.6 7.8 4.5 9.1 14.6 12.8

.16 .19 .35 .40 .42 .43 .47 .47 .54

-.02 .04 .15 .01 -.11 .11 .12 .09 -.01

30.1 21.1 37.8 36.9 43.3 24.1 9.7 40.4 11.6

10.5 17.5 4.1 1.6 3.7 21.6 37.5 1.9 30.3

Orange Palm Beach Broward Dade

.51 .53 .56 .69

.01 .03 .00 .05

29.3 30.1 36.4 31.2

22.8 17.7 19.4 56.2

Category 4: Greater than 50 percent minority enrollment

St. Lucie Highlands Alachua Escambia Duval Hillsborough Osceola Leon Collier

Category 3: Between 40 to 50 percent minority enrollment

Marion Pinellas Lee Seminole Lake Brevard Volusia Manatee Martin

TABLE 5.7 (continued)

150681 153825 251129 368356

29489 11201 29694 44922 125744 164270 34566 32050 34196

38545 113017 58369 60869 29023 70596 61340 36554 16306

47.8 39.6 37.1 59.4

53.6 58.1 44.6 56.5 46.6 47.4 46.6 30.5 31.7

52.3 36.3 43.2 44.6 39.4 30.8 38.6 37.8 31.0

142 133 194 295

31 15 37 58 143 154 37 39 33

39 116 57 51 35 78 54 41 16

50.0 55.6 63.9 53.6

38.7 53.3 64.9 44.8 44.1 69.5 29.7 59.0 54.5

56.4 62.1 73.7 86.3 60.0 87.2 83.3 68.3 81.3

12.7 17.3 8.8 18.0

16.1 6.7 10.8 15.5 23.8 7.8 32.4 10.3 24.2

5.1 5.2 3.5 2.0 0.0 1.3 3.7 7.3 6.3

39 42 65 105

5 1 11 18 44 32 0 16 7

10 26 11 10 9 17 12 9 3

43.6 47.6 24.6 38.1

18.8 71.4

25.0 0.0

12.8 14.3 23.1 19.0

60.0 0.0 27.3 33.3 54.5 28.1

20.0 11.5 9.1 10.0 0.0 5.9 8.3 33.3 33.3

20.0 0.0 36.4 22.2 6.8 34.4

10.0 50.0 72.7 40.0 55.6 47.1 50.0 11.1 33.3

-.65 -.69 -.74 -.51

-.75 -.70

-.24 -.11 -.30 -.64 -.64 -.50

-.10 -.45 -.29 -.59 .08 -.47 -.47 -.63 -.55

-.68 -.77 -.78 -.55

-.73 -.79

-.23 -.36 -.40 -.72 -.66 -.64

-.16 -.57 -.38 -.70 -.05 -.61 -.60 -.67 -.65

140

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

NAACP wanted the district to implement a controlled choice plan in addition to the magnet programs that were already in place. This motion was denied and the case went back to the Court of Appeals where it was remanded and sent back to the District Court for further consideration. At that time District Judge William Terrell Hodges took over the case and, sensing a conciliatory attitude on the part of both parties, assigned a mediator to bring the sides together.27 Mediation was unsuccessful, and in 1996 the Duval County School Board filed a motion to be declared unitary and released from court jurisdiction. Judge Hodges concluded that the issue of unitary status would be decided by considering each of the requirements contained in the 1990 agreement. In his 1999 decision, Judge Hodges determined that the NAACP’s arguments about a controlled choice method of assignment were without merit as they were not part of the provisions of the 1990 agreement. He found that the school board had complied with the 1990 agreement in good faith and had eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination to the maximum degree possible and stated that the racially identifiable schools that still existed in Duval County School District were the product of housing patterns and parent choice, not a vestige of past discrimination.28 Hence, he granted the board’s motion for unitary status. The NAACP appealed the ruling, but in November 2001 the appeals court upheld the 1999 District Court ruling. Shortly after the 1999 decision, Superintendent John Fryer stated that race would no longer be a factor in student assignment to magnet schools because it might leave the district open to discrimination lawsuits.29 By 2001, when the unitary status decision was upheld by the District Court, over half of the districts programs were already seeing erosion in racial diversity.30 This followed a period from 1991 to 2000 when segregation was actually decreasing in the district (see data on Duval in Table 5.7, category 3). School desegregation has been an issue of constant debate and racial tension in Duval County for forty years. In the 1970s the Black community felt that Black children were facing a greater burden of desegregation than their White peers. Later, the placement of new schools in the suburbs seemed incongruent with racial equality when Black schools in the inner city were decaying from lack of resources. Duval County (and the City of Jacksonville) has a history of racial strife that includes problems in the sheriff ’s department, the fire department, and with city services in addition to problems with school

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

141

desegregation.31 The A+ accountability grading may only spur more racial discontent as few disproportionately Black schools (three out of forty-four or 6.8 percent) were rewarded with As or Bs and over half (twenty-four out of forty-four or 54.5 percent) were assigned Ds or Fs in 2002. Miami-Dade County School District. Unlike many school districts in the country, the Dade County School District’s Board of Education invited the federal courts into their desegregation efforts when in 1969 a group of White parents won a state lawsuit to keep their children from attending a formerly all-Black elementary school. At that time District Judge Clyde Atkins ordered the integration of twenty-four allBlack and all-White schools. An appellate court increased the number of schools included in the order to fifty-three. During the next year, Judge Atkins declared Dade County a unitary system, but he maintained supervision of the district and established a biracial committee to oversee Dade County’s efforts to maintain a desegregated system. As the racial composition of Dade County changed, the biracial committee expanded to its present form of a biracial, triethnic committee (bi-tri committee) on desegregation efforts. While it is fair to say that over the past thirty years the Miami-Dade County School Board has invoked court supervision when parents have complained about busing, some critics say they have also ignored the court order when it came to building new schools in areas that clearly serve students of one racial or ethnic group.32 The bi-tri committee objected to many decisions that the board made over the years, but the committee itself claims it has little real impact on decision-making in the district.33 This futility resulted in a growing demand in 1997 that the district end the pretense of operating under a court order, since it was having very little impact on segregation in the school system.34 In 1997 public school enrollment in Dade County was 51 percent Hispanic, 34 percent Black, and 15 percent White (non-Hispanic), Asian, or Native American, yet 27 of Dade’s 281 schools were over 90 percent African American, and 43 schools were serving disproportionately Hispanic students. In 1998 Judge Atkins stated that “the court could not retain jurisdiction over this case indefinitely” and asked the Dade County School Board to produce a timetable for showing that the Dade County School District is operating a unitary school system. The School Board responded with hesitation due to concern that a withdrawal of the order would prevent them from being allowed to assign teachers and

142

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

students to schools based on race. The board was concerned that the end of court supervision would result in a more segregated system. Nonetheless, the district under a mandate from Judge Atkins brought their case to court in 2000, asking the judge to lift their court order but seeking permission to continue to use race-based student assignments and employee placements. John Due, the attorney for the NAACP (representative of the original plaintiffs in the case), argued that the existing racially identifiable schools were vestiges of past discrimination and that the district should remain under court scrutiny. In 2001 U.S. District Judge William Dimitouleas ruled that Miami-Dade County’s public school system was desegregated and released the district from thirty-one years of court supervision.35 In response to the district’s request to continue to use race-conscious policies to prevent the emergence of more racially isolated schools, the judge gave the district flexibility for one year. After the judgment the school board reaffirmed its commitment to the constitutional rights of all students, while John Due and other civil rights activists openly questioned the school board’s commitment, citing its failure to meet with the plaintiffs to even discuss a post-unitary plan for the district.36 Miami is currently the nation’s fourth largest school district and faces interesting post-desegregation challenges in terms of equity due to its large (360,000 students) and diverse (54 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Black, and 12 percent White) student population. The former bi-tri committee on desegregation will be continuing as an agent of the school board rather than as an agent of the court order. Current system planning includes an increase in magnet programs and the additions of choice programs in many areas of the district. The impact of these programs on racial enrollments and isolation is yet to be seen, but the new programs are unlikely to change the very high level of Black versus White student segregation that currently exists and has been on the rise as White enrollment declined during the 1990s (see Miami-Dade in Table 5.7, category 4). Over one-third of the graded schools in the district (105 of 295) are disproportionately Black schools. Under the A+ accountability plan, only 19 percent of these 105 schools were assigned an A or B in 2002 (compared to 53.6 percent of all schools in the district), while 38 percent were assigned either a D or F (compared to 18 percent of all schools in the district). Lee County School District. The Lee County school system in southwest Florida was sued by civil rights advocates in a 1964 case brought

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

143

by the NAACP on behalf of a Black student who was denied access to a White high school.37 In 1965 the court approved a school board plan that proposed to desegregate in five years and Lee County schools integrated by accepting three Black students into two White schools.38 In 1966 a federal judge allowed the U.S. Justice Department to join the NAACP, and the district attempted to get around the problem of desegregation by saying that students could attend any school of their choice. Some Black students did attend the White schools, but virtually no Whites attended the all-Black schools. By 1969, the courts lost patience with Lee County and ordered that the district either desegregate the Black schools or close them down altogether. The district responded by closing Dunbar High School. Dunbar High School was the center of the Black community and its closing so angered Black parents and students that thirty years later the reopening of Dunbar High School would become the centerpiece of the eventual settlement to the school desegregation lawsuit. Even after the closing of Dunbar High School, efforts to desegregate schools in Lee County in a way that was palatable to the district and the plaintiffs in the case were very slow. Little happened in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s the district created specialized magnet programs at several schools with large minority populations.39 The magnet schools, which offered appealing programs in art, technology, and other specialty areas, became very popular and helped to integrate minority schools. However, the school district still had to redraw school boundaries every few years to maintain racial balance in a county that was growing rapidly. In 1996, a consent decree was signed by the judge indicating that the district was desegregated in four areas: faculty and staff assignment, extracurricular activities, facilities, and student transportation. The only area remaining at issue surrounded student assignment. In 1998 the school board began a system of assigning some students through School Choice, an enrollment plan that uses a lottery and racial quotas to achieve the goal of having between 10 and 40 percent minority population at each school.40 By late 1998 the Lee County district was moving to petition the court for unitary status. The petition was planned for submission in early November of 1998, but the district delayed hoping that an out-ofcourt settlement could be reached with the plaintiffs in the case. The members and supporters of the NAACP were in support of the delay and seemed responsive to the idea of a settlement.41 The president of the

144

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

Lee County NAACP, Willie Green, was an original plaintiff when the lawsuit was filed in 1964. In November 1998, Green was still concerned that under the new school choice plan Black students might endure the disproportionate burden of busing. The NAACP represented a stillsuspicious minority community that is not sure if they can trust the school district to do the right thing once the order is dissolved (as chapter 2 notes is true more broadly in the politics of desegregation). Green pointed out that there remain complaints in the Black community over the way the geographical zones were drawn for the school choice plan, but he also acknowledges that there was no other way to ensure racial balances in the schools. By mid-December 1998, the parties had met and ironed out a settlement agreement that was signed by all parties in January 1999. In the agreement the district agreed to convert Paul L. Dunbar Middle School, located in a Black community, into a science and technology magnet high school to be named for the original Dunbar High School closed by the district in 1969.42 The agreement also requires the school district to establish a position of equity director in the district and continue the school choice enrollment program. In July 1999 Judge Steven Merryday settled the Lee County schools’ lawsuit and ruled that the district no longer needed court supervision, but he required the district to continue the school choice plan using a lottery system for at least five years and to abide by the other stipulations in the settlement agreement that all parties had signed.43 Both sides celebrated the 1999 unitary status decision and felt that the agreement would allow the district the greatest opportunity to provide the best education to all students. They also prided themselves on coming together to establish a plan that satisfied all parties. However, by late 2002 the Lee County school board had already begun to plan for the 2004 expiration of the court order regarding the school choice plan. The school choice plan requires a large transportation budget and thus will not likely outlive the stipulated 2004 date. In fact, by early 2003 a task force set up the prior summer was putting forth various new student assignment systems that would result in lower transportation costs. The resulting new student assignment plan was instituted in the 2005-2006 school year and divided the districts into three attendance zones. How this new student assignment system will affect issues of race in the district is yet to be seen, but the district remains cognizant that the Black community will be monitoring them and will not hesitate to return to court if schools in the district resegregate.44

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

145

Lee County has a much smaller enrollment and lower percent minority enrollment than Hillsborough, Duval, or Miami-Dade counties (32 percent compared to 46 percent, 47 percent, and 87 percent respectively). It also had a lower level of Black versus White segregation at .34 than these other districts and only eleven of the fifty-seven graded schools in 2002 were disproportionately Black schools (see Lee in Table 5.7, category 2). Under the state’s A+ accountability plan, these eleven schools are faring very similarly when compared to other schools in the district. RACIAL COMPOSITION, SCHOOL SEGREGATION, AND SCHOOL GRADES School segregation does not end when districts are declared unitary by the courts, and the problems associated with segregation, poverty, and race relations will continue to be important issues as Florida proceeds with its A+ Plan, particularly if the plan has any hope of decreasing racial/ethnic disparities in educational outcomes. If one looks at Governor Bush’s A+ Plan as one way of responding to academic risk factors, we can see that the governor’s policies, as well as his public statements, ignore the effects of segregation in and of itself. Continuing to document the level of segregation, racial compositions of schools, and the school grades is one way to monitor current educational opportunities for students from various racial/ethnic backgrounds. This will be important in the four districts described in this chapter and in other districts that have been released from their court orders to desegregate or are experiencing growth in minority enrollment. As indicated earlier in this chapter, there is considerable variation in the state in school grades. In some districts over 75 percent of the schools earned an A or B grade in 2002 with no schools earning below a C. In other districts less than half of the schools earned an A or B and more than 25 percent are earning below a C. In order to more clearly explore the relationship between Black versus White student school segregation and school grades and what this relationship might mean for Black students, one can sort the districts into four minority enrollment categories: 0–19.9 percent, 20–39.9 percent, 40–49.9 percent, and 50 percent and over. Table 5.7 reports data on racial composition, school segregation, free lunch participation, and school grades for the thirty-seven largest school districts in Florida sorted into the four categories of minority enrollment.

146

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

While this analysis focuses on Florida’s more urban districts, some of the most racially isolated schools exist in small rural districts that are predominately Black or White. In fact, of the thirty districts with fewer than ten thousand students, most have less than 40 percent minority enrollment. Only seven are majority-minority districts and these poor, mostly rural, minority districts are experiencing the highest rate of failing schools in the state. They deserve special consideration and support in any sort of school reform plan that hopes to improve education. Additionally, Hispanic/Latino versus White segregation and disproportionately Hispanic/Latino schools were not analyzed here in Table 5.7, but as the Hispanic/Latino migrants and immigrants begin to move into more districts in Florida, this relationship should be explored as well. Among the larger districts in the state, the first category (for lowminority enrollment) includes eleven school districts (29.7 percent of the large districts in the state) with minority enrollments that range from approximately 7 percent to just short of 18 percent. The districts are ordered from lower to higher levels of Black versus White student segregation. Levels of Black versus White student segregation vary from an index of dissimilarity of .23 to .56. As discussed earlier in this chapter the measure of segregation (index of dissimilarity) indicates the proportion of students of either racial group being compared that would have to change schools in order for the racial composition of all schools to be equal to the racial composition of the entire district. The rest of the columns include data on changes in segregation in the last ten years, the percent Black and percent Hispanic enrollments, the percent of students qualified for free or reduced price lunch, school grades in each district for all schools and for disproportionately Black schools. Also included in the last two columns of the table are the correlations between percent Black students enrolled and the percent of students passing the math and reading FCAT. A few features stand out regarding this first category of schools. First, there were very few D and F schools (six) and a large proportion of A and B schools in these districts. Second, the school grades for disproportionately Black schools closely mirror those for all schools with only a few exceptions. Only in Pasco and Sarasota counties (the two districts in this category with the largest enrollments) were the disproportionately Black schools faring more poorly than other schools in the district. In Pasco there were forty-five schools graded in 2002, with 51 percent earning an A or B and 6.7 percent (three schools) earning a D

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

147

or F. Five of the forty-five schools were disproportionately Black and only one of these schools (20%) earned an A or B, while two of them earned a D or F, so two of the three D or F schools in the county were disproportionately Black schools. In Sarasota a similar pattern emerged, with only one out of five of the disproportionately Black schools (20 percent) earning an A or B when compared to 87.1 percent of all schools in the district. Both Pasco and Sarasota counties had fairly high levels of segregation at .48 and .51, although Pasco has experienced a drop in segregation (-.14) since 1991 and Sarasota has experienced an increase of .13 during the same time period. With the exception of Pasco and Santa Rosa, which have low Black enrollments (less than 6 percent) and decreasing levels of segregation (-.14 and -.13 respectively), the districts with higher levels of segregation also have distinct relationships between the percent Black enrolled in their schools and the percent of students passing the reading and math FCAT. The second racial composition category includes districts that have between 20 and 40 percent minority enrollment. In 2002 there were twelve such districts among Florida’s largest, and the level of Black versus White student segregation in these districts varied from .14 to .46. Similar to the first racial composition category, the pattern here indicates a large proportion of A and B schools. However, the disproportionately Black schools are not doing as well as the schools overall. Many of the schools earning Ds or Fs are disproportionately Black schools (fourteen out of twenty-two or 64 percent). Additionally, overall, ten of the twelve districts have over 50 percent of their schools earning an A or B, while among disproportionately Black schools only three districts have more than 50 percent earning an A or B. As in the first group, as the level of segregation increases so does the correlation between the percent Black enrolled in their schools and the percent of students passing the reading and math FCAT. The exceptions are Polk, Lake, and Lee counties. These are also the districts where the disproportionately Black schools are performing similarly to schools overall within their districts. In these three districts there does not seem to be a strong relationship between the racial compositions of the schools and performance on the FCAT. Polk County’s school district has a fairly low level of segregation and has experienced a 50 percent reduction in segregation during the 1990s. Lake County school district is experiencing an increase in segregation (.06), but has 100 percent of its schools earning a C or better

148

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

(regardless of each school’s racial composition). Similarly, almost 75 percent of the schools in Lee County school district are earning an A or B with only two D or F schools. There were nine districts with between 40 and 50 percent minority enrollment; in these, the level of Black/White student segregation varied from .16 to .54. Most of these districts have fairly high levels of Black versus White segregation (greater than .35) and most (7 of 9) have more than 10 percent of their schools earning a D or F. Without exception, the disproportionately Black schools in each district had a lower percentage of A and B schools and a higher percentage of D and F schools than schools in their districts as a whole. Again the situation for disproportionately Black schools is worse (fewer A and B schools and more D and F schools) in those districts that are more segregated and the correlation between the percent Black enrolled in schools and the percent of students passing the reading and math FCAT is higher in the more segregated districts. Considering this relationship, it is disturbing that four districts in this category—Alachua, Hillsborough, Osceola, and Leon—have experienced substantial increases in levels of segregation (with increases of between .09 and .15 in the index of dissimilarity) during the 1990s. In the fourth category are the four districts among the largest thirty-seven that have more than 50 percent minority enrollment. These four large urban districts have high levels of White versus Black student segregation (.51 to .69). They also are very large districts. Orange and Palm Beach counties each has more than 150,000 students enrolled, and Broward and Miami-Dade counties have over 250,000 and 360,000, respectively. In each of these districts, more than half the schools earned an A or B. Given the high levels of segregation in these districts, each has substantial numbers of disproportionately Black schools. In each district the disproportionately Black schools account for almost all of the schools earning a D or F. For example, in Orange County there were eighteen D or F schools—seventeen of which were disproportionately Black schools. The same was true in Palm Beach, where twenty of twenty-three D or F schools were disproportionately Black schools, in Broward County (sixteen of seventeen), and in Miami-Dade County (forty-one of fifty-three). The overall patterns of school grades provide some information about how districts are doing as a whole, but looking at the performance of disproportionately Black schools provides a better understanding of race and educational opportunity in Florida. With the

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

149

exception of districts in the first racial composition category (less than 20 percent minority enrollment) there seems to be a relationship between White/Black student segregation, on the one hand, and FCAT scores and the school grades that are based on test scores, on the other. The majority of schools earning Ds or Fs are disproportionately Black schools and this is especially true among the most segregated districts. In districts such as Manatee, Hillsborough, Leon, Orange, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade disproportionately Black schools account for more than 75 percent of all the D and F schools and less than 15 percent of A and B schools. CONCLUSIONS Given the data reported here, a distinct pattern emerges. In many Florida districts Black students are still experiencing considerable segregation. Hence, most large districts (greater than ten thousand students enrolled) in Florida have some schools that are disproportionately Black (have at least 10 percent greater Black enrollment than the district as a whole). In many districts, particularly the more segregated, these disproportionately Black schools are the schools that are failing or near failing under Governor Bush’s A+ Accountability Plan. This means that in the most segregated districts the failing (F) schools or near-failing (D) schools enroll the great majority of each district’s Black students. Under the plan students attending double F schools (schools earning an F two years in a row) are able to use vouchers to attend private schools or other public schools in the district. However, few private schools have been willing to enroll students from the F schools, and many public schools that have earned higher grades are already overcrowded and cannot accommodate more students. Most students attending the F schools cannot or do not take advantage of the vouchers and over a quarter of the high school students that began private schools under the voucher program in fall 2002 had moved back to their public schools within several months.45 They cited either difficulty keeping up academically or difficulty fitting in socially as their primary reason for returning to their F school.46 Not surprisingly a very rudimentary exploration of the data indicates that the disproportionately Black schools identified in Table 5.7 also serve the majority of the high-poverty students in their districts. And they do so (based on analysis not included here) with teachers

150

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

who have less education and experience than those schools with racially balanced or disproportionately White enrollments. If current trends continue and school segregation increases in the post-desegregation period, then a greater focus must be placed on determining the factors that contribute to helping disproportionately Black schools with high poverty rates succeed in producing high-performing students. President Bush’s most recent accountability plan calls for encouraging equality by calling for increases in minority student performance as well as overall improvements in student performance in order for a school to be deemed successful. In other words, schools that are doing well overall will not be considered high performing unless the minority students in that school are also doing well and showing improvement. While this idea has merit and might encourage schools to focus on improving minority student performance, it will do little to help the many schools that already serve primarily Black and Hispanic students and are not performing well. Additionally such a plan may encourage greater school segregation. Among other details of the policy, the state does not hold a school accountable for at-risk population groups if the numbers of those groups are small. If the goal is to both improve education and to encourage equality, than the relationships among poverty rates, minority enrollment, and average test scores must be acknowledged and explored. Ignoring these relationships will likely increase school segregation and encourage greater racial inequality in education. NOTES 1. Jeb Bush, http://www.flgov.com/eog/test/aplusplan/a+plan_page_ revised2000.htm. 2. George W. Bush, “President Signs Landmark No Child Left Behind Education Bill” ( January 8, 2002), retrieved January 2003, from http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020108-1.html. 3. Erica Frankenberg and Chungmei Lee, Race in American Public Schools: Rapidly Resegregating School Districts (Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project Harvard University, 2002), available at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/reseg_schools02.php#fullreport. 4. Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, “Subverting Swann: Tracking and Second Generation Segregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,” American Educational Research Journal, 38 (2001), 215-252. Kenneth J. Meier, Joseph Stewart Jr., and Robert E. England, Race, Class, and Education (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

Diversity, Desegregation, and Accountability in Florida Districts

151

5. Jeb Bush, “Reader’s Forum,” The Miami Herald, July 2003. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Florida Department of Education, “Change and Response to Change 2002” (April 2002), retrieved December 10, 2002, from http://www. firn.edu/doe/eias/eiaspubs/reports.htm. 10. Jeb Bush, http://www.flgov.com/eog/test/aplusplan/a+plan_page_ revised2000.htm. 11. David R. James and Karl E. Taeuber, “Measures of Segregation,” in N. Tuma (ed.), Sociological Methodology (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985). 12. School Advisory Council Reports, Florida Department of Education. 13. Gary Orfield, “The Growth of Segregation,” in Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton (eds.), Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: The New Press, 1996). 14. Orfield, “The Growth of Segregation”; Eric Cambum, “College Completion among Students from High Schools Located in Large Metropolitan Areas,” American Journal of Education, 98 (1990), 551–69; Patricia Gándara, “Staying in the Race,” in José F. Moreno’s (ed.), The Elusive Quest for Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Review, 1999); Linda McNeil, Contradictions of School Reform (New York: Routledge, 2000). 15. Melanie Ave, “Judge Ends Busing for School Desegregation,” St. Petersburg Times, May 3, 2001. 16. See chapter 2 for more details on the Hillsborough desegregation case. 17. Stephen Hegarty, “Federal Oversight Tough to End,” St. Petersburg Times, August 16, 1998. 18. “Bid to Stop Busing for Integration in Florida District Draws Protests,” Education Week, December 13, 2000. 19. Robert Johnston, “Hillsborough, Florida, District Declared Unitary,” Education Week, March 28, 2001. 20. In Table 5.8, Black schools in each district are defined as those schools with greater than 10 percent more Black enrollment than the percent Black in the district. 21. Jacksonville Branch, NAACP, v. Duval County School Board, 85-316Civ-J-10C (1999). 22. Ibid. 23. Mims v. Duval County School Board, 329 F. Supp. 123 (M.D. Fla. 1971). 24. NAACP v. Duval. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid.

152

TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Laura Diamond, “Race Won’t Be School Factor,” Florida TimesUnion, January 18, 2000. 30. “Diversity: In Jeopardy,” Florida Times-Union, February 25, 2001. 31. James. B. Crooks, “An Introduction to the History of Jacksonville Race Relations,” address given to the JCCI ( Jacksonville Community Council Incorporated, Improving Race Relations Study Committee, October 30, 2001. 32. Jodi Mailander, “Schools Take a Look at Desegregation,” Miami Herald, March 24, 1997. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Jay Weaver, “An Era Ends as Court Says Dade Schools Desegregated,” Miami Herald, June 30, 2001. 36. “Miami-Dade Desegregated/Court Rules County Schools No Longer Require Supervision,” Newsday, July 2, 2001. 37. Kara Vick, “Desegregation: District’s Goal Is to End 34-Year-Old Lawsuit,” Naples Daily News, November 1, 1998. 38. Dave Breitenstein, “Lee Schools’ Desegregation Lawsuit Is Settled,” Naples Daily News, July 13, 1999. 39. Vick, “Desegregation.” 40. Ibid. 41. Kara Vick, “Board Delays Submitting Request to Dissolve Desegregation Lawsuit,” Naples Daily News, October 28, 1998. 42. Kara Vick, “Plaintiffs Sign Settlement Agreement in Lee Desegregation Suit,” Naples Daily News, January 14, 1999. 43. Breitenstein, “Lee Schools’ Desegregation Lawsuit.” 44. Jennifer Booth Reed, “Task Force Moves toward School Choice Changes in Lee,” News-press.com, January 14, 2003. 45. “1 in 4 Voucher Students Abandon Plan,” Miami Herald, November 3, 2002. 46. Ibid. 47. Florida Department of Education, http://www.firn.edu/doe/schoolgrades/pdf/grade_dist0102.pdf.

CHAPTER

6

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

David Eitle Tamela McNulty Eitle In May of 2000, a seventh grade student named Nathaniel Brazill was suspended for throwing water balloons on the last day of the school year. He returned later that day to Lake Worth Middle School with his grandfather’s semiautomatic pistol and confronted a thirty-five-yearold language arts teacher, Barry Grunow, in the school’s hallway. Brazill pulled the gun, cocked it, and pointed it at Grunow’s head for eleven seconds. And then the gun fired, killing the teacher. Controversy swirled around this crime over the next year—contentious debates regarding whether the shooting was accidental or premeditated, whether the mother of Nathaniel should have taken a plea agreement, whether or not a thirteen-year-old should be charged as an adult for his alleged crime, and whether such a young teen should receive such a draconian sentence of twenty-eight years. While there were (and are) several unresolved controversies regarding this tragedy, many view this case as another example of a growing and disturbing problem in American schools. In the past decade, American towns such as Littleton, Colorado; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas, have forced their way into the American consciousness because of the horrific school shootings that have devastated these communities. And many observers interpret such school shootings as indicative of a larger problem before our nation’s schools—school violence, crime, and disorder.1 While prevailing evidence suggests that school shootings and violence

153

154

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

may be relatively stable since the 1980s, most adults agree that such behavior is an important concern in education and has detrimental consequences for our nation’s youth,2 including jeopardizing the mission of providing a quality and safe learning environment for America’s students.3 The 1999 Gallup poll on adult attitudes toward education indicate that “lack of discipline,” “fighting, violence, and gangs,” “use of drugs,” and “crime and vandalism” are four of the top six most serious concerns adults have about schools.4 These four issues rank above concerns about standards and the problem of getting good teachers. The predominant strategy that has been embraced for managing the problem of school violence and disorder has been largely based on social control principles: decrease the opportunities for offenders to violate school rules and laws and increase the punishment of offending students to deter them and others from committing future offenses. The most popular strategies include the installation of metal detectors at school entrances; the enactment of zero-tolerance policies to remove students who commit violent acts on school grounds; the use of police officers, school resource officers, and high-tech surveillance methods to monitor student behavior; and the increasing treatment of student misbehavior as criminal offenses to be handled by law enforcement.5 While evaluations of whether such strategies are equivocal and incomplete,6 the popularity of such strategies cannot be denied. Although this “get tough” ideology implies that schools—their organization, policies, physical environments, and other characteristics—can be changed and that such alterations can reduce school violence and disorder, the notion that school characteristics generally can influence school violence and disorder rates has rarely been the subject of empirical scrutiny.7 That is, while popular sentiment embraces the movement to make our schools more prisonlike in design and operation, few examine whether other school factors beyond the presence or absence of zero tolerance policies and metal detectors may affect the occurrence of school violence and disorder. Yet, many academics believe that schools can do little to reduce a problem whose causes are situated in the family and the community of the student. Laub and Lauritsen write, “conventional wisdom holds that school violence is a reflection of violence in the broader social context, that is, violence is imported into a school by the students, and by intruders from the neighborhood surrounding the school.”8 Other than decreasing the opportunity to commit such acts at school, and getting rid of those who break the law, this position

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

155

suggests that schools have little influence over the occurrence of such crimes and acts of disorder. Yet schools do differ, often substantially, in their resources, their student composition, their organization, and the community contexts wherein schools are situated. As was documented in chapter 5, there have been large shifts in the demographic composition of student populations nationally and within Florida. Resource inequities have been well documented, yet little research has examined the consequences of such inequities on student malfeasance and the attempted social control of student behavior. This chapter will contribute further to our understanding of how the nature and organization of schools and the communities they serve influence rates of school crime and disciplinary actions. The chapter is organized to address the following issues. First, we describe the problem of school disorder, both nationally and in the state of Florida. Next, we examine the nature and extent of school violence and disorder in Florida public schools, followed by a look at some of the central issues concerning the social control of school disorder. We describe the nature and distribution of disciplinary actions taken against students with respect to race and school context, both nationally and for the state of Florida. Finally, we explore the nexus between disorder, discipline, and school characteristics, including resource inequities and differences in de facto segregation (both school and community based) in Florida public schools. We specifically examine the questions of whether segregated learning environments and schools with fewer resources influence both the rates of school disorder within schools and the nature and distribution of disciplinary actions taken against students. Our charge is to describe and explore the nature of school violence and disorder, discipline, and inequity in Florida schools, but our hope is to establish a blueprint for examining these issues for other schools across the United States. This chapter contributes to a general argument forwarded by this book that the focus of accountability on student achievement is unnecessarily and unfortunately narrow. While the first year of the A+ Plan included plausible measures of disorder (the rate of suspensions and expulsions) in the accountability framework, the legislature removed those measures within a year. As a result, schools are not accountable for the environment children face every day. Examining disorder and the social control responses to student unwanted behavior is important because it affects the lives of children in ways independent of academic

156

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

achievement and because it also helps to shape the academic environment. Along with the issue of desegregation, school disorder and violence are omitted and ignored issues in Florida’s education policies. In this chapter we document both the relationship between segregation patterns and school district disorder for Florida schools and the apparent disjunction between school district disorder and discipline levels in Florida schools. This gap suggests that other factors beyond the patterns of unwanted behavior are influencing the distribution of suspensions and expulsions in Florida schools. THE PROBLEM OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE AND DISORDER Myths and evidence nationwide. A common misconception about school violence and disorder is that such crimes have only recently become a problem in American schools. As Crews and Counts note, school violence and disorder have been significant problems throughout our nation’s history of schooling.9 Indeed, Crews and Counts report that a major qualification for being hired as a teacher in seventeenth-century American schools was his or her ability to maintain order, since the teacher would often have to physically fight the larger male students for control of the classroom. Unfortunately, this practice may have exacerbated the problem of school violence rather than reduce it, illustrated by the scores of documented cases of abusive behavior committed by teachers against students.10 However, the nature of student misbehavior in twentieth-century American schools became more violent. For instance, Crews and Counts report that the typical school disturbance of schools in the 1920s and 1930s was truancy, while student misconduct in the 1940s included chewing gum, making inappropriate noises, and running in the hallways.11 Today student misbehavior is more likely to include carrying weapons to school, sexual harassment, and beatings.12 This rise in serious school crime and violence appears to parallel the rise of juvenile crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Another common misconception about school violence and disorder is that such crimes are on the rise in the past decade.13 According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2000, school crimes, including violent crimes and thefts, have actually declined (for all total crimes and thefts) or

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

157

remained relatively stable (for violent crimes) over the 1990s (from 1992 to 1998).14 While there are questions about whether school violence and disorder have been increasing over the past decade, it is undeniable that such behaviors as students carrying weapons to school, weapon-associated threats and assaults, robberies and fights are occurring at high levels at our schools,15 relative compared to other places. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, approximately half of the boys and one-quarter of the girls reported being attacked by someone at school.16 The school is the modal setting for violent victimizations among younger adolescents (aged 12–15) and second most common setting for violent acts besetting older (16–19 years old) teens.17 Snyder and Sickmund emphasize the importance of the school setting in examining adolescent crime, stating, “there is no comparable place where crimes against adults were so concentrated.”18 Teacher victimizations are also prevalent, with the recent Met Life Survey of the American Teacher (1999) finding that nearly one out of every six teachers reports being the victim of a violent act at school. Similarly, a National School Board Association survey19 found that 28 percent of all urban school districts reported student-teacher violence, with 75 percent of teachers surveyed indicating that they knew of verbal abuse against teachers in their school.20 However, it is also important to note, as Gottfredson and Gottfredson did, that most personal victimizations that occur at school are minor—that serious victimizations are relatively rare.21 And as is the case with the distribution of crime in the community, property crime is a far more common occurrence on school grounds than any form of violent crime.22 According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 46.3 percent and 37.5 percent of high school males have had property damaged or stolen at school in the past month, with a corresponding rate for females of between 31.6 percent and 21.5 percent.23 Finally, indications are that alcohol and drug use on school grounds is a significant problem, with 7 percent of males and 4 percent of females reporting using alcohol on school grounds in the past month, while 9 percent of males and 5 percent of females admitted to using marijuana at school in the past month.24 Logically, selling drugs is also a problem that prevails on our nation’s campuses, with 32 percent of high school students reporting that drugs were made available to them on school property in the past year.25

158

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

While the evidence overwhelming supports the belief that school crime is a significant social problem that confronts students, teachers, and administrators, there are indicators that less-serious student problem behavior—behavior that does not rise to the threshold of being labeled criminal—is a significant concern as well. For example, the school crime supplemental report of the National Crime Victimization Survey (1995) revealed that 13 percent of students reported that they were called a hate-related word or name and 36 percent reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school. Research also suggests that classroom disruption is more prevalent than in the past, with such disruption interrupting teaching in a majority of both eighth and twelfth grade classrooms.26 School crime and disorder in Florida. While the aforementioned research provides important insights into the problem of school crime and disorder, they provide little information about variations in such behaviors across school districts or within a single state.27 Indeed, the nature and extent of school crime and disorder in the state of Florida has received relatively little attention. Fortunately, the state of Florida has made available information about student malfeasance from each of its sixty-seven public school districts for each school year since 1997–1998.28 Based on data reported through their School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting (SESIR) system, we provide a brief summary of the problem of school crime and disorder in Florida for a three-year span. As Figure 6.1 clearly indicates, the rate of crime incidents on school grounds across Florida public schools decreased slightly during this three-year period, with the exception of the disorderly conduct rate, which declined approximately 54 percent in 1999–2000 from the prior school year. However, this change was likely due to a change, from prior years, in the state’s definition of what types of disruptive events should be reported—schools were instructed to only report acts that substantially disrupted class or campus functions.29 For example, the Gadsden County public school district reported a disorderly conduct rate of 405.11 incidents per 1,000 students in the 1998–1999 school year. After the definitions changed, the same school district reported a disorderly conduct rate of 5.19 incidents per 1,000 students—a decrease of 98.7 percent! Other than disruptive events, most categories of crime incidents enjoyed steady decreases during this three-year period: rates of violent

FIGURE 6.1 Florida Public School Crime Rates: 1997–2000

160

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

acts against persons declined by approximately 9 percent; rates of substance use acts declined by almost 29 percent; rates of property destruction acts decreased by over 23 percent; and rates of fighting on campus declined by 3 percent. Of the major categories of crime incidents occurring at Florida schools, only harassment incident rates experienced an increase over the three-year period with increases of 21 percent. However, state officials aptly point out that in light of the recent school shootings in the 1990s, school officials may be taking student threats and intimidations more seriously than in the past, implying the increase may be a reporting artifact.30 While these data indicate that school crime in Florida is declining, the distribution of the type of events that occurred during the school year remained stable (with the exception of the aforementioned disorderly conduct acts). In the 1999-2000 school year, fighting (with 38 percent of all reported incidents) and disorderly conduct acts (20%) comprised the majority of school crime incidents reported to the state. Substance use acts (10%), harassment acts (9%), property acts (9%), and violent acts (8%) constituted relatively similar proportions of campus incidents. The remaining incidents included other nonviolent acts (4%) and weapons possession offenses (2 percent of all reported incidents). THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF SCHOOL DISORDER— DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS Objectives. Disciplinary actions have always been a dominant strategy used to control student conduct in American schools.31 At the heart of the use of discipline to control student conduct is the general perception that teachers will not be able to accomplish instructional objectives if they fail to control student behavior.32 Further, the ability to identify and discipline disruptive students quickly is viewed as a key trait of successful teachers.33 Clearly, the use of discipline to marshal the behavior of unruly youth is reflective of a general belief in American culture of the necessity of such reactive actions to socialize children. Indeed, Nichols, Ludwin, and Iadicola34 note that discipline concerns have been found to be the most important problem confronting public schools identified by sixteen annual Gallup polls.35 While discipline and schooling have always been closely intertwined,36 the line defining acceptable versus unacceptable use of disciplinary strategies to maintain control or punish unruly students has

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

161

been much more difficult to define. Compared to contemporary standards of what constitutes abusive behavior, many of the actions that teachers and schoolmasters historically used in the name of discipline would clearly be defined as criminal. And many of these responses involved inflicting physical pain on the student—corporal punishment. Spitting on the floor or leaving one’s seat without permission, for example, might garner lashes from the teacher in seventeenth-century American schools.37 Nineteenth-century disciplinary actions were as severe, with such punishments as being forced to wear a necklace of sharp weed burrs for the school term (if one dropped his or her head in class), being locked in closets (for whispering), or being tied to a chair for hours.38 Indeed, the problem of abusive behavior by teachers toward students led to the dissolution of almost four hundred schools across Massachusetts because of disciplinary problems, including one school that averaged sixty-five floggings a day with a student enrollment of 250.39 In the latter half of the twentieth century, the use of physical painbased disciplinary actions against students came under increasing ethical and legal scrutiny, with the U.S. Supreme Court attempting to balance the interests of the school administrators and teachers in maintaining control and order in the classroom versus the rights of the student. The landmark case defining the constitutionality of corporal punishment in schools, Ingraham v. Wright, involved a Dade County student by the name of James Ingraham. Ingraham, fourteen-yearsold, was paddled so severely that his injuries resulted in a hematoma requiring a physician’s care and prescription painkillers, a laxative, sleeping pills, ice packs, and a week of bed rest.40 Despite the gravity of the resulting injuries, the court ruled that corporal punishment in principle is not in violation of the Eighth Amendment (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment) and that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require the school to provide the student (and parents) with a notification of charges and an informal hearing prior to receiving corporal punishment. While the Ingraham case did not find corporal punishment to be unconstitutional, the use of physical force to punish students appears to be waning—corporal punishment is prohibited in twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia and outlawed in all continental European countries, Israel, and Puerto Rico.41 Furthermore, research on corporal punishment suggests that its use is both ineffective and possibly counterproductive.42 Many educators agree, arguing that corporal punishment

162

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

dehumanizes the school environment and actually supports, rather than alleviates, disruptive and rebellious behavior in schools.43 Today, there exists a vast array of strategies that can and are used to control and respond to student misbehavior, including the more commonly-used strategies of corporal punishment, suspensions (both in school and out of school) and expulsions.44 While corporal punishment has a more entrenched tradition in American school practices, suspensions and expulsions are the predominant strategies used today to respond to students who engage in significant disruptive behavior or criminal conduct. Although the use of suspensions and expulsions may not be as conspicuous among the public as the issues regarding corporal punishment, the use of suspensions and expulsions, both in principle and in practice, have raised concerns among many educators and scholars alike. Costenbader and Markson note the research arguing that suspensions produce or are associated with adverse consequences for students.45 These consequences include maladaptive behaviors that were not the original source of the punishment, like withdrawal or reduction in commitment to school,46 increased disengagement from course materials,47 retardation of academic development,48 displacement of the problem from the school to the streets,49 increases in the likelihood of grade retention,50 dropping out,51 and drug use.52 Race and disciplinary actions. One particular concern about the employment of the aforementioned disciplinary actions is whether such forms of social control are administered fairly. A number of studies that have examined the use of suspensions and expulsions have found that minority students are disproportionately the recipients of such disciplinary actions,53 with findings suggesting that Black students are as much as two times more likely to be suspended than White students.54 Eyler, Cook, and Ward observed that Black students receive longer suspensions and are more likely to be suspended multiple times.55 The origin of disproportionate suspension rates is a heated controversy. Many argue that the disparity in disciplinary actions reflects the disproportionate involvement in school crime and disruptive behavior by minority students.56 Others suggest that different factors have played a role in this pattern as well, including racist attitudes and more negative expectations for Black students among teachers,57 White teachers’ being out of “cultural sync” with Black students and

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

163

being unable to communicate effectively with them,58 and even that suspensions are consciously and deliberately used in a discriminatory fashion as a kind of tool to accomplish what Meier, Stewart, and England refer to as “second-generation school discrimination”59—a means to segregate within court-ordered desegregated schools via isolation or even by encouraging dropping out.60 Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of comprehensive research on the use of suspensions generally,61 let alone studies investigating the factors that explain the race gap in suspension rates. Disciplinary actions in Florida. Consistent with the dearth of research at the national level, there has been very little systematic evaluation of disciplinary actions in Florida schools—even very little descriptive information about the nature and extent of such actions. An exception is Raffaele’s analysis of out-of-school suspensions in Hillsborough County.62 Similar to the aforementioned research nationally examining the association between race and suspensions, Raffaele reports that Black students were overrepresented in being the recipients of such actions, comprising 44 percent of the suspension recipients while comprising only 24 percent of the student population. She also reports that neighboring Pinellas County had a similar disparity in the overrepresentation of Black students among suspension recipients, with Black students comprising 18 percent of the student population but 36.4 percent of the suspensions.63 The most common reasons for receiving outof-school suspensions, according to Raffaele, was for disobedience, which includes “insubordination, disorderly conduct, disrespectful, disruptive, inappropriate behavior, noncompliance with discipline, and profanity.”64 Finally, Raffaele reports the results of an ordinary leastsquares (OLS) regression of various factors regressed on school suspension rates. She found that the largest predictors of suspension rates for middle and high schools include the following: mean scores on the FCAT writing test, the percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch, the percent of students who are White, the percent of new staff, and the percent of students who are Black.65 Additionally, the Florida Department of Education collects information on the use of disciplinary actions such as suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishment. Based on data reported through their School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting (SESIR) system, we provide a brief summary of the disciplinary actions in Florida public schools in the following paragraphs.

164

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

Figure 6.2 illustrates an important relationship between the use of corporal punishment and out-of-school suspensions in Florida schools from 1985–1999. While the use of corporal punishment dropped in the late 1980s, schools’ use of suspensions more than doubled in the last fifteen years of the twentieth century. Clearly, school districts in Florida are moving away from the use of corporal punishment and in turn, relying more upon suspensions to respond to student disruptive behavior. In fact, a recent report from the Florida Department of Education notes that corporal punishment is more likely to be used in smaller, rural school districts, with the large, urban school districts largely discontinuing its use as a common disciplinary tactic.66 While the use of corporal punishment is becoming obsolete among Florida schools, the sharp rise in the use of out-of-school suspensions warrants a more concerted examination. Beyond the explanation that the use of suspensions is a replacement for corporal punishment, parallel trends in Florida schools may provide additional insight into this trend. First, the rise in the use of suspensions appears, at first glance, to suggest that the use of such disciplinary actions is accomplishing its objective—one could argue it is the reason for the reduction in reported school crimes and disorder acts between 1997 and 1999. The rate of school crime incidents reported to the state Department of Education dropped almost five percent from the 1997–1998 to the 1999–2000 school year,67 while the use of suspensions has marginally increased during this period. The increase has been in the use of in-school suspensions, which rose from a rate of 314.64 actions per 1,000 high school students in 1998–1999 to 363.4 actions per 1,000 high school students in 1999–2000 (with elementary and junior high schools in Florida reporting similar patterns). During this time, the rate of out-of-school suspension use declined, but the rate of change was smaller than the increase in the use of in-school suspensions, so overall, suspensions are being used at a higher rate than previously. However, we caution against such a simple explanation. Another major trend that parallels the use of suspensions in Florida schools that must be considered is the growth in the size of the minority student population. From 1976 to 1999, the overall student population grew approximately 54.5 percent.68 However, much of this increase was due to the 139 percent increase in minority students attending Florida public schools during this period. In comparison, White student enrollment only increased 18.5 percent during this same period. While race-specific suspension data was not available over this time period,

Source: Florida Department of Education, 2001, 2005, Florida Information Note: Trends in Discipline and the Decline in the Use of Corporal Punishment. Publications 2001-13F, 2005-24F.

FIGURE 6.2 Use of Corporal Punishment and Suspensions in Florida Public Schools, 1985–1999

166

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

the rise in the use of out-of-school suspensions of approximately 115 percent from 1985–1999 is clearly more congruous with the rise in the minority student enrollment than the rate of increase in White student enrollment. While the similarity in the slope increases for suspensions and minority enrollment is consistent with what others have found regarding race and suspensions,69 these data do not shed any light on whether the association is due to the discriminatory use of suspensions or the increased involvement of minority students in disruptive and criminal conduct (or a combination of the two). Surprisingly, there is not an obvious relationship between the rates of student misconduct incidents, on the one hand, and suspension rates, on the other. Districts reporting the highest rates of student misconduct are, with two exceptions, not the districts suspending students at the highest rates. Table 6.1 presents the rankings of the top ten school districts in Florida in terms of school incident rates and both inschool and out-of-school suspension rates for the 1999–2000 school year. Prior research has demonstrated that minor infractions of school rules are the major reasons for out-of-school suspensions being meted out,70 including research conducted in Hillsborough County public schools. One must suspect, therefore, that the causes of suspension rates in Florida, including disproportionate rates, are not a rational response to student behavior.71 TABLE 6.1 Rankings of Florida School Districts by Incident and Suspension Rates (1999–2000)

Ranking

School Crime Incident Rate

Out-of-School Suspension Rate (Middle Schools)

Out-of-school Suspension Rate (High Schools)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Jackson Palm Beach Gadsden Hamilton Osceola Lee Indian River Dade Putnam Lafayette

Jefferson Duval Hardee Gadsden Taylor Polk Marion Escambia St. Lucie Osceola

Jefferson Duval Okeechobee Gadsden Marion Escambia Osceola Brevard St. Lucie Pinellas

Note: Excludes disorderly conduct incidents.

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

167

EQUITY, SCHOOL DISORDER, AND DISCIPLINE IN FLORIDA The notion that inequality is associated with criminal behavior has deep roots in criminology. Since the seminal work of Merton,72 criminologists have attempted to understand how structured inequality promotes criminal behavior among the disadvantaged. Two major conditions, albeit interwoven, are salient to the discussion of the antecedents of school crime: resource deprivation and segregation (typically racial). Resource deprivation research examines whether such factors as poverty, unemployment, lack of institutions, among others, are associated with crime rates. Segregation research examines whether structured isolation inspires higher crime rates among the segregated, independent of resources. However, most of this research has only examined how neighborhood disadvantage or residential segregation is associated with high crime rates. Relatively little research has explored whether structured inequality within schools is predictive of school crime and disorder.73 Of the research examining the link between community resource deprivation and crime, the dominant theoretical foundation is social disorganization theory.74 The essence of social disorganization theory is that a community beset by conditions of economic dependence, population turnover, and heterogeneity is essentially unable to come together as a community to solve its problems (including the social control of adolescents). The lack of social cohesion and social control that stems from impoverished communities produces high rates of crime and disorder. Several studies that have examined the association between disadvantaged communities and crime rates have found evidence of a strong relationship.75 Research examining the association between racial residential segregation and certain indicators of crime has found evidence of a relationship.76 One (or both) of two explanations is generally applied to make sense of the finding of increased racial segregation generating higher crime rates: relative deprivation theory77 or a version of social control theory.78 The former emphasizes how structured inequality generates crime by creating frustration and aggression among disadvantaged groups, while the latter focuses on the role that segregation plays in weakening bonds between disadvantaged groups and the conventional normative structure that ordinarily serves to restrain selfserving tendencies. Each of these explanations is compatible with the

168

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

social disorganization framework outlined previously. Again, very little research has examined the relationship between residential- or schoolbased segregation patterns and school crime. In the following analyses, we examine whether variations in resources (and other school characteristics) and school segregation are predictive of crime rates for school districts in the state of Florida. Further, we control for community factors to provide a context for evaluating the association between the segregation measures and school crime rates, since conventional wisdom suggests that community characteristics should explain variations in school crime and disorder.79 Additionally, we evaluate whether these same factors are predictive of school suspension rates. Clearly, one would expect a logical association between school crimes and suspensions. However, research suggests that minority students are more likely to receive suspensions than White students80 and that increased use of suspensions is associated with the implementation of court-ordered school desegregation.81 Thus, we examine whether school characteristics and organization (in the form of de facto segregation) is predictive of suspension rates, independent of community characteristics. School factors. To capture variation in resources and other relevant school characteristics, we rely upon the conceptual framework of school climate research. Research exploring how school characteristics can contribute to school crime and disorder has investigated how school climate is associated with such student problems.82 School climate refers to those distinct characteristics that serve to define the parameters of appropriate behavior among its constituents. Important aspects of schools include its culture (values, norms, and attitudes that characterize interactions, including clarity of rules and enforcement practices), organizational structure (administrative structure, including salaries, classroom size, student-teacher ratio, overall school enrollment), and social milieu (background characteristics of school constituents).83 Consistent with prior studies entailing school climate, this analysis includes previously used measures of the different characteristics that comprise school climate. We use principal components analysis as a data reduction strategy to produce factor scores for three dimensions of school climate: school culture, organizational structure, and social milieu. School culture was derived from two measures: the percentage of students absent twentyone or more days and the percent of eighth and tenth grade students

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

169

who scored level 3, 4, or 5 on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Tests (FCAT)—scores below a three are considered unacceptable according to state standards (and both chapters 5 and 9 use the same criterion in analyzing student achievement). School attendance rates have been argued to be a measure of students’ attachment to school and belief in conventional rules, two important aspects of school culture.84 Likewise, academic achievement, as measured by standardized tests such as the FCAT, may capture a student’s attachment and commitment to school85 and whether an academic ethos exists in the school district,86 constructs which are logically connected to a school’s culture. Larger factor scores indicate lower attachment and commitment to school. School organizational structure captures closely resource inequities between school districts. We use two measures to capture such variations: average school size and average class size. One can argue that school size is associated with school crime from a social control perspective. Larger schools are more difficult to monitor and, all things being equal, provide more opportunities for motivated offenders to commit criminal acts.87 Average class size is plausibly related to school crime because of both decreased supervision and diminished quality and attention paid to individual students in larger classes.88 Larger factor scores indicate fewer school resources. Finally, we described the school social milieu using two measures: the school’s percentage of minority students, and the school’s percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches. Both of these measures have been suggested as pivotal aspects of the social milieu.89 Larger factor scores indicate a greater proportion of disadvantaged groups in the school district. Community-level factors. We examine the influence of three important community characteristics in our analyses: population density, residential segregation and percent of female-headed households. Each has been found to predictive of overall crime patterns90 and each is a representative proxy of community disadvantage. Segregation measures. The measure of school-district segregation is the index of dissimilarity. It is a commonly used measure of segregation that is easily interpreted as the proportion of all students (White versus nonWhite) who must be transferred in order for the percent minority in each school to be equivalent to the percent minority in the entire school district. Likewise, the index of dissimilarity for the community (county)

170

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

is interpreted as the proportion of residents (White versus non-White) who must move in order for the percent minority in each census tract in the county to be equivalent to the percent minority in the entire county. Table 6.2 presents the descriptive information for each of the variables considered in these analyses. Results We report the summaries of several regression analyses examining the associations between school and community factors and the school district crime rates in Table 6.3.This table includes the results of ordinary least-squares regressions at the county level. Of the school climate variables, both school organization and social milieu predict school crime in the direction anticipated (Model 1). Schools with fewer resources at their disposal have greater problems with students, even after controlling for the student composition (or milieu). Furthermore, these associations remain stable when the measure of school district segregation is included in the analysis (as in Model 2). School-based segregation does not have a significant association with school district crime rates in this model. However, when community-level measures are included in the analyses, school-based segregation helps predict school district crime rates. What is unexpected is the direction of this association— the greater the integration of schools across a district, the higher the school district crime rate, controlling for other factors. This caveat is important, because the association between school-based segregation and lower crime rates is revealed only in the context of community characteristics. Subsequent analyses (not shown) reveal that the important contextual factor for exposing this association is the level of residential segregation in the county. And as these analyses reveal, the strongest predictor of a district’s school crime rate is the level of residential segregation. All things being equal, counties with relatively segregated residential patterns have the highest school crime rates. This finding is consistent with prior research that found residential segregation patterns to be positively associated with community crime rates. Additionally, the proportion of female-headed households was also found to have a positive association with school crime rates. Overall, the community-level measures were stronger predictors of school crime rates than school characteristics. We report the results of regression analyses examining the associations between school and community factors and the school district

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

171

suspension rates in Table 6.4. Of the school climate variables, including the measure of school resources (school organizational factors), none are significant predictors of suspension rates (Model 1). This pattern holds when the measure of school district segregation is included in the analysis (Model 2). Only school-based segregation is found to be a predictor of school district suspension rates. Again, the more segregated a district is, the lower its overall suspension rates. This association remains unchanged when controlling for community factors (Model 3) and provides some limited support for those who interpret suspensions as a form of resegregation.91 Indeed, unlike the pattern of findings revealed in Table 6.3, none of the community factors have a significant association with school suspension rates. Only the extent of segregation in the school district predicts the dependent variable. However, the proportion of variance explained by the models in Table 6.4 suggests that important predictors of school district suspension rates have been omitted from the analyses. CONCLUSION The effects of inequity between schools and school segregation on students have been the subject of numerous studies over the past half-century. However, relatively scant attention has focused on the potential impact that such inequities may have on student misbehavior and the schools’ social control response to such malfeasance. In this chapter, we documented the nature and distribution of both school crimes and disciplinary actions across Florida public schools. Furthermore, we examined whether measures of school resources and school-based segregation were predictive of school district crime rates and suspension rates, in the context of other school and community characteristics. Our analyses revealed both an expected and a somewhat unexpected association between the dependent variables and measures of school inequality. While our research found that school resources predicted school district crime rates, independent of the characteristics of the students who attend such schools, we also found a negative association between the extent of segregation that exists in a school district and the crime and suspension rates for that school district, controlling for other factors. Making sense of the association between school segregation and school crime is somewhat daunting, but we believe that the key to explaining such a relationship begins with the necessity to consider the

Min. 0.56

0.04 -1.91

-2.25

Variable

School Crime Rate

School Suspension Rate

School Organization

School Culture

2.58

2.48

0.42

122.89

Max.

0.00

0.00

0.20

48.31

1.00

1.00

0.09

27.29

Standard Mean Deviation

(continued on next page)

Factor score of school culture derived from two measures: the percentage of students absent twenty-one or more days and the percent of students (8th and 10th graders) who scored level 3, 4, or 5 on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Tests (FCAT).

Factor score of school organizational resources derived from two measures: average school size in the district and average classroom size (language and arts classes) in the district.

Total school district suspensions per student.

Total school district crime incidents per 1,000 students reported including the following types of acts: homicide, rape, robbery, larceny-theft, arson, vandalism, assault, drug and alcohol offenses, fighting and harassment, and motor vehicle theft. Disorderly conduct acts were not included in the calculation of this rate.

Description

TABLE 6.2 Descriptive Statistics for Florida School District and County Variables (1999–2000)*

0.02

0.04

School-Based Segregation

County Residential Segregation

8.33

1516.4

0.22

0.53

0.54

2.77

Max.

*County variables taken from the 2000 census.

Population Density

0.07

-2.06

School Social Milieu

Proportion Female-Headed Households

Min.

Variable

TABLE 6.2 (continued)

222.86

0.11

0.31

0.25

0.00

313.00

0.03

0.11

0.13

1.00

Standard Mean Deviation

Average number of County residents per square mile

Proportion of county households headed by females with children.

Index of dissimilarity for White versus minority residents for the county

Index of dissimilarity for White students versus minority students for the school district.

Factor score of school social milieu derived from two measures: percentage of students receiving free or reduced-priced lunches and percent of students who are minority race/ethnicity.

Description

TABLE 6.3 Standardized OLS Regression, Florida (1999–2000) (n=67) Independent Variable School Climate Measures School organization School culture School milieu

Model 1

0.218+ -0.012 0.359*

Segregation Measures School district segregation County residential segregation County-level Controls Proportion female-headed households Population density Adjusted R2 .10

Model 2

Model 3

0.228+ -0.009 0.353*

0.266+ -0.065 0.217

-0.054

-0.305* 0.438**

.09

0.327* -0.245 .21

+ p < .10 (two-tailed tests) * p < .05 (two-tailed tests) ** p < .01 (two-tailed tests)

TABLE 6.4 Standardized OLS Regression Coefficients Predicting Florida School District Suspension Rates (1999–2000) (n=67) Independent Variable School Climate Measures School organization School culture School milieu

Model 1

0.034 -0.023 0.255

Segregation Measures School district segregation County residential segregation County-level Controls Proportion female-headed households Population density Adjusted R2 .01 + p < .10 (two-tailed tests) * p < .05 (two-tailed tests)

Model 2

Model 3

0.091 -0.007 0.225

0.229 -0.039 0.134

-0.286*

-0.282+ -0.012

.08

0.225 -0.184 .08

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

175

context in which such an association was found. Residential segregation patterns also help predict of school crime rates. One can expect that school districts that have students who live in segregated communities and are placed in desegregated learning environments will have the highest district crime rates. Students in such contexts are faced with a sort of clash between worlds—the segregated world where they reside, in which they are exposed to homogeneity and little diversity, and the integrated world where they go to school, in which they are exposed to heterogeneity and great diversity. It is not surprising that in such contexts desegregation, which has often been implemented as racial balance rather than equal access to educational opportunity, might generate feelings of resentment, anger, suspicion, and a bevy of other emotions that may ignite aggressive and criminal behavior. Indeed, it should be expected. Furthermore, it should be reiterated that school districts with fewer resources have higher crime rates, so that the grand picture painted from these findings is that districts that serve disadvantaged communities and have fewer resources in the schools have the highest crime rates. Understanding the association between the school-based segregation measure and school district suspension rates is a little more straightforward, given Meier, Stewart, and England’s research.92 They suggested that suspensions may be used as a type of strategy to accomplish what they refer to as second-generation school discrimination— a means to segregate within schools via isolation or even by encouraging dropping out. This thesis implies that only under conditions of relative integration in school districts would there be pressure on school administrators and other personnel to employ such methods in a discriminatory fashion. Indeed, additional analyses (not shown) provide additional support for the second-generation school discrimination hypothesis. Including school district crime rates in the model predicting school district suspension rates not only failed to change any of the associations found in Model 3 of Table 6.4, but the school district crime rate itself was not predictive of the school district suspension rate. This result suggests that the bulk of the behaviors that trigger suspensions are not crimes but acts of less serious misbehavior, an assumption consistent with prior studies of suspension.93 And given that the level of segregation in a school district remains a significant predictor of district suspension rates even with the school district crime rate included as a predictor, further exploration of the second-generation discrimination hypothesis is clearly warranted.

176

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

A major limitation of these analyses and their interpretations (including construing the findings to be supportive of Meier et al.’s second-generation discrimination thesis) is that neither measure of the dependent variable (crime nor suspension rates) was disaggregated by race. That is, our findings cannot directly support the notion that desegregated school districts predict surges in minority suspension rates, as is implied by Meier et al.’s second-generation discrimination thesis. However, our measure of school social milieu (derived from percent minority students and percent poor students) does provide an important context for considering whether school district-based segregation predicts overall suspension rates. Clearly there is a need for further research that examines these associations with race-disaggregated data. The specific policy implications derived from the portrait of crime and disciplinary actions in Florida public schools painted by this chapter should minimally include the need for teachers, school administrators, and the state of Florida itself to more carefully consider the consequences of resource inequities and de facto segregation on students beyond the typical concerns of academic achievement and graduation. Inequities in educational opportunities affect students in myriad, interrelated ways. Our research suggests that school factors, including resource differentials, do matter in predicting student misbehavior, beyond the communities that students reside in and beyond the characteristics of the students themselves. De facto segregation also has unexpected consequences for student disorder rates, in the context of other disadvantages that students experience. In this latter regard, we suggest that cultural sensitivity and diversity courses added to curriculums seem a logical first step for combating the effects of mixing students who come from segregated communities. Furthermore, these findings suggest that school boards and administrators need to more carefully and systematically monitor teachers and others in charge of discipline to assess whether being Black is a factor that triggers the use of suspensions in integrated schools. This is particularly important in light of recent findings by Jones and Jones that 90 percent of all discipline referrals were made by only 5 percent of teachers,94 as well as Meier, Stewart, and England’s analyses that revealed negative relationships between the percent Black teachers in a district and the corporal punishment, suspension, and expulsion of Black students.95 It may be the case that a small number of teachers are catalysts in a process that ends up leading to the discriminatory treatment of minority students.

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

177

And given the changing nature of school districts in Florida—their increasing diversity, the rollback of court-ordered desegregation practices, zero tolerance policies, and the statewide evaluations of schools on the basis of student performance on standardized tests—the need for a closer and more systematic scrutiny of disciplinary actions has never been more timely. This chapter has documented the nature and distribution of two often-overlooked forms of student and institutional behavior in the school equity literature—student disorder rates and disciplinary actions. Using data on Florida public schools and their communities, we found that contrary to conventional wisdom, schools do matter in understanding rates of school crime and disorder, and educational inequities have multiple consequences for students. Consistent with the larger theme of this book, our results raise questions about the efficacy of narrowly framed educational policies such as the evaluation of schools on the basis of student standardized test performance. Such policies that do not consider the role of both school and community inequities may not be successful in accomplishing the objective of raising the quality of the learning environment for students, if an integral part of that learning environment is a safe school in which discipline is fairly administered. NOTES 1. It should be noted, however, that less than 1 percent of all homicides involving juveniles occur on school grounds (NCES 2000)—juveniles are at much greater risk for being killed in the community than at school. 2. P. M. Kingery, M. B. Coggeshall, and A A. Alford, “Violence at School: Recent Evidence from Four National Surveys,” Psychology in the Schools 35 (1998). 3. Ibid. 4. L. C. Rose and A. M. Gallup , “The 31st Annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan (September 1999), 46. 5. P. A. Noguera, “Preventing and Producing Violence: A Critical Review Analysis of Responses to School Violence,” Harvard Educational Review, 65 (1995). 6. D. C. Gottfredson, Schools and Delinquency (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 7. W. W. Welsh, R. Stokes, and J. R. Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 27 (2000).

178

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

8. J. H. Laub and J. L. Lauritsen, “The Interdependence of School Violence with Neighborhood and Family Conditions,” in D. S. Elliott, B. Hamburg, and K. R. Williams (eds.), Violence in American Schools (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 127. 9. G. A. Crews and M .R. Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance in America: Colonial Times to Modern Day (Westport CT: Praeger, 1997). 10. Ibid.; Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983). 11. Crews and Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance. 12. National Center for Education Statistics, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2000 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 2000). 13. M. B. Coggeshall and P. M. Kingery, “Cross-Survey Analysis of School Violence and Disorder,” Psychology in the Schools 38 (2001); M. Furlong and R. Morrison, “Status Update of Research Related to National Goal Seven: School Violence Content Area,” in R. Talley and G. Walz (eds.), Safe Schools, Safe Students (Washington, DC: The National Education Goals Panel and the National Alliance of Pupil Services Organizations, 1996). 14. M. Furlong and R. Morrison, “Status Update of Research.” 15. P. M Kingery, M. B. Coggeshall, and A .A. Alford, “Violence at School”; D. S. Elliot, B. Hamburg, and K. R. Williams, eds., Violence in American Schools. 16. Centers for Disease Control, Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Morbidity and Mortality Report (Atlanta: Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 1993). 17. T. R. Simon, A. E. Crosby, and L. L. Dahlberg, “Students Who Carry Weapons to High School,” Journal of Adolescent Health 24 (1999). 18. H. N. Snyder and M. Sickmund, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: A Focus on Violence (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 1995). 19. National School Board Association, Violence in the Schools (Alexandria: National School Boards Association, 1993 ). 20. However, other data sources (i.e., NCES 2000) suggest that the violent crime rate for teachers on school grounds is much lower (2.4 to 4 percent), particularly for serious violent crime (.3 to .5 percent). 21. G. Gottfredson and D. Gottfredson, Victimization in Schools (New York: Plenum, 1985). 22. P. M Kingery, M. B. Coggeshall, and A. A. Alford, “Violence at School.” 23. Centers for Disease Control, Youth Risk Behavior Survey. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice, 2000 Annual Report on School Safety (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2000).

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

179

27. The major exceptions to the lack of variation in describing school disorder in other reports include school location (urban, suburban, and rural), level of schooling (elementary, middle, and high), and public versus private schools. 28. Florida Department of Education, Florida Information Note: Trends in Discipline and the Decline in the Use of Corporal Punishment (Series 200113F, 2001), available from http://firn.edu/doe/eias/eiaspubs/fin01_13.htm. 29. Florida Department of Education, Statewide Report on School Safety and Discipline Data (2001). 30. Ibid. 31. I. A. Hyman, E. McDowell, and B. Raines, “Corporal Punishment and Alternatives in the Schools,” in J. Wise (ed.), Proceedings: Conference on Corporal Punishment in the Schools (Washington, DC: National Institute of Education, 1977). 32. J. Brophy and C. Everston, Learning From Teaching: A Developmental Perspective (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1976); J .D. Nichols, W. G. Ludwin, and P. Iadicola, “A Darker Shade of Grey: A Year-End Analysis of Discipline and Suspension Data,” Equity and Excellence in Education 32 (1999); W. Mansfield, D. Alexander, and E. Farris, Teacher Survey on Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free Schools (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Statistics, 1991). 33. F. Redl, “Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom,” School Review 83 (1975). 34. Nichols, Ludwin, and Iadicola, “A Darker Shade of Grey.” 35. Hyman, McDowell, and Raines, “Corporal Punishment.” 36. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic. 37. Crews and Counts, The Evolution of School Disturbance. 38. Ibid.; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic. 39. K. Baker and R. Rubel, Violence and Crime in the Schools (Lexington: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath, 1980). 40. Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977). 41. American Academy of Pediatrics, “Corporal Punishment in Schools,” 2001, available online as part of the 2001 legislative affairs packet at http://www.aap.org/advocacy/01statelegrpt.pdf. 42. A. F. Bongiovanni, “An Analysis of Research on Punishment and Its Relation to the Use of Corporal Punishment in the Schools,” in I. Hyman and J. Wise (eds.), Corporal Punishment in American Education (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979); R. S. Welsh, “Delinquency, Corporal Punishment, and the Schools,” Crime and Delinquency 24 (1978); R. A. Lawrence, School Crime and Juvenile Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 43. J. H. Ballantine, The Sociology of Education (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001). 44. Meier, Stewart, and England (1989) aptly note that while other forms of discipline such as verbal reprimands or being sent to an administra-

180

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

tor are more commonly used than corporal punishment or suspensions/expulsions, these forms of discipline are generally not recorded, while corporal punishment and suspensions/expulsions actions are compiled by such sources as the Office of Civil Rights. K. J. Meier, J. Stewart Jr., and R.E. England, Race, Class, and Education (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). 45. V. Costenbader and S. Markson, “School Suspension,” Journal of School Psychology 36 (1998). 46. J. Lovey, J. Docking, and R. Evans, “Excluded from School,” International Journal of Adolescence and Youth 4 (1994). 47. P. Lipman, Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 48. Ibid. 49. C. A. Hudley, “The Reduction of Childhood Aggression Using the Brainpower Program,” in M. Furlong and D. Smith (eds.), Anger, Hostility and Aggression (Brandon: Clinical Psychology, 1994); N. Radin, “Alternatives to Suspension and Corporal Punishment,” Urban Education 22 (1988). 50. D. Safer, “Nonpromotion Correlates and Outcomes at Different Grade Levels,” Journal of Learning Disabilities 19 (1986). 51. W. Velez, “High School Attrition among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Youths,” Sociology of Education 62 (1989). 52. R. Swartz and P. Wirtz, “Potential Substance Abuse,” Clinical Pediatrics 29 (1990). 53. Costenbader and Markson, “School Suspension”; Lipman, Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring; A. McFadden, G. Marsh, B. Price, and Y. Hwang, “A Study of Race and Gender Bias in the Punishment of School Children,” Education and Treatment of Children 15 (1992); E. Moore, “Message from the Executive Director,” Black Child Advocate 14 (1987); P. Ordovensky, “Florida, Maryland Suspend Most Students,” USA Today, December 12, 1988, sec. D-1; R. Reed, “Education and Achievement of Young Black Males,” in J. Gibb (ed.), Young, Black, and Male in America (Dover: Auburn House, 1988); J. L. Streitmatter, “Ethnic/Racial and Gender Equity in School Suspensions,” The High School Journal 69 (1986). 54. Meier, Stewart and England, Race, Class, and Education; Moore, “Message from the Executive Director”; Ordovensky, “Florida, Maryland Suspend Most Students.” 55. J. Eyler, V. Cook, and L.E. Ward, “Resegregation: Segregation within Desegregated Schools,” in C. H. Rossell and W. D. Hawley (eds.), The Consequences of School Desegregation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). 56. E. T. Gordon, E. W. Gordon, and J. G. Nembhard, “Disproportionate Involvement of Black Males in Violence and Violent Behaviors,” Journal of Negro Education 63 (1994). 57. C. E. Sleeter, ed., Empowerment Through Multicultural Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); B. D. Tatum, “Teaching

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

181

White Students about Racism,” Teachers College Record, 95 (1994). 58 J. J. Irvine, Black Students and School Failure (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990); Lipman, Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring; Nichols, Ludwin, Iadicola, “A Darker Shade of Grey.” 59. Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class, and Education. 60. Ibid. 61. Costenbader and Markson, “School Suspension.” 62. L. M. Raffaele, An Analysis of Out-of-School Suspensions in Hillsborough County (Tampa: Hillsborough Constituency for Children, 1999). 63. Ibid., 93. 64. Ibid., 94. 65. Ibid,, 76. 66. Florida Department of Education, Statewide Report on School Safety and Discipline Data. 67. This change excludes the category of disorderly conduct incidents. See the discussion of that change earlier in this chapter. 68. Florida Department of Education, Statewide Report on School Safety and Discipline Data. 69. Costenbader and Markson, “School Suspension”; McFadden et al., “A Study of Race and Gender Bias in the Punishment of School Children”; Streitmatter, “Ethnic/Racial and Gender Equity in School Suspensions”; Reed, “Education and Achievement of Young Black Males”; Moore, “Message from the Executive Director”; Ordovensky, “Florida, Maryland Suspend Most Students.” 70. National School Board Association, “Towards Better and Safer Schools,” American School Board Journal 152 (1994); L. Rosen, School Discipline (Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 1997). 71. Raffaele, Analysis of Out-of-School Suspensions. 72. R. K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” American Sociological Review, 3 (1938). 73. Welsh, Stokes, and Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder.” 74. C. Shaw and H. McKay (eds.), Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 75. D. G. Curry and I. A. Spergel, “Gang Homicide, Delinquency, and Community,” Criminology, 26 (1988); L. J. Krivo and R. D. Peterson, “Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime,” Social Forces 75 (1996); R. D. Peterson, L. J. Krivo, and M. A. Harris, “Disadvantage and Neighborhood Violent Crime: Do Local Institutions Matter?” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 37 (2000); R. J. Sampson and W. B. Groves, “Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1985). 76. R. J. Sampson, “Neighborhoods and Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 22 (1985); S. F. Messner and S. J. South, “Economic

182

DAVID EITLE AND TAMELA MCNULTY EITLE

Deprivation, Opportunity Structure, and Robbery Victimization,” Social Forces 64 (1986); J. Logan and S. F. Messner, “Racial Residential Segregation and Suburban Violent Crime,” Social Science Quarterly 68 (1987); S. S. South and R. B. Felson, “The Racial Patterning of Rape,” Social Forces 69 (1990); R. D. Peterson and L. J. Krivo, “Racial Segregation, the Concentration of Disadvantage, and Black and White Homicide Victimization,” Sociological Forum 14 (1993); E. S. Shihadeh and N. Flynn, “Segregation and Crime: The Effect of Black Social Isolation on the Rates of Black Urban Violence,” Social Forces 74 (1996). 77. P. Blau and J. Blau, “The Cost of Inequality,” American Sociological Review 38 (1982). 78. Logan and Messner, “Racial Residential Segregation and Suburban Violent Crime.” 79. Laub and Lauritsen, “The Interdependence of School Violence with Neighborhood and Family Conditions.” 80. Costenbader and Markson, “School Suspension”; McFadden et al., “A Study of Race and Gender Bias in the Punishment of School Children”; Streitmatter, “Ethnic/Racial and Gender Equity in School Suspensions”; Reed, “Education and Achievement of Young Black Males”; Moore, “Message from the Executive Director”; Ordovensky, “Florida, Maryland Suspend Most Students.” 81. N. L. Arnez, “Implementation of Desegregation as a Discriminatory Process,” Journal of Negro Education 47 (1978); C. H. Thornton and W. T. Trent, “School Desegregation and Suspension in East Baton Rouge Parish,” Journal of Negro Education 57 (1988); J. Larkin, “School Desegregation and Student Suspension,” Education and Urban Society 11 (1996). 82. W. W. Welsh, J. R. Greene, and P. H. Jenkins, “School Disorder,” Criminology 37 (1999); Welsh, Stokes, and Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder.” 83. C. S. Anderson, “The Search for School Climate,” Review of Educational Research 52 (1982); Welsh, Stokes, and Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder.” 84. Welsh, Stokes, and Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder.” 85. P. H. Jenkins, “School Delinquency and School Commitment,” Sociology of Education 68 (1995). 86. M. Rutter, B. Maugham, P. Mortimer, and J. Ouston, Fifteen Thousand Hours (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); R. B. Felson et al., “The Subculture of Violence and Delinquency,” Social Forces 73 (1994). 87. J. Toby, “Violence in School,” in M. Tonry and N. Morris (eds.), Crime and Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Welsh, Stokes, and Greene, “A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder.” 88. Gottfredson and Gottfredson, Schools and Delinquency.

Equity, Disorder, and Discipline in Florida Schools

183

89. Anderson, “The Search for School Climate.” 90. Sampson, “Neighborhoods and Crime”; Messner and South, “Economic Deprivation, Opportunity Structure, and Robbery Victimization”; Logan and Messner, “Racial Residential Segregation and Suburban Violent Crime”; South and Felson, “The Racial Patterning of Rape”; Peterson and Krivo, “Racial Segregation”; Shihadeh and Flynn, “Segregation and Crime.” 91. Meier, Stewart, and England make this argument in Race, Class, and Education. 92. Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class, and Education. 93. Rosen, School Discipline; National School Board Association, “Towards Better and Safer Schools”; Raffaele, Analysis of Out-of-School Suspension. 94. V. F. Jones and L. S. Jones, Comprehensive Classroom Management, fourth edition (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995). 95. Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class, and Education.

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

7

Competing Agendas for University Governance: Placing the Conflict between Jeb Bush and Bob Graham in Context

Larry Johnson Kathryn M. Borman Governor Jeb Bush sought to transform every level of education in Florida during his first term in office. While his A+ Plan intensified the use of testing and performance-based budgeting in elementary and secondary education, his One Florida Initiative eliminated the consideration of race and gender in university admissions, and his reorganization of higher education governance established new relationships between universities and the state. Chapter 8 will discuss his One Florida Initiative to eliminate the consideration of race and gender in university admissions. Here, we examine the politics of university governance. Near the end of the 2000 session, the legislature passed a bill that eliminated the Florida Board of Regents, which governed the state’s eleven universities, and the State Board of Community Colleges, replacing them with the Florida Board of Education, a superboard with authority over all education from kindergarten to graduate school. The same legislation also created boards of trustees for each of the universities. The superboard’s advocates claimed that it would create a “seamless” system aligning all of the state’s educational “delivery systems” into a tightly woven web and eliminate cracks through which the administration believed many students were falling.

185

186

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

Just two years later, Florida voters ratified a constitutional amendment that seemed to undo Bush’s plans. The amendment, supported most prominently by former governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham, established a constitutional body, the Florida Board of Governors, with governing authority over the universities and continued the boards for each university but redefined their powers. The conflict between Bush and Graham in many ways continues long-standing tensions over the role of elected officials in higher education. The way in which the reorganization proposals emerged raises questions about the rationality of policy making and about the political and other conditions that make one policy option appear preferable to another. The reorganization of higher education in Florida belies an explanation either that policy is the rational response to recognized problems or that the battle in Florida is over the extent of higher education politicization. Instead, the destruction of the board of regents and its later replacement with a constitutionally protected board of governors is consistent with John Kingdon’s interactive model of policy, problems, and politics.1 The Bush administration continued to promote its agenda, subordinating the board of governors to the superboard, even though that seems contrary to the amendment. The sections of this chapter examine the history of Florida’s higher education politics, the origins of Bush’s plan to eliminate the Florida Board of Regents, who supported it, what conditions made it possible for Bush and his allies to succeed, Graham’s opposition, and what happened after the amendment’s passage. THE ROLE OF POLITICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION The story of Bush’s reorganization effort has unfolded in Florida’s news media as a conflict between those who want to exploit the universities for political gain versus those who want to get politics out of higher education and place universities in the safe hands of professionals who can guide the system efficiently.2 This is an enduring theme of twentieth-century American education; however, in practice, removing politics from education often amounts to little more than putting another group in power, that is, creating a different politics.3 Conflicts over education in Florida have often hinged on opposing interests of governors and legislators, and at times legislators have expressly sought to undermine universities’ independence and the free

Competing Agendas for University Governance

187

expression of students and faculty, particularly during the 1960s when legislators saw the universities as centers of civil rights activity.4 When the Bush administration eliminated the board of regents, it broke with a century-long practice of having a statewide board concerned solely with higher education. Florida education reformers throughout the twentieth century saw increased centralization as a way to remove political influence from educational policy and rationalize policy making. At the turn of the twentieth century, Florida had seven small institutions of higher learning, most of them governed by local boards. In 1905, Florida created the first statewide body to govern higher education, the Florida Board of Control (sometimes BOC), and eliminated the local boards. Just as Graham would nearly a century later, advocates of the board of control believed it would help constrain what they saw as an unwarranted proliferation of schools. After the legislature had authorized an eighth school, Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward said: In my judgment, the needs and requirements of these institutions can never be intelligently and properly considered until an efficient system of management, control, and supervision over them is provided.5

The board of control, appointed by the governor, oversaw three institutions—which over time became the University of Florida, in Gainesville, Florida State University, in Tallahassee, and for African American Floridians, Florida A&M University, also in Tallahassee. The BOC reported to the state board of education, which consisted of five elected officials comprising Florida’s unique collegial executive, discussed in an earlier chapter. Robert Mautz, who served as chancellor of Florida higher education from 1968 to 1976, argued that the board of control provided some independence from elected members of the executive branch but little independence from the legislative branch. Of course, it may not be surprising that members of the executive branch and those they appoint find fault with the legislative branch, but the legislature in Florida exerted enormous influence over the state’s colleges and universities. It exercised line-item control over positions on campus, including faculty lines, approved all buildings, their shape and size, and the creation or expansion of programs.6 By mid-century the federal government became a powerful ally of those who believed legislatures exercised too much control over higher education. Commissions appointed by presidents Truman and Eisenhower urged states to adopt governance structures that would increase

188

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

universities’ independence from state politics. The Eisenhower report in 1959, The Efficiency of Freedom, criticized bureaucratic controls and “opposed the imposition of uniform regulations on state systems of higher education.”7 The Campus and the State, a companion publication to the Eisenhower report, offered a romantic vision of the university in its argument for autonomy: However petty each instance of control may be, in cumulative effect a broad range of restrictions upon the operating freedom of institutions of higher education leaves very little room for imagination and vitality by which truly creative institutions of higher learning are nourished.8

Like the progressive reformers a half-century earlier, the authors of these reports wanted to remove politics from higher education and increase the role of experts in university governance. A fuller account of these efforts would address the increasing assertion of federal control over higher education during the second half of the twentieth century. David Noble has argued that federal agencies’ and national foundations’ arguments for decreasing state control cannot be seen as simple demands for university independence. Rather, they were seeking to assert greater control over universities themselves.9 Nonetheless, many found merit in the argument that state legislatures interfered too much with the efficient operation of universities. In Florida, two striking developments convinced people that the board of control was not up to the task of constraining legislative influence and led to the creation of the Florida Board of Regents in the mid-1960s. First was an egregious example of legislative intrusion into the affairs of the universities by what was called the Johns Committee. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Florida, like other southern states, created committees to try to link civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to communism. The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, chaired by Charley Eugene Johns of Starke, Florida, spent a great deal of time trying to ferret out communists and homosexuals on university campuses. The University of South Florida, newly created in Tampa, was especially vulnerable to the committee’s tactics.10 Second, the space program centered on Florida’s east coast promised to promote economic growth throughout the state. Anticipating increasing demand for higher education, the board of control obtained authorization to establish several new universities. Florida

Competing Agendas for University Governance

189

political and economic elites came to believe that political intrusion by the legislature hindered their ability to strengthen the scientific and technological capacity of the state’s institutions and, most importantly, attract money for the space program. President John Kennedy’s commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s bolstered their case. A board of control study, Space-Age Demands on State-Supported Higher Education in Florida, completed in 1963, focused on expanding higher education opportunity in east central Florida, along the “Space Coast,” near Orlando, and condemned what the board saw as political interference in higher education: An imposed routine of political favor, delay, intrusion of wholly extraneous factors, and depreciation of higher education is present in one form or another in practically every aspect of the state’s daily operations in higher education.11

Two years later, the legislature abolished the board of control and established the state board of regents, giving it the power to govern the state university system. Legislators went out of their way to accommodate the demand for independence by agreeing that the nine members of the new board would serve nine-year terms. The constitution had to be amended to allow for such long terms, but no one seems to have pushed to make the regents a constitutional body at that time. A chancellor, to be appointed by the board, would supervise the board’s staff and name university presidents.12 In 1968 Florida voters ratified a new state constitution to replace the post-Reconstruction constitution passed in 1885. The new constitution allowed governors to run for two terms and among other things mandated the reorganization and consolidation of state agencies. The board of regents became part of the Department of Education and reported to the Commissioner of Education, who in turn reported to the Board of Education, which still consisted of the entire elected cabinet, chaired by the governor.13 This subordinated the regents to elected officials, undermining the main reason for their existence. Although advocates claimed the board was “designed to bring balance, order and rational educational decisions to the competing demands of individual institutions,”14 university presidents felt the new board diminished their powers, particularly because it would submit a consolidated budget on behalf of all universities, thereby limiting their ability to lobby in their own interests. Legislators’ support for the new structure was shaky as well. In 1972 critics of centralized governance introduced bills to abolish the regents and establish institutional boards of trustees.15

190

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

The next year, Florida’s economy collapsed when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ oil embargo exacerbated an already weak U.S. economy. Facing increasing unemployment and declining state revenues, the governor and the cabinet ordered budget cuts. In 1975, the legislature refused to appropriate funds for faculty salary raises, yet increased the student/faculty ratio to make universities more efficient. Doing this freed up funds for previously authorized new universities and for medical, dental, and veterinary programs. Few were happy. Within a decade of its creation, the board of regents had alienated university presidents, faculty, legislators, and much of the public. The new board had failed to keep university officials from lobbying legislators directly or to free educational policy from what its creators felt was legislative intrusion. THE HISTORIC WEAKNESS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS Events during the late 1970s and early 1980s foreshadowed what happened twenty years later. Opponents of the regents provided an object lesson in how to attack it, and Bob Graham, who served as chair of the Senate Education Committee before becoming governor in 1979, developed many of the arguments he would use against Bush’s superboard. The way in which the regents undermined themselves was strangely like what they would do later. Aware of its weakness, the board undertook a campaign to win public support for increased funding by creating advisory boards comprised of prominent business people for each university and establishing a Commission on the Future of Florida’s Public Universities, made up of prominent citizens. The regents emphasized the need to improve the quality rather than to try to increase the number of universities. The newly appointed commission produced a study, “Quality Universities to Serve Florida’s Future,” laying out the argument.16 The strategy seemed to work when the legislature responded with increased funding in 1977 and 1978. Indeed, the Florida State University System received national recognition in 1977, winning the National Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Grand Award for Legislative/Governmental Relations. Chancellor E. T. York, who succeeded Mautz, reported to the regents that they had never had “greater success in getting legislation of interest to the SUS

Competing Agendas for University Governance

191

approved.”17 The regents seemed poised to consolidate their position as a strong, central governing authority of the state university system. They were ready to fight for constitutional status. The Florida Constitutional Revision Commission, a unique body created by the 1968 Florida Constitution to review and recommend changes to the constitution, placed nine amendments on the ballot in 1978, including the regents’ proposed amendment to protect the board of regents in the state constitution. Education Commissioner Ralph Turlington and other elected cabinet members campaigned expressly against the regents’ amendment, as did several legislators from southern and central Florida. These legislators felt the regents favored the University of Florida and Florida State at the expense of newer institutions in their parts of the state, and they saw the legislature as a check on the regents’ provincialism.18 A citizens’ initiative to legalize casino gambling also appeared on the ballot. Governor Reubin Askew campaigned vigorously against legalized gambling. To simplify their message, opponents of the gambling measure urged citizens to vote against all of the initiatives. None of them passed. The failure of their amendment stripped the regents of any illusion that they enjoyed a reservoir of popular appeal or power based upon broad support of the citizenry. Legislators filed bills in the next session to eliminate the board of regents.19 Graham, now governor, sidestepped efforts to eliminate the board and pushed legislation to address the perceived lack of quality in university programs. He supported a statewide test to be given to all college students at the end of their sophomore year, a measure that reflected a lack of faith in the universities and a desire to make them accountable to the legislature for any increased funding, the Eminent Scholars Endowment Fund, which provides public dollars to match private contributions to endowments, a program meant to strengthen Florida’s ability to compete in a national and international market for renowned faculty, and a tuition voucher program, which provided public money to students attending private universities and colleges.20 Despite Graham’s legislative successes, he and the legislature could not agree on a comprehensive plan to improve quality or on the level of authority the regents should have. Just as they would years later, the regents took actions that alienated some of their remaining supporters by trying to create a threetiered system with the University of Florida and Florida State becoming centers of advanced graduate and professional study at the top of

192

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

the pyramid. Both of these older universities are in northern Florida. Several legislators from central and southern Florida resisted because they felt this would permanently freeze their universities in a subordinate role. The legislature established a Joint Legislative and Executive Commission on Postsecondary Education, but it too failed to resolve the conflict over quality and governance. The regents were unable to produce a master plan for higher education as mandated; meanwhile, the legislature attached legislative intent and proviso language to budget bills as a backdoor way to increase its control over universities and to achieve university presidents’ goals, often at the regents’ expense. The regents’ failure to address what they themselves had claimed to be the most important matters facing Florida’s universities opened the door to the first serious effort to eliminate the board.21 Speaker of the House Hyatt Brown, representing communities on the east coast of central Florida, led the effort,22 but Graham vetoed the bill. His veto message, written by his chief of staff, Charley Reed, who later served as chancellor of higher education for a dozen years, condemned the legislature’s use of intent language and proviso language in budget bills to assert greater control over higher education. He listed four conditions he thought necessary to build a strong university system: an independent board serving as an intermediary between the academic community and political institutions, a long-term strategy for quality improvement, coordination among the sectors of higher education, and adequate and focused resources.23 He also called for increasing salaries to levels that would attract outstanding faculty and staff, later setting a goal of raising faculty salaries into the top quarter in the country. According to Reed, the Graham administration made significant strides in improving the quality of Florida’s universities. Faculty salaries rose to thirteenth in the nation, the share of Florida’s general revenues going to the universities increased, peaking at nearly 11 percent in 1985–1986 before entering a long slide.24 The University of Florida and Florida State University collaborated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to win the federally funded National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in a head-to-head competition with MIT. Florida attracted its first Nobel laureate, Robert Scheiffer, who became chief scientist at the lab. Reed is still proud of these achievements; he said in an interview, “The single biggest thing that I probably will ever do in higher education was to bring [the lab] from MIT to Florida.”

Competing Agendas for University Governance

193

The legislature appropriated approximately $100 million for this facility. The legislature, the governor, and the regents were determined to get the lab no matter what it cost.25 The glory days, such as they were, did not last long. By the time Jeb Bush was running for governor, the universities were again in a weak position. The Business/Higher Education Partnership, a group combining business leaders and university representatives, argued that the universities faced serious problems. Faculty salaries had plummeted to forty-second in the nation by the mid-1990s, and the share of general revenues going to universities had declined to 7.5 percent.26 Reed argues that the board of regents itself became weaker during the 1990s because Democratic governor Lawton Chiles had appointed people who had served with him in the legislature thirty years earlier. Reed criticized them for not understanding their role on the board, often calling him early in the morning to tell him “to cut out all the drinking at Florida State, because somebody fell off a balcony the night before.”27 Reed left Florida after being named chancellor of the California State University System in 1998. His replacement, Adam Herbert, had been president of University of North Florida in Jacksonville and served as the first African American chancellor of the Florida State University System until 2001, just before the board of regents was eliminated. His short tenure is closely linked to the creation of the new governance regime by Jeb Bush. PUTTING A NEW REGIME IN PLACE During the campaign of 1998, Bush gave no sign of wanting to do away with the board of regents. Herbert was a friend and business associate, and Bush put him in charge of his transition team, a puzzling turn of events if one assumes that the reason the regents and their chancellor existed was to get politics out of higher education. Bush supported some of Herbert’s most controversial actions, such as his resurrecting the three-tier structure that nearly undid the regents two decades earlier. There is no evidence that Bush planned as he took office to transform higher education governance and eliminate his friend’s job. The way in which reorganization emerged on his agenda and how he succeeded in implementing his plan raise questions about common models of policy making. The most common and enduring model portrays policy making as a rational process of identifying

194

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

problems, prioritizing them, generating and weighing solutions, and choosing the one that maximizes benefits and minimizes costs. This model, however, has come under criticism since the early 1970s. Few cases seem to fit it very well. John Kingdon’s work on agenda-setting in the federal government shows clearly that policy making is not often rational in the sense required by rational-comprehensive models. Several recent articles by Michael McLendon apply a version of Kingdon’s “revised garbage can” model to several cases of what he characterizes as decentralization of higher education governance, including a brief sketch of Florida’s reorganization. According to this model “three separate ‘streams’—problems, policies (ideas or solutions), and politics—flow through the national government largely independent of one another.” Issues make it onto the agendas of “policy entrepreneurs” when these streams intersect with “choice opportunity.” What gets on the agenda depends on what is “floating in the metaphorical garbage can” when the intersection occurs. Our goal is not to provide a test of competing models but to use them to guide our discussion.28 Of the three major changes in Florida education policy in Bush’s first term, only the A+ Plan was on his agenda when he took office. As explained in chapter 8, while he was ideologically opposed to affirmative action, the One Florida Initiative was a response to conservative California businessman Ward Connerly’s drive to end affirmative action in Florida by ballot initiative. Higher education governance emerged as an issue only when events that in and of themselves had little to do with governance intersected with the historic weakness of the board of regents and with long-standing grievances that several constituencies had with the regents. Once there, the reorganization had remarkably smooth sailing because the rekindling of old grievances and new coalitions of opponents restricted the board’s ability to protect itself. The first and most important fortuitous event was the ratification of an amendment restructuring Florida’s executive branch. Several chapters have mentioned that in Florida executive powers of state government were exercised by an elected cabinet in which each member was independently elected by the voters of Florida. The cabinet served as the state board of education and included the governor and the commissioner of education.29 The 1998 amendment reduced the size of the cabinet, changed the board of education from the governor plus the cabinet to a board appointed by the governor, and gave the new board the power to appoint the commissioner of education.30

Competing Agendas for University Governance

195

Although this amendment did not seem to have any implications for higher education in 1998, the Bush administration later claimed the amendment authorized their reorganization plan (including it, for example, in the preamble language of the Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act of 2000). Members of the Constitutional Revision Commission (CRC), which placed the amendment on the ballot, responded that they had restricted the new, appointed board’s authority so that it would not have authority over the university system. They explained that they had limited the new board to supervising the system of “free” public education. Commissioner Lowndes, who proposed this modification said: And the reason for [inserting the word free] is that the system of free public education is described another place in the Constitution and it differentiates it from having jurisdiction or authority or business over the university and college systems.31

Advocates of the superboard cited an attorney’s opinion that adding the word free made no difference. CRC Chair Dexter Douglas countered that the Bush administration could eliminate the regents, but putting the universities under the new board of education violated the intent of the commission.32 These competing legal interpretations were never tested; the Bush administration had the political power to implement its reforms regardless of the position that former CRC members took. John Winn, who played key roles in planning and implementing Bush’s reorganization and was appointed commissioner of education in 2004, clarified the role the amendment played in getting reorganization on the agenda. He said that while some felt the amendment did not mandate the superboard, it served as a “catalyst to review” every aspect of education governance. He described how then commissioner of education Tom Gallagher began preparing in late 1999 for the appointment of a new board and a new commissioner of education called for in the amendment: Gallagher decided, ‘Hey, you know, 2003 will be here before we know it . . . and we’ll have one legislative session to make all these decisions and that’s crazy. So I’m going to appoint this commission to start studying the issue and get some recommendations on the table and we can start fighting over them.’

Gallagher’s thirty-five-member blue-ribbon committee met for about five months, discussing what sort of governance structure would best

196

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

serve Florida. According to Winn, although the amendment didn’t require such deliberations, “without that constitutional amendment we would have never had these discussions.”33 Winn’s argument that the amendment served as a catalyst is credible, but the formation of the blue-ribbon committee was likely more complicated than in his account. In the fall of 1999 Bush met with Speaker of the House John Thrasher at a restaurant, where, according to new accounts, they sketched out the educational reorganization plan on the back of a napkin. That dinner was followed by another at the governor’s mansion, attended by “Bush, [Adam Herbert], Thrasher, Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan and Board of Regents Chairman Tom Petway.” The new reports were based on Thrasher’s admission that the meetings took place. Thrasher was apparently the “mastermind” behind the plan.34 Winn’s description of the blue-ribbon committee’s deliberations illustrate two important features of policy making: first, that there was a very tenuous connection between the solution it offered (reorganizing higher education governance) and the problems this solution was meant to solve; second, the rational processes prescribed by the rational-comprehensive model played a very small role in its deliberations. The committee instead created an opportunity to resolve primarily issues in governance. Winn and Carl Backman, a former policy maker with the state university system, pointed to a number of problems that they said have plagued policy makers for many years: access, financial aid, faculty productivity, and low baccalaureate attainment. Winn said, “We were getting beat up by everywhere else in the nation in terms of our relative production of baccalaureate degrees.” According to the Postsecondary Education Planning Commission, Florida ranked forty-fifth among all states in awarding bachelor’s degrees and forty-seventh in the proportion of nineteen-year-olds in college in 1996. To reach the national average, Florida would have to increase the number of high school graduates going on to college by 7,317 students. The amount of needbased financial aid was only about one-third the national average ($31 compared to $111 per college-age individual).35 Backman and Winn said that policy makers had been trying for years to figure out how to increase student achievement, get people through the system faster, make the system produce well-trained employees in fields that would attract businesses to Florida, and increase accountability.36 Governance reorganization does not seem to have been necessary to solve any of these problems, nor is it clear that it would be of great help

Competing Agendas for University Governance

197

in addressing them. Surprisingly, the blue-ribbon committee and the governance reorganization task force that succeeded it both agreed. According to Winn they came to see their mission as creating “world-class” universities in Florida rather than as trying to solve a list of problems one by one. Both bodies came to believe that governance structures were of little importance in creating such a world-class university system. Winn said, “The governance system itself wasn’t necessarily the cause of either high or lower quality for a university system in any state. And more and more experts began saying more than one system can work.” Everyone in the planning process was coming to believe that the quality of the people in the universities and the reputation of institutions were the critical variables.37 Despite these emerging feelings, both the blue-ribbon committee and later the task force vigorously promoted reorganization. To explain why, Winn said that the groups examining governance came to realize that governance systems “grow out of the unique events, historical events and roots of a particular state and the way they do business.” His argument was that the idea of creating a seamless system from kindergarten through graduate school developed from Florida’s efforts to enhance the articulation between community colleges and universities. Florida, Winn pointed out, developed a common course-numbering system, created joint campuses in several locations, and forged articulation agreements very early compared to other states. Comparing Florida to California, he said, “But here’s Florida already far more advanced” than California, where, he said, community colleges and state colleges in the same city have difficulty articulating. “That looks like the Dark Ages to Florida.” The commission and the task force argued that Florida needed to “take the next step.” That step was to create a superboard with control over the entire system, a board that could “kind of force delivery systems to say ‘okay we’ll work with you.’” Seamlessness meant among other things that exit and entrance requirements would be aligned as students progressed through the system. The Bush administration policy makers called their system “student centered” and argued that it would promote higher achievement.38 While it is plausible that having a superboard could enhance articulation among the various levels within the system, it is not clear that the history of Florida leads so easily to a preoccupation with articulation. After all, a centralized board had governed universities in Florida for nearly a century, longer than any other state.39 Thus, the history of the state could just as easily have been used to justify continuing the board of regents.

198

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

If the evidence does not clearly support a rational-comprehensive interpretation of reorganization, we must consider how the political stream intersected with the problem and policy streams. A motive that must be considered as fixing reorganization firmly on Bush’s agenda is the possibility of consolidating Republican power in Florida. Amendment 8 increased the governor’s authority, not least by expanding his appointment powers. While Bush is the third Republican to be elected governor since Reconstruction, he is the first to have a Republican legislature in a position to confirm his nominations. Both of these factors provided an opportunity for Republicans to appoint like-minded people that had not existed for a very long time. The Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act of 2000 created a thirteen-member board of trustees for each university, twelve of whom were appointed by the governor (the remaining member representing students). The governor appointed all seven members of the Florida Board of Education and a secretary of education, who served until Amendment 8 took effect in 2003. This gave Bush a total of 140 new appointments. Plus, he appointed five of the eleven members on the Education Governance Reorganization Transition Task Force. As might be expected, Bush filled these appointments largely with people ideologically allied with him. Newspaper articles pointed out that the new trustees were mostly Republican businessmen.40 Lawyers and business people made up two-thirds of the appointees, and fewer than a dozen were educators.41 Republicans constituted a majority on nearly every board, men vastly outnumbered women, few appointees were people of color, and none were Asians.42 Some of the appointments, though, have been strikingly political, and news stories pointed this out. Bush appointed Thrasher, who was forced out of the legislature by term limits, to the Florida State University Board of Trustees; he is now its chair. Jim Horne, a key sponsor and promoter of reorganization legislation whose primary occupation was as a financier, became secretary of the Florida Board of Education and later the state’s first appointed commissioner of education. Other Bush allies have been named university presidents. T. K. Wetherell, former speaker of the house and a conservative Democrat who supported Bush’s reelection, was named president at Florida State University, and Bush’s lieutenant governor, Frank Brogan, was appointed president of Florida Atlantic University. These appointments would allow Bush allies to shape state politics for many years. When asked, Bush and his spokespersons denied he was more politically motivated than Democ-

Competing Agendas for University Governance

199

rats had been when they controlled state government.43 That may well have been the case. Undeniably, however, the reorganization provided a significant patronage opportunity. To the extent that placing Republican supporters in state government influenced the reorganization, those plans were not so much focused on solving problems in education but rather on the intersection of those problems with political interests, with solving the political problem of how to expand and enshrine party influence. Putting an item on the agenda is one thing, but getting it through the legislature is quite another. Two factors smoothed the way for reorganization in the legislature. First, while the idea of eliminating the board of regents likely originated with the Speaker of the House, this time Thrasher had the full support of his governor. This is quite different from twenty years earlier when Governor Graham vetoed the Speaker’s legislation. Second, just as it had a generation earlier, the regents alienated powerful people, some of whom might have otherwise supported them. The regents angered Thrasher by rejecting his proposals to establish a medical school at Florida State University, his alma mater, arguing that a new school was unnecessary to meet Floridians’ needs and would be difficult to sustain. The regents also alienated the African American and Hispanic communities by adopting a three-tier system that placed disproportionately minority institutions in a subordinate position. In Chancellor Adam Herbert’s initial draft of the tiered system, Florida International University (FIU) with its large Hispanic enrollment was in the middle tier, along with Florida Atlantic University in South Florida and the University of Central Florida in Orlando, with limited research functions and limited enrollment growth, while historically Black Florida A&M University (FAMU) appeared in the bottom tier, which would concentrate on undergraduate education. The regents further alienated Blacks and Hispanics by refusing to build new law schools at FAMU and FIU. Both communities began pressing for law schools in 1993, as the regents were preparing a five-year master plan for higher education. Many African Americans believed FAMU Law School in Tallahassee had been closed in 1968 as punishment for the university’s activities in the civil rights movement. Blacks argued that something needed to be done to increase the number of Black lawyers in the state. While making up 15 percent of the state’s population, Blacks made up only 2 percent of its lawyers44 after twenty years’ effort to desegregate Florida higher education and a half-century after Virgil Hawkins

200

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

attempted to become the first Black admitted to University of Florida Law School (see chapter 8). FIU advocates argued that their area of the state was entitled to a law school and argued that one would help increase the number of minority lawyers in the state. With almost 35 percent of the state’s population and almost 40 percent of its taxable property, southeast Florida was receiving only about 20 percent of state higher education funding.45 Chancellor Reed agreed that the state was not graduating enough minority lawyers but was unable to resolve the issue before departing for California.46 Herbert, with backing from the Florida Bar Association and the deans of the two existing law schools, continued to oppose any new law schools. This time, Blacks and Hispanics mounted a more effective campaign. During the 1990s, the groups competed to see which one could get a law school, but in the spring of 1999, not long after Ward Connerly announced his intention to eliminate affirmative action in Florida, they began to build a coalition to push for two law schools. This changed the political dynamics within which the regents operated; they could no longer play referee. During the summer, coalition leaders, Representative Al Lawson, an African American Democrat from Tallahassee, and Alex Villalobos, a Hispanic Republican from Miami, openly criticized the board.47 Although Bush had opposed any new law schools during his campaign for governor, by the following spring, he was under attack for having ended the consideration of race and gender in college admissions and state contracting and was looking for a way to defuse the controversy so that it would not affect his brother’s run for the White House (see chapter 8). A meeting with business leaders from Miami, Speaker Thrasher, Senate President Toni Jennings, a Republican from Orlando, and coalition leaders overcame any reservations Bush may still have had about building new law schools. Jennings said later that they had traded approval of a medical school at FSU for two law schools. FAMU’s new law school would be located not in Tallahassee, where the main campus is, but in Orlando.48 As the session came to a close, legislators passed the Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act of 2000. This act repealed, effective January 7, 2003, the Florida State Board of Regents and a number of other education boards, divisions, and offices, including the Postsecondary Education Planning Commission and the boards overseeing community colleges and private colleges and universities.49 The act created the Florida Board of Education, a seven-member board to

Competing Agendas for University Governance

201

be appointed by the Governor by July 1, 2000, to oversee kindergarten through graduate school education, established an Education Governance Reorganization Transition Task Force “to help ensure a smooth transition from the elected State Board of Education to the appointed Florida Board of Education,” and proclaimed that it is the policy of the legislature to “establish a true systematic change in education governance by establishing a seamless academic educational system that fosters an integrated continuum of kindergarten through graduate school education for Florida’s citizens.”50 THE GRAHAM AMENDMENT, AN APPARENT DEFEAT Regardless of Bush’s motives and despite easy passage of the reorganization bill, many Floridians came to oppose the new governance scheme. While the reorganization task force was planning implementation of the bill’s provisions, the opposition jelled around Senator Graham. Graham played a very public role, urging the reorganization task force to keep a centralized governing body responsible for higher education, but he attributes the idea of a ballot initiative to amend the constitution to Chancellor Emeritus E. T. York. To gather signatures and raise money, Graham and his allies organized a political action committee, Education Excellence for Florida, which included seven former chairs of the board of regents. The amendment created the Florida Board of Governors to set policy for the university system and institutional boards of trustees to administer each university. This two-tiered governance structure, Graham told us in an interview, was modeled to a large extent on that of North Carolina. The board of governors (BOG) consists of seventeen members, fourteen appointed by the governor, with senate confirmation, to staggered seven-year terms plus the commissioner of education, the chair of the advisory council of faculty senates, and the president of the Florida student association.51 The boards of trustees consist of six members appointed by the governor and five by the BOG plus the student body president and the chair of the faculty senate. Having a faculty as well as a student representative on all of the boards sets the Graham amendment apart from all of the previous governing arrangements in Florida and possibly the nation. Robin Gibson, an attorney who drafted the amendment, explained in a debate that faculty representation was

202

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

added in response to suggestions made in public meetings held in several parts of the state.52 The Graham forces argued their amendment would keep politics out of the universities. Graham explained in an interview with the authors that he had been consistent in his views on university governance. I think many of the reasons why I vetoed [the bill to abolish the board of regents] in 1980 were the same reasons that I was so committed to Amendment 11; . . . there needs to be a central governing body to provide direction to the university system.

He said he had always thought a two-tier structure in which institutional boards took care of local university matters freeing a statewide board to focus on policy. But most important, the amendment would finally achieve his long-term goal of protecting university governance from legislators’ meddling by enshrining a governing body in the constitution: “The more important aspect of Amendment 11 . . . is to put [the] structure into the state constitution, which changes the relationship between the university system and, particularly, the legislature.”53 Opponents argued restoring a structure like the board of regents was a step backward, but the voters sided with Graham by a margin of almost two to one. The campaign was as one-sided as was the outcome. Chaired by Joan Ruffier, Education Excellence for Florida expended over $1.7 million while the opposing political action committee, Floridians for Education Reform, chaired by Carolyn Roberts, then a member of the Florida Board of Education, raised only $89,000 by October 11. Republican leaders portrayed the amendment as a Democratic initiative, but while many on the committee were Democrats, and Democrats no doubt wished to blunt Bush’s efforts to build a conservative Republican culture in Florida, the amendment won with 60.5 percent of the vote. Graham felt that winning by a larger margin than Bush, who received 56 percent of the vote, showed that the amendment enjoyed very wide support.54 After passage of the amendment, one might have expected dramatic changes, but Bush and his allies were able to keep their agenda alive. Bush appointed people already on his short-lived boards to the new ones, and all fifty-five of the BOG’s appointees to institutional boards had been serving on Bush’s boards of trustees. When the BOG met for the first time in January 2003, it left little doubt that it would remain committed to the plan the governor drew on the back of a napkin years earlier. The board elected Tom Petway chair, a man who had

Competing Agendas for University Governance

203

chaired the board of regents as it was being dismantled and who after the election of 2002 headed up Bush’s transition team. The BOG elected Carolyn Roberts vice chair even though she had led the political action committee trying to defeat the amendment. She has since become BOG chair. Under Petway’s and Roberts’s leadership, the new governing board delegated many of its powers back to the Florida Board of Education, the superboard, and delegated other powers to the universities’ boards of trustees, including the ability to establish bachelor’s and master’s level programs. The legislature, by not appropriating funds for BOG staff, left the new board dependent on the State Board of Education, which continues to function as a superboard.55 Bush allies treated the initiative process and the amendment the voters had passed contemptuously. Shortly after the election of 2002, Republican Party of Florida Chair Al Cardenas said, “I will bet you 75 percent of the electorate walked in the voting booth not really understanding the issue. It just read well.”56 Jim Horne told the BOG to “stay the course” as he became the first appointed commissioner of education. “I urge this board,” he said, “to implement the vision of our governor and build a K–20 system. This is the right model. It is the right approach.”57 Oddly, Governor Bush, in a prepared statement, said, “It is the will of the people that we maintain Florida’s coordinated K–20 system of education.”58 This despite the large margin by which voters approved an amendment that meant, if anything, the opposite. Bush and his allies continue to resist implementing the Graham amendment much as they do the class-size reduction amendment. The processes by which higher education governance made it onto the governor’s agenda and the means by which he has persisted in his K–20 plan illustrate the limited role a rational weighing of alternatives sometimes plays in higher education policy making. This by itself is not a criticism since policy makers are seldom in a position to do so as fully or freely as those who study policy making might wish.59 The important lesson from Florida higher education reorganization during the last five years is that the intersection of the political stream with the problem and policy streams is central to understanding how education policy changes make it onto policy makers’ agendas. NOTES 1. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (NY: Harper Collins, 1984).

204

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

2. Robert Friedman, “The University System on the Edge,” St. Petersburg Times, February 18, 2001, South Pinellas Edition, 1D. Although the Tampa Tribune supported Bush’s reelection, it also supported Graham’s amendment, “Amendment 11 Would Restore Order to University System,” October 20, 2002; “The Revolution Begins,” St. Petersburg Times, July 27, 2001, South Pinellas edition, 22A; Barry Klein, “New Trustees Mostly GOP Businessmen,” St. Petersburg Times, July 29, 2001, South Pinellas edition, 1A. 3. Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Joseph Beckham, “Constitutionally Autonomous Higher Education Governance: A Proposed Amendment to the Florida Constitution,” University of Florida Law Review 30, 3 (1978), 543–59. For similar discussion about public education, see David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974). It is surely possible for politicians to be committed to building independent universities with strong faculties controlling significant aspects of university policy and with admissions policies that promote democratic access. Laurence R. Veysey discusses some examples, particularly in states that had a strong populist influence, in The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 4. See James A. Schnur, “Cold Warriors in the Hot Sunshine: USF and the Johns Committee” (http://www.lib.usf.edu/virtual/ldc/floridiana/sunland/v18n1_92/v18n1_92_009.pdf ) for a particularly egregious example, one predating the Bush administration by thirty years. 5. Cited in Bob Graham, “Education Governance Statement,” January 8, 2001, before the Education Governance Reorganization Transition Task Force. 6. Robert B. Mautz, “The Power Game: Governance of Higher Education in Florida,” Institute for Studies in Higher Education, Research Report No. 1, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 1982, 1. Mautz provides a brief, clear analysis of the conditions leading up to the first serious attempt to abolish the board of regents in 1980. Hendrix Chandler, Dreams and Political Realities: A 20th Century History of Florida’s University System (Tallahassee: Board of Regents, 1983) provides an excellent overview of Florida higher education up to the early years of the Graham administration. David R. Colburn and Lance deHaven-Smith, Government in the Sunshine State: Florida Since Statehood (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999) gives a useful account of changes in Florida government since statehood. 7. Cited in Beckham, “Constitutionally Autonomous Higher Education Governance,” 544. 8. M. Moos and F. E. Rourke, The Campus and the State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), cited in Beckham, “Constitutionally Autonomous Higher Education Governance,” 545. 9. See David F. Noble’s Forces of Production (New York: Knopf, 1984).

Competing Agendas for University Governance

205

10. The committee investigated individuals and groups whose conduct “could constitute violence, or a violation of the laws of the state.” Florida Department of State, Bureau of Archives and Records Management, “Reports of Investigators on Meetings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Ku Klux Klan,” http://www.floridamemory.com/FloridaHighlights/investigation/index.cfm, has a fascinating reproduction of a committee report; James A. Schnur, “Cold Warriors in the Hot Sunshine “ is a valuable source for the effect of the committee on USF. 11. Florida, Space Era Education Study, Space-Age Demands on StateSupported Higher Education in Florida; an analysis of Florida’s publicly financed services in higher education, at the advanced and graduate levels, as related to accelerating developments in science and technology. Presented to the Florida Board of Control (Tallahassee, 1963), cited in Graham, “Education Governance Statement”; see also Central West Coast Industry Committee on Space Era Education Study, Summary of Facts Presented to the Space Science Task Force (St. Petersburg, Florida, 1962). 12. Mautz, “Power Game,” 2; Chandler, Dreams and Political Realities; Colburn and DeHaven-Smith. 13. Colburn and deHaven-Smith, Government in the Sunshine State, 46. Under the 1968 Florida Constitution, the cabinet and hence the board of education consisted of the governor, the commissioner of education, the secretary of state, the treasurer and insurance commissioner, the commissioner of agriculture, the attorney general, and the comptroller. See Mautz, “Power Game,” 2, for a useful discussion of the consequences of the dispersion of executive power for higher education. 14. Cited in Graham, “Education Governance Statement.” 15. In 1972, House Bill 3247 would have abolished the board of regents, and House Bill 3248 would have established boards of trustees for the universities, Journals of the Florida House of Representatives (Tallahassee: State of Florida, 1972), 116. 16. Commission on the Future of Florida’s Public Universities, Quality Universities to Serve Florida’s Future: Report of the Commission on the Future of Florida’s Public Universities (Florida Board of Regents, Tallahassee, 1977). The commission never mentions that at the time of its report Florida was negotiating an agreement to desegregate its universities (see chapter 8). In Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy, Stephen Steinberg shows how Whites’ talk about quality is often coded language to justify excluding Blacks from education and employment. The timing of the shift from a strategy of increasing access to promoting quality raises the suspicion that racial politics may have played a role. Mautz discusses the board’s strategy in detail, though he does not mention desegregation, see pages 3 ff. 17. The chancellor’s report to the board of regents on the 1977 legislative session, cited in Mautz, “Power Game,” 14.

206

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

18. Chandler, Dreams and Political Realities, and Mautz, “Power Game,” both discuss these legislators’ position. 19. Charles Reed interview, August 13, 2002; Colburn and deHavenSmith, Government in the Sunshine State; Mautz, “Power Game,” 15. 20. Florida Joint Legislative and Executive Commission on Postsecondary Education, Report and Recommendations of the Joint Legislative and Executive Commission on Postsecondary Education (Tallahassee: The Commission, 1980). Cited hereafter as the joint commission. 21. According to Hendrix Chandler, in his history of Florida higher education, “Critics of the Board of Regents point to the Regents’ handling of systemwide and institutional role and scope documents in the late 1970s as a classic example of [the board’s] reluctance to make hard decisions” (96). In the end, the regents were unable to produce the master plan, even under a legislative mandate to complete it by October 1, 1979. 22. Journal of the House, 1980, 501 ff. HB 1769 also would have created regional advisory councils, eliminated the Division of Community Colleges and the Division of Universities, limited the Department of Education’s control over a new Coordinating Commission, and merged University of North Florida with the University of Florida and merged Florida Atlantic University and the Florida International University, among a host of other provisions. The bill that came out of conference, GB-7D, was passed the following year but vetoed by Graham; see Journal of the House, 1981. 23. Journal of the House, 1981, 5–6. 24. Business/Higher Education Partnership, Higher Education in Florida: The Emerging Catastrophe and How to Prevent It (Tampa: Council of 100, Business/Higher Education Partnership, 1996), 13. 25. Graham, “Statement on Education Governance”; Finney, State Structures; Charles Reed interview with the authors, August 13, 2002. 26. Business/Higher Education Partnership, Higher Education in Florida, 13. 27. Reed interview, August 13, 2002. 28. Michael McLendon, “Setting the Governmental Agenda for State Decentralization of Higher Education,” Journal of Higher Education 74, 5 (2003), 479–515, 487; see also, Kingdon, Agendas. 29. The cabinet consisted of the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, comptroller, commissioner of agriculture, and commissioner of education. 30. Here is the ballot language of Amendment 8: Merges cabinet offices of treasurer and comptroller into one chief financial officer; reduces cabinet membership to chief financial officer, attorney general, agriculture commissioner; secretary of state and education commissioner eliminated from elected cabinet; secretary of

Competing Agendas for University Governance

207

state duties defined by law; changes composition of state board of education from governor and cabinet to board appointed by governor; board appoints education commissioner; defines state board of administration, trustees of internal improvement trust fund, land acquisition trust fund. http://www.law.fsu.edu/crc/ballot.html. 31. Florida Constitutional Revision Commission, Proceedings, Part II, March 17, 1998, http://www.law.fsu.edu/crc/minutes/crcminutes031798b. html. Article IX, Section 2 of the Florida Constitution was amended as follows (with cross-outs and underlines indicating changes): State board of education.—The governor and the members of the cabinet shall constitute a state board of education, which shall be a body corporate and have such supervision of the system of free public education as is provided by law. The state board of education shall consist of seven members appointed by the governor to staggered 4year terms, subject to confirmation by the senate. The state board of education shall appoint the commissioner of education. 32. Martin Dyckman, “Education Superboard May Hinge on Word,” St. Petersburg Times, April 16, 2000, D3. 33. John Winn, interviewed by the authors, September 12, 2002; the committee’s recommendations are in: Commissioner’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Education Governance, “Final Recommendations” (Tallahassee: Florida Department of Education, Office of Legislative Affairs, 2000). This document contains a minority report advocating the retention of the board of regents. 34. “Education Idea Dates to ‘99,” St. Petersburg Times, February 5, 2001, late Tampa edition; see also, Gary Fineout, “Bush Conceived Education Plan on Paper Napkin,” Gainesville Sun, February 4, 2001. 35. Florida’s poor showing in its high school graduation rate, a full ten points below the national average, exacerbates any attempt to address this issue. While the Bush administration strives to make an increasing share of financial aid “merit-based,” the PEPC pointed out that the amount of needbased aid in Florida is only about one-third the national average ($31 compared to $111 per college-age individual). Florida Postsecondary Educational Planning Commission, “What Would It Take to Be ‘Average’?” in Perspective on . . . , May 1999. 36. Carl Backman, interviewed by the authors, August 12, 2002; Winn interview, September 12, 2002. 37. Winn interview, September 12, 2002. 38. Much of the task force’s work is documented on the web at http://www.myflorida.com/myflorida/education/learn/egrt_taskforce/.

208

LARRY JOHNSON AND KATHRYN M. BORMAN

39. Michael McLendon and Erik C. Ness, “The Politics of State Higher Education Governance Reform,” Peabody Journal of Education 78 (2003), 66–88, 69. 40. Barry Klein and Steve Bousquet, “New Trustees Mostly GOP Businessmen,” St. Petersburg Times, June 29, 2001. 41. “Revamping of Education Governance in Florida Reveals a New Political Order,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 2002, http://web. lexis-nexus/universe/. . . . 42. “The Revolution Begins,” St. Petersburg Times, Editorial, July 27, 2001; Barry Klein and Steve Bousquet, “New Trustees Mostly GOP Businessmen.” 43. Lucy Morgan, “Ex-House Speaker Wetherell Asks to be FSU President,” St. Petersburg Times, November 12, 2002, late Tampa edition, 1B. An announcement of Wetherell’s appointment, “Board of Education Ratifies Wetherell as FSU President,” appeared in Monday Report, an official publication of the Florida Department of Education, January 6, 2003; available on the worldwide web at http://www.myfloridaeducation.com/monday/2003pdf/ 2003-01.pdf. Bush announced the Florida State trustees in a press release, “Governor and Lt. Governor Announce Florida State University Board of Trustees” (Office of the Governor, June 26, 2001), http://www.state.fl.us/ eog_new/eog/library/releases/2001/june/university_board_tall-06-2501.html; on Thrasher’s becoming chair, see Florida State’s website at http://www.fsu.edu/~trustees/. On the day Bush signed the higher education reorganization bill, he appointed Horne secretary of education; see Governor Bush’s announcement of Horne’s appointment: Governor Appoints Florida’s First Secretary of Education and the Florida Board of Education: Signs Senate Bill 1162 Education Reorganization, June 6, 2001, http://sun6.dms.state. fl.us/eog_new/eog/library/releases/2001/june/education-06—06.html and http://www.myfloridaeducation.com/monday/ 2003pdf/2003-01.pdf; “Frank T. Brogan, President, Florida Atlantic University,” Florida Atlantic University website, http://www.fau.edu/president/. 44. Barry Klein, “Florida International Argues Its Case for a New Law School,” St. Petersburg Times, March 13, 1998; Barry Klein, “Lack of Minority Lawyers to Be Studied,” St. Petersburg Times, July 16, 1998. 45. Klein, “Florida International Argues Its Case.” 46. James Harper, “Compromise to Third Law School Endorsed,” St. Petersburg Times, August 21, 1993, and Tim Nickens, “Regents Approve Law School, Raises,” St. Petersburg Times, September 11, 1993. 47. “Regents as Referees,” St. Petersburg Times, March 20, 1998; Barry Klein, “Alliance Seeks to Win Law School,” St. Petersburg Times, July 12, 1999; Klein, “Lack of Minority Lawyers”; Klein, “Regents Reject New Law Schools”; on Connerly, see chapter 8. 48. William Yardley, “Herald Publisher Joins Push for Law Schools,” St. Petersburg Times, April 14, 2000;Tim Nickens, “Medical, Law Schools Racing

Competing Agendas for University Governance

209

to Floor Votes,” St. Petersburg Times, April 26, 2000, 1A; Tim Nickens, “Law School Is a Deal Just Waiting to Happen,” St. Petersburg Times, September 16, 2000. 49. Laws of Florida, 2000, Ch. 2000-321, 2; see Education Governance Reorganization Transition Task Force, Overview of House Bill 2263 (Tallahassee, n.d.). 50. Overview of HB 2263, 1 ff.; Laws of Florida, 2000, Ch. 2000-321, 2, 7. 51. For the provisions of Amendment 11, see its full text at http://election.dos.state.fl.us/initiatives/fulltext/34498-1.htm. 52. In an event sponsored by the University of South Florida, Gibson debated Phil Handy, chair, Florida Board of Education, the superboard. This debate can be viewed at http://www.netcast.usf.edu/Public/announce/PublicLectures/2002/Election2002/Amendment11/amend11debate/amend11deb ate.htm. Clark Kerr, whom Graham admires, recommended faculty representation on governing boards in “Shock Wave II: An Introduction to the Twenty-First Century,” in Steven Brint (ed.), The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 53. Robert Graham interview with the authors, December 14, 2002. 54. Graham interview; Florida Department of State, Division of Elections, November 5, 2002 General Election, Official Results http://www.fec. state.fl.us/fec/links.html; Barry Klein, “Democrats Lead Governance Fight,” St. Petersburg Times, June 5, 2001. 55. Florida Board of Governors, Minutes, January 7, 2003, http://www. flboe.org/bog/meetings/2003_04_30/Minutes_2003_01_07.pdf; Anita Kumar, “University Boards Belie Voters’ Will,” St. Petersburg Times, January 8, 2003. 56. “Graham’s Education Initiative Approved,” Gainesville Sun, November 6, 2002. 57. Anita Kumar, “University Boards Belie Voters’ Will.” 58. “Board of Governors Meets First Time; Tom Petway III Takes Chair,” January 8, 2003, Associated Press news clipping on Florida Department of Education website http://www.fldoe.org/bog/news/2003_01_08_ meeting.asp. 59. Kingdon, Agendas. Bush’s opponents attacked the irrationality of the changes he made. In his interview with the authors, former chancellor Reed called Bush’s superboard a “goat rodeo.”

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

8

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity, and the Blinkered Language of Preference

Larry Johnson Deirdre Cobb-Roberts Florida became the focus of a right-wing campaign to end affirmative action in the spring of 1999. In March, Ward Connerly announced, “Florida is going to be a target for our national movement. I have concluded there is a problem in Florida.”1 Connerly, the wealthy African American businessman and foe of affirmative action and desegregation, had previously led campaigns that eliminated the consideration of race and gender in university admissions and state employment and contracting in California and Washington. His goal was to put a similar initiative on the Florida ballot for the 2000 election.2 In California and Washington, conservative political leaders supported Connerly’s effort, as did the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington, DC, law firm that has provided legal representation for individuals claiming “reverse discrimination,” but in Florida, neither the law firm nor the Republican establishment supported him. Governor Jeb Bush saw Connerly’s initiative as “divisive,” and the state chairman of the Republican Party “followed his governor’s lead in keeping his distance from the initiative.”3 However, many Floridians apparently supported Connerly in 1999. Two autumn public opinion surveys found overwhelming support for his initiative among Florida’s white voters; the results of the second poll appeared in newspapers on November 8. Connerly and his organization, the American Civil

211

212

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

Rights Institute, trumpeted the results of these polls.4 The next day, the governor issued an executive order banning the consideration of race and gender in university admissions and state contracting.5 Bush called a press conference to explain his executive order and announce his One Florida Initiative to increase diversity on college campuses and in state government while prohibiting the use of “racial or gender set-asides, preferences, or quotas.” The initiative included a plan guaranteeing college admissions to a proportion of each high school graduating class similar to that implemented by his brother George W. Bush in Texas, a $20 million increase in need-based financial aid, a partnership with the College Board to raise scores on the SAT, the appointment of a task force to address equity in education, and numerous other programs, many of which were aimed at preparing high school students for college, such as increasing the number of Advanced Placement courses offered in high schools serving poor and minority students. The percent plan guaranteed admission to a state university to the “top 20 percent of students in every Florida high school senior class, regardless of one’s SAT or ACT scores” (though students needed to take one of the tests), provided that the student completed nineteen academic credits. Bush dubbed this system the “Talented 20 Program.” The talented twenty would move to the “front of the line” to receive financial aid. Bush’s plan still allowed colleges to use “race-neutral factors such as income level, whether an applicant is a first generation college student and geographical diversity.” It did not, for example, prevent legacy admissions or other benefits for students from wealthy families. Governor Bush claimed that the One Florida Initiative would eliminate the ethically and legally problematic affirmative action policies of the past and create more substantive opportunities in the long run.6 The timing of the governor’s decree raised suspicions among political observers in Florida. Opponents of One Florida as well as experts speaking in national and local media speculated that Bush acted to keep the Connerly initiative off the ballot in 2000, when his brother George W. would be a candidate for the U.S. presidency. The general expectation was that having the initiative on the ballot would mobilize African Americans, other people of color, and women to vote not only against the initiative but also against the governor’s brother. In an interview on PBS’s NewsHour, Lance deHaven-Smith, who has studied Florida politics for many years, explained why Governor Bush might wish to avoid a large vote in opposition to his new plan:

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

213

The governor was trying to head that off, in part. He was going to propose this as a moderate position, replacing affirmative action with what he has come to call “affirmative access,” which is reaching out and trying to recruit African Americans and women and other minorities in to jobs. There’s also a rumor that he was hoping that by doing this, he would prevent there being a huge Black turnout in November, which there would be if the Connerly proposal were on the table.7

Not surprisingly, Governor Bush denied that he was motivated by presidential politics; he said he had developed the One Florida Initiative to stave off chaos before affirmative action was ended completely in Florida, either by court order or by the ballot. Bush’s plan still allowed colleges to use “race-neutral factors such as income level, whether an applicant is a first generation college student and geographical diversity.”8 In analyzing the policy implications of One Florida, it is fair to say that some of the policy’s provisions are welcome and may benefit students of color and possibly women. We should say that although Bush ended consideration of gender in college admissions, it is quite clear that he and his advisors focused on race. In the announcement of his initiative, Bush did not mention women when referring to university admissions, although he does in his discussion of state contracting.9 However beneficial some provisions of One Florida may be there are many reasons to be suspicious of the ban on considering race. This chapter will examine some of those reasons. First, Florida has a long history of resisting desegregation of higher education and did not develop a desegregation plan acceptable to the court until 1978. The state still operates its universities and colleges under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education that requires continued progress in desegregating the entire higher education system, not just admissions. Second, the rhetorical focus on individual merit underlying the package of One Florida policies shifted the burden for equalizing educational outcomes away from the state and onto students of color, particularly Blacks. Despite the governor’s claims, the elimination of race-based affirmative action and some of the governor’s initial rhetoric suggested that those who benefited from it lacked the characteristics to succeed in college. Third, One Florida suggests that the problems of racial discrimination in education, employment, and business opportunities are in the past. Although there has undoubtedly been some progress desegregating Florida’s system of higher education, many of

214

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

the patterns of discrimination seen when affirmative action was instituted in 1978 are still apparent. Florida’s system still concentrates students of color, particularly Blacks, in less prestigious institutions, and Blacks are still largely excluded from many graduate and professional programs, factors that limit their life chances. Those life chances are such that African Americans still face unemployment rates twice as high as Whites in Florida. Finally, desegregation of faculty, administration, staff, and governing boards has proceeded slowly at best. One Florida has not effectively addressed these matters, and following implementation of One Florida, admissions of African Americans dropped at the University of Florida, the state’s most prestigious university, from 10 percent of firsttime-in-college freshmen in 1999 to 7.1 percent in 2001. In the system as a whole, the proportion of African American first-time-in-college freshmen dropped from 17.6 percent in summer and fall 1998 to 14.1 percent in the fall of 2005.10 Neither One Florida nor previous affirmative action policies have created a just society in Florida. Unfortunately, the debate over One Florida and affirmative action have been distracting debates in higher education; discrimination against African Americans and other people of color must be fought much more vigorously than it ever has been in Florida. Both educational and economic opportunities must be expanded. FLORIDA’S RESISTANCE TO THE DESEGREGATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION The history of higher education in Florida does not inspire confidence that the state university system can offer equal opportunities without supervision. Florida is one of nineteen states found to operate dual systems of higher education, systematically harming Blacks. During the first half of the twentieth century, Blacks who wished to attend college in Florida were exclusively confined to Black institutions.11 These colleges never received the level of funding nor the quality of facilities the state afforded White institutions.12 When Virgil Hawkins applied to the University of Florida’s law school in 1949, Florida’s system of higher education still “maintained complete segregation.”13 After being rejected because of his race, Hawkins battled for nine years to be admitted. The United States Supreme Court considered his case three times; the Florida Supreme Court, three times. At every step, the board

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

215

of control, which governs Florida higher education before the board of regents, resisted orders to admit him. Even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hawkins be admitted promptly and the Florida Supreme Court ruled Hawkins was qualified to be admitted, the Florida board of control kept him out by adopting a regulation in May 1958, a regulation that was putatively race-neutral but designed specifically for Hawkins. Despite court rulings, the board of control used this regulation to disqualify him “post facto.”14 Facing this new obstacle, Hawkins agreed to drop his suit in exchange for court-ordered desegregation of University of Florida graduate and professional schools. (After graduating from New England College of Law in Boston, Hawkins had to fight for many years before being admitted to the Florida Bar.15) The board of control’s maneuvering was plainly an attempt to keep the University of Florida Law School all-White after Brown v. Board of Education, even in the face of specific court orders. As chapter 2 points out, this manipulation of rules fits into the long history of resistance to desegregation after Brown, but is one example of the massive resistance undertaken by Florida’s political leaders as well as others in the South to prevent Blacks from attending the most prestigious universities and earning degrees from their programs.16 This intransigence remained for years. Even after civil rights groups pressed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requiring institutions (in Title VI) receiving federal assistance to show no discrimination in conducting their programs, Florida, like other southern states, continued to operate a dual system of higher education.17 For many years, Florida refused to acknowledge that it was violating the law. Just as important, however, was the failure of the federal government to enforce desegregation in higher education. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, charged with enforcing Title VI, failed to enforce the law by withholding federal funds or ending federally funded programs to offending institutions. Indeed, for many years, HEW did not even raise the possibility of withholding funds. Only under pressure did HEW begin to act, though without great vigor, advising ten states with dual higher education systems to submit desegregation plans. Seeking voluntary compliance had little effect on some of those states.18 Florida and five other states did not submit plans as ordered, but HEW took no enforcement action. Finally, in 1970, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a class action suit on behalf of Black students, citizens, and taxpayers to compel HEW to enforce the law. This case, Adams v. Richardson, was filed

216

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

against Elliot Richardson, secretary of HEW under Nixon. Three more Adams suits were filed, each against the incumbent secretary of HEW or, later, the secretary of the Department of Education, Adams v. Weinberger, Adams v. Califano, and Adams v. Bell, in order to compel these agencies to enforce the law.19 Slowly, southern states moved to desegregate higher education. Florida and several other affected states submitted plans in 1974, but the NAACP found them still to be inadequate.20 In 1977, in Adams v. Califano, the district court agreed that these plans had failed to end segregation. In February 1978, following months of negotiations, HEW provisionally accepted plans from Florida, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.21 Thus, it was not until 1978 that Florida had a desegregation plan in place, almost three decades after Hawkins’s first application for law school and twenty years after the admission regulation that thwarted Hawkins’s initial court victories. However, no one implemented this plan energetically in Florida. In 1981, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that Florida had made little progress in the three areas covered by the plan: disestablishment of the structure of the dual system, including strengthening historically Black colleges; desegregation of student enrollment at all levels, undergraduate, graduate, and professional, at “traditionally White universities”; and desegregation of faculty and administrative staffs, nonacademic personnel, and governing boards.22 Florida and the other so-called Adams states operated their higher education systems under court-ordered agreements until the Reagan and Bush administrations successfully petitioned the courts to dismiss the Adams cases. Another case, Allen v. Wright (1984), had limited the ability of ordinary citizens to compel executive branch agencies to enforce laws through lawsuits. The Reagan administration used Allen to defang Adams. In 1990, the Circuit Court in Washington, DC, dismissed the Adams cases because, in the words of the court, “Congress has not explicitly or implicitly authorized the grand scale action plaintiffs delineate.” Thus, Florida and the other Adams states were freed from the court order twenty years after the first Adams case was filed.23 Since the dismissal of the Adams cases, the state of Florida has entered into several agreements with the Federal Department of Education and its Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to continue desegregating higher education. The most recent agreement was signed in 1998 and ran until 2003. The precise relationship between One Florida and OCR monitoring is unclear. Attorneys in the Office of Civil Rights

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

217

have negotiated a new agreement, but the secretary of education has not yet released it. These are considered “private agreements” because they are between two parties, and they do not result from a court order. The 1998 agreement has provisions similar to the earliest one, and OCR’s stated goal is to implement those provisions without litigation.24 OCR is publicly committed to monitoring the implementation of One Florida to make sure minority enrollment does not drop. Raymond Pierce, deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, told a town hall meeting called to discuss One Florida at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida, “The minute the number starts to drop, we must increase our engagement with the state of Florida . . . We are preparing our analysis . . . and building our case.” This meeting took place following the approval of One Florida by the Florida board of regents and the Florida cabinet in February 2000.25 OCR has “expressed its concern to members of Jeb Bush’s administration,” and received assurances that steps would be taken to maintain minority enrollment.26 REACTION TO ONE FLORIDA OCR staff was not the only ones concerned about the effects of One Florida. Politically, One Florida became a lightning rod inside the state even as Bush’s moves eliminated the chance of a referendum in 2000. One Florida became the center of the largest protests in Bush’s first term and a symbol of his gubernatorial staff. Women, students at Florida’s historically Black colleges and universities, members of Black and Hispanic organizations, and Florida legislators expressed concern, but Bush refused to meet with any groups or individuals opposed to his plan. Toni Van Pelt, president of Florida National Organization of Women, describes how the governor spurned groups desiring to meet with him and how these individuals responded: And when all doors were closed to us, two of our Black state legislators, Senator Kendrick Meek and Representative Tony Hill, along with Florida NOW member, Barbara DeVane, staged an overnight sit-in in the governor’s office. Barbara was dragged from the room the next morning. The Black legislators were treated with more respect.27

As the governor’s suite filled with reporters during the sit-in, the governor tried to call a press conference, but reporters remained with the

218

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

protesters. According to news accounts, Bush called the sit-in “childish, sophomoric and unbecoming an elected official.” Late at night, when Bush’s anger flared and unaware the sound system was operating, he said into an open microphone: “Kick their asses out.” Following this embarrassing episode, students from nearby Florida A&M University (FAMU) went to the governor’s office to show their support for the sit-in and demanded that the governor put an end to One Florida policies. The outcome was dramatic. For the first time since taking office, the governor met with the legislative Black caucus. The caucus persuaded the governor to delay implementation of One Florida and to hold public hearings around the state. Hearings in Tampa, Miami, and Tallahassee drew thousands of people who testified that One Florida would harm Floridians.28 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NOW, and several other groups representing Blacks, Latinos, women, and labor organized a coalition, Floridians Representing Equality and Equity (FREE). FREE held demonstrations in several cities and organized a large protest involving at least ten thousand people to coincide with Bush’s State of the State address to the legislature on March 7, 2000 in Tallahassee. National civil rights leaders attended the rally. The Reverend Martin Luther King, III, Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke against Bush’s plan. Members of Congress and several state legislators also attended.29 In response to both rising public opposition and negotiations with the Office of Civil Rights, the Bush administration modified its plan and released a document entitled “Improvements to the One Florida Initiative.” The changes included a commitment to promote diversity among students, faculty, and staff at each state university system (SUS) institution. This brought the One Florida plan more closely into line with Florida’s agreement with the Office of Civil Rights. Bush announced that Chancellor Adam Herbert has decided to evaluate presidents on their performance in this area to a greater extent than ever before. Decisions on allocation of resources, retention and performance raises will be linked to these evaluations.30

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Bush administration and the state university system have acted on this decision any more enthusiastically than they implemented the agreement with the Office of

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

219

Civil Rights. University presidents’ failure to increase diversity on their campuses seems to have had little effect on their escalating salaries. The failure of the state to hold State University System administrators accountable for increasing the number of minorities at all levels of their institutions and in particular for addressing the precipitous decline in Black enrollment raises questions about the present state administration’s ability to follow through on its commitments. Moreover, it suggests that some attention should be paid to subtle rhetorical markers in Governor Bush’s initial announcement of One Florida and an accompanying document from the governor’s office. IDEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATIONS OF ONE FLORIDA While much of Governor Bush’s discussion of One Florida focused on claims that his policy initiative would lead to greater equality of opportunity, there are several revealing passages from his initial announcement and plan in 1999 that are substantially different from the primary message Bush tried to convey in 1999 and 2000, in presenting and then defending One Florida. Bush has been a remarkably disciplined public speaker as governor, and the disappearance of this language in later speeches and documents suggests that One Florida was drafted hastily by the governor’s office. In the initial speech and plan, both he and his staff were drawing from multiple strands of conservative thought. One strand emphasizes a human-capital solution to inequality: improve education in general, and inequality will shrink. But another strand blames minorities and women for the gains made through the civil rights movement. This second, far more bitter, strand appeared only briefly in the governor’s announcement of One Florida, but its appearance is clear evidence that neither the human-capital argument nor the electoral concerns about a Connerly-led initiative monopolized the framing of One Florida. Some background on this second set of arguments is important. Over the past several decades, opponents of affirmative action inside and outside academia have developed a sophisticated ideology to justify ending affirmative action. Some arguments are encapsulated in titles such as Nathan Glazer’s Affirmative Discrimination, emphasizing the claim that affirmative action discriminates against White people, particularly White men. While Glazer claims affirmative action discriminates most against White men, it is important to note that the Center for Individual Rights

220

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

(CIR) has selected women plaintiffs for its suits aimed at undermining the consideration of race in university admissions. Cheryl J. Hopwood was the name plaintiff in CIR’s case against the University of Texas. Barbara Grutter, Jennifer Gratz, and Patrick Hamacher were the name plaintiffs in the University of Michigan cases recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The strategy of using White women as plaintiffs has pitted the two groups with the most at stake in affirmative action, women and racial minorities, against one another.31 The claim that affirmative action discriminates against White men was prominent in the first-day justification of One Florida. On its very first page, Governor Bush’s Equity in Education Plan claimed, “diversity that disregards performance and focuses solely on race or ethnicity is wrong. It is discrimination” (emphasis added).32 This passage suggested falsely that affirmative action in Florida had ever disregarded performance entirely. If taken literally, failing high school students could have been admitted to universities based “solely on race.” That factual slip shows the bitter tone of this argument. This plan was largely devoted to ways of improving minority and low-income students’ preparation for college in the public schools, a laudable goal, but that first page implied that students who have been admitted to universities under affirmative action have in various ways not deserved it. The plan stated that “diversity is an important state goal in our higher education system,” but it portrayed the diversity that has resulted from affirmative action as a “false diversity” that “does an injustice to those who work hard and are passed over.” The implication was that students admitted under affirmative action, necessarily students of color or women, do not work so hard as those admitted without it. Another rhetorical tactic blames affirmative action for causing racial conflict. In this strategy, Whites are described as hostile regardless of the rationality of a reverse-discrimination claim. This social-disruption argument is an echo of claims made in the 1950s and 1960s that segregation should be maintained to avoid provoking violence. Rather than paying attention to the long-standing oppression of Blacks, the bitter position is that affirmative action itself is responsible for pitting Blacks and Whites against each other, as though absent affirmative action, there would be no problem. At several points in 1999 and 2000, Bush presented himself as taking a pragmatic position on One Florida, that we need to back off in order preserve gains that have been made or to proceed along different, more moderate lines. In the press conference announcing One Florida, he said:

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

221

This new initiative will increase opportunity and diversity in the state’s universities and in state contracting without using policies that discriminate or that pit one racial group against another.33

He characterized affirmative action programs as “old solutions” that “have become increasingly controversial and divisive.” He summed up his view that affirmative action is discriminatory and stakes his claim as a moderate in this way: What is viewed as an opportunity by one Floridian is too often correctly viewed as an unfair advantage by another Floridian. And in the heat of the controversy too many of our citizens are forgetting the shared values that bind us all together.

In his announcement, Bush leaned on multiple arguments for banning race-conscious policies. In emphasizing the controversial nature of the policies he was banning, Bush implied that the discomfort of some with affirmative action was a reason to end it. The question no reporter raised at the time was whose discomfort justified a major change in state policy.34 In ending race-conscious affirmative action, Bush shifted the ground from racism and discrimination to the theoretical shortcomings of students who might benefit from affirmative action. He argued, “preferences in higher education are being used to mask the failure of low performing schools.” To Governor Bush, the real problems were that “social promotion and race-based preferences for admissions to higher education have made the need to address the deficiencies in our K–12 system less urgent.” Many of these deficiencies existed long before affirmative action was put in place; from a historical perspective, the connection he drew between efforts to end discrimination in higher education and poor quality public schools is spurious. It is important to keep in mind that this rhetoric was mixed with other arguments relying on human-capital assumptions instead. For example, Bush acknowledged that schools serving African Americans and Latino/a students lacked many needed resources and programs, such as Advanced Placement classes, and his pledge to improve them is appropriate. However, that first justification of One Florida mixed this promise to provide more opportunities in high schools, on the one hand, with the subtle implication that hundreds of Black students in Florida universities had been given unearned opportunities that made White Floridians uncomfortable, on the other hand.

222

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

This mixed rhetoric was accompanied by an odd therapeutic argument, comparing affirmative action programs to substance abuse. The plan released by the governor’s office described “three enablers—the lack of accountability, social promotion, and preference policies based on race and ethnicity—have intentionally and unfairly perpetuated the low-performing status of these schools and their students.”35 While it is true that students admitted under alternative admissions programs graduate at noticeably lower rates than those admitted under regular admissions guidelines (roughly 35 percent compared to 60 percent), the disparaging language obscured the socioeconomic obstacles that face students who had relied on affirmative action. (Because the governor’s plan allowed differential criteria by social class and parents’ education, it would not be surprising if special admissions based on nonracial factors result in the same disparities in outcomes over the next ten years.) It compared college opportunities to dependency and substance abuse, a language far removed from human-capital assumptions. “Preferences” and social promotion, the governor said, “set these children up for failure”: Our university system’s graduation rates of students admitted who did not meet basic admissions criteria are significantly less than that of well-prepared students. This cycle of failure must be broken.36

His first day promoting One Florida combined the language of substance-abuse therapy with an older rhetoric of a culture of poverty, suggesting that university admissions fed poverty. What of Florida’s history of racial discrimination, especially in higher education? Bush argued that racism was no longer a significant problem in Florida. He acknowledged that Florida has a long history of racism and recognized the past need for affirmative action, saying, “I do not question the previous need for policies that we are moving beyond today. These policies were intended to deal with the real and tragic legacy of more than a century of segregation in our state.” Affirmative action had been taken, he said, “to right those historic wrongs.”37 Bush administration documents asserted instead that overt racism and discrimination were no longer significant causes of inequity in Florida. For example, the Equity in Education Plan stated: A generation ago, race- and ethnic-based preferences were appropriate because segregation was a matter of policy. Now the gaps that have been created in education performance are more a result of the lack of opportunity than overt racial or ethnic discrimination. White

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

223

students in D and F schools suffer just as much as African American and Hispanic students, just as in A and B schools African American, Hispanic and White students alike have a greater chance to be high performers. Today, the most glaring inequity is not overt race and ethnic discrimination, but the failure of school districts to equitably offer the same opportunities and resources to low-performing and high-performing schools alike.38

The Plan is surely correct in noting that poor Whites and Blacks are both consigned to low-performing schools that fail to provide them resources and opportunities needed to succeed. Poverty is a significant factor in the proportion of students passed the math and reading portions of Florida’s statewide standardized tests. In addition, the extent to which schools are segregated makes an enormous difference in how well students do on this test. For example, fewer than 32 percent of fifth graders in highly segregated schools, those with more than 90 percent Black students, passed the FCAT while nearly 55 percent in integrated schools and almost 56 percent of in nearly all-White schools, with fewer than 15 percent Black students, did. As occurs elsewhere in the United States, race and poverty are interrelated in Florida. Eighty percent of students in segregated elementary schools are poor compared to 58 percent in integrated schools and 43% in nearly allWhite schools. Remedying these inequities will take a long-term commitment to improve the quality of education offered poor children of all races and Black children in particular. Fortunately, there is some evidence of progress in the public schools. Segregated schools in 2000 received significantly higher per-pupil expenditures, including state appropriations and Title I funds, than either integrated or nearly allWhite schools.39 These findings suggest that Florida retains significant racial disparities in education as a legacy of racial discrimination and poverty within the state. The next two sections of this chapter provide evidence that minorities and African Americans in particular still face intense discrimination in many areas of their lives. Before moving on to those sections, it is important to note that although the announcement of the One Florida Initiative banned the consideration of race and gender in college and university admissions and state contracting, Bush’s comments on affirmative action in university admissions focused entirely on what he believes are unfair advantages conferred upon minority applicants. He did address women in his comments about state contracting, but it is clear that when it came to the universities, he and his

224

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

advisors were focused on race. While we believe that it is important to continue to challenge sexism and discrimination against women, in this chapter we are primarily trying to show that Florida has failed to desegregate its universities fully; thus, race is central to our discussion. THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS Governor Jeb Bush lauded his One Florida Initiative as the answer to race-conscious admissions. This initiative by executive order would end affirmative action in the state of Florida while increasing diversity in the State University System by accepting the top 20 percent of all graduating seniors from Florida public high schools. If this plan were successful, it could then be used as a national model for other states searching for a race-neutral admissions policy. Governor Bush felt he had “solved one of the most controversial issues in the United States.”40 Has it? Patricia Marin and Edgar K. Lee of Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project examined the aftermath of his Talented 20 program.41 Their findings revealed the plan was flawed on several important levels. While Bush proclaimed One Florida a success and touted it as a national model, Marin and Lee challenged Bush’s claims. There was very little affirmative action in higher education in the SUS prior to the One Florida initiative, and Bush’s efforts made little difference.42 Nearly all of the students admitted to the SUS under the Talented 20 program would have been admitted in any case. Fewer than 150 Black and Hispanic students would not have been admitted prior to the implementation of the program (104 Blacks and 16 Hispanics).43 One Florida did little to address the racial stratification in the SUS, leaving FAMU and Florida International University clearly subordinate to other institutions within the system. Furthermore, Bush’s claim that there had been an increase in minority enrollments the year One Florida was implemented is entirely suspect because he relied on data gathered two months after the program went into effect. Enrollment decisions had been made prior to the program’s implementation. Bush failed to address how changing racial composition of high school graduates affected the number of minorities enrolling in the SUS.44 Last, the claim of “success” does not take into account the race-conscious efforts in the areas of recruitment, financial aid, outreach, retention, and summer achievement programs aimed at supporting Black and Hispanic students in place prior to the beginning of the One Florida initiative.45

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

225

As Marin and Lee point out, the irony of the Talented 20 plan is that it draws its talented 20 percent from a public education system that is highly segregated, in which African Americans receive lowerquality education, conditions perpetuated from the southern educational past, a social system that provoked affirmative action measures initially. Admitting the top 20 percent of graduating seniors from all high schools appears to provide a solution to achieving diversity by blind acceptance regardless of race and gender.46 However, which graduating seniors will qualify for the Talented 20 program—and where they matriculate—is seldom discussed. Not all seniors who graduate from Florida public schools will be eligible for Bush’s program; however, students from all racial and gender backgrounds are eligible. Eligibility is based on graduation from a Florida public high school, completion of nineteenth required high school units, receipt of a standard high school diploma, and submitted SAT or ACT test.47 After students meet the eligibility criteria, they are guaranteed admission to the SUS with the promise of some financial aid. However, it may not be the college or university of their choice. The promise of the plan has been fulfilled once students are admitted to any college or university in the SUS. Rarely are students admitted to the top-tier institutions (University of Florida and Florida State University) under the Talented 20 pool. Furthermore, Black and Hispanic students are often disenfranchised as they are the overrepresented recipients of nonstandard diplomas. In fact, according to researchers, “for those applying to college for fall 2001, 95.0 percent of Whites and 95.9 percent of Asians received standard diplomas, but only 83.9 percent of Blacks and 89.9 percent of Hispanics did so.”48 Another point for serious consideration is the actual number of students that have benefited from this program.49 Bush has asserted that this program has been responsible for increasing diversity on Florida college and university campuses. Marin and Lee’s analysis concluded that the plan has increased diversity by admitting fewer than 180 “newly eligible” students, a number reflecting the final result of the plan’s first two years. This number is a miniscule gain when compared to the 30,000 students annually admitted for the first time in college in Florida, drawn from approximately 120,000 Florida public high school seniors each year.50 An assessment of the Talented 20 program must consider the context of Florida public education and efforts to promote equity in place prior to implementation of the program. Florida’s demographics are

226

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

changing and the state is becoming increasingly diverse. However, Florida has a high dropout rate compared to the United States as a whole. Dropping out of school precludes students’ participation in the program. In essence claims that the program is successful ignore the fact that over half the state’s Black and Hispanic students are missing. Also important to note is that many colleges in the state universities had moved away from race-based admissions policies prior to the 1999 announcement of One Florida. Aside from race-neutral policies in admissions criteria, many colleges and universities had lifted enrollment caps, a policy that would appear to suggest that the number of students from diverse backgrounds had applied and been admitted. Additionally, top-tier universities disclosed that students in the Talented 20 program would have been admitted under their standard admission policies. Finally, perhaps the most important omission has been the lack of discussion pertaining to other affirmative measures to increase campus diversity. Both the University of Florida and Florida State University have increased their race-conscious recruitment strategies. Race-conscious recruitment strategies are not in conflict with the One Florida initiative, which only prohibits race-based admission standards. To date, the Talented 20 program, which focuses on race-neutral admissions standards, has yielded no significant success in a highly complex system of higher education in which racism is still important. In fact, it could be hypothesized that recruitment outreach has been the key to enrolling African American and Hispanic students. THE PRESENT VESTIGES OF THE DUAL SYSTEM People of color still must live with both marketplace and institutional racism. Outside schools, prejudice is still a common barrier in acquiring jobs and housing. Only three years after the creation of One Florida, the compliance officer of the Pinellas County (St. Petersburg) Government Office of Human Rights argued that there was still systemic racism in Pinellas County and that African Americans confronted prejudice on a regular basis.51 His office conducted a discrimination audit, which found widespread discrimination in the rental housing market. According to the 2002 audit: More than 70 percent of African Americans and more than half of Hispanic renters received differential treatment [compared to] White renters. The White testers were often told they could move

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

227

in tomorrow. Minority renters were told [the apartment manager] had to do a background check and that nothing was currently available.52

In addition to discrimination in housing, Blacks in Florida face consistently higher unemployment than Whites; the unemployment rate of Black men is twice that of White men (8 percent versus 4 percent).53 Within education, achievement gaps among teenagers are significant, and in some important ways schools are less accountable for paying attention to demographic trends than before Governor Bush took office. As chapter 5 notes, the largest school systems in Florida now have no oversight to keep segregation in check. After some progress desegregating the schools, the public schools have been undergoing resegregation. In 1991, 17 percent of students attended schools that were more than half minority, but by 2000, 41 percent did.54 In this context, what has the role of One Florida been? The goal of Adams was to eliminate vestiges of the dual system in Florida and the other states. No public university or college in Florida is completely segregated today, as they all were before the late 1950s. This is an important achievement of the civil rights movement nationally and in Florida; however, a great deal remains to be done. Some of the patterns of discrimination against people of color reported by the Commission on Civil Rights in 1981 are still apparent. This discrimination has been most apparent—and for many Floridians, most painful—at the state’s flagship university, the University of Florida. Overt hostility to Blacks has been reported as recently as 1990. Socially and politically, UF remains largely segregated. Greek organizations are separated into Black and White fraternities and sororities. Blacks charge that groups such as student government, the prestigious Blue Key leadership club, and the Alligator (the student newspaper) are difficult for Blacks to join. Student leaders say few Black students show an interest in becoming members.55 Perhaps it is no wonder Blacks did not want to join in the late 1980s, given the way some Whites treated them. White men harassed Black students, and a gang of White men chased and threatened a group of six Black women. White students formed a White Student Union to oppose affirmative action and what they called a “quota system.” In addition to these overt acts of racism, there were few Blacks on the faculty; only 73 of 3,188 full-time faculty (a little over 2 percent) were Black. And only 6 percent of the students were Black. An organization of Black

228

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

students began patrolling campus to protect Black women, and Black students protested the hiring of a White man as president over a Black woman.56 Bush’s announcement of One Florida reopened those wounds. In his early statements in 1999, the implication that affirmative action provided unearned opportunities mirrored statements by White students at the University of Florida less than ten years before that Black students were accepted “only because of affirmative action.” Many of the Blacks at the time had been academically talented students who had been recruited heavily by the university. In language parallel to the defense of One Florida, White students at the time had also exaggerated the effect of alternative admissions programs. Less than 3 percent of all students at UF did not meet the minimum test score and GPA requirements, and fewer than half of those were Black.57 Alternative admissions students, regardless of race, may be members of athletic teams, dance, music, and other programs that require special talents.58 Some may be disabled. (Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, UF makes provisions for students who are unable to take the required admissions tests.59) Three-quarters of the Black students met the usual criteria for admissions, and some who did not may have qualified for alternative admissions for reasons other than race. The role of a flagship university should not be underestimated either as a rhetorical touchpoint or as an institutional capstone. Flagship universities usually have powerful political friends in a state and retain both status and budget advantages in inter-institutional maneuvering. Thus, the imagined or real effects of affirmative action reshape both the symbolic and the institutional significance of flagship universities. It is no surprise that several major conflicts over affirmative action in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries focused on flagship universities—the University of California at Berkeley in Ward Connerly’s efforts as a California regent, the University of Michigan in the 2003 Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, and the University of Florida in Governor Bush’s One Florida policy. In the early twenty-first century, the University of Florida remained an uninviting place for African Americans, according to Provost David Colburn. “We were a segregated institution for a long time,” he said. “And for a long time after that we were an almost lily-White institution.”60 There are still few African American faculty—only about 3 percent are Black—particularly outside the field of education, a fact that contributes to the unwelcoming atmosphere.61 One Florida exacerbated

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

229

these problems. The number of African American freshman dropped from a high of 829 in 2000 to a low of 461 in the fall of 2001, after implementation of One Florida.62 Their proportion of the student body dropped from over 11 percent to just over 7 percent. The relatively high numbers for 2000 resulted from extraordinary efforts made by the university to recruit Black students the year before One Florida took effect. Throughout the rest of the university system, African American enrollment dropped only slightly, about one-quarter of one percent. But this is hardly the success Bush and One Florida promoters claim.63 The elimination of race-conscious admissions has had disproportionate effects on flagship institutions. California, Texas, and Washington also experienced plummeting minority enrollment at their most prestigious institutions when consideration of race in admissions was banned there during the 1990s.64 The aim of the agreements between Florida and HEW from 1978 on was to desegregate White institutions, particularly the most prestigious ones, such as the University of Florida, to strengthen FAMU, the public historically Black university, and to ensure that desegregation took place at all levels of higher education. It was never simply about the number of freshmen in the higher education system as a whole. In fact, in 1977 the proportion of Black freshmen enrolled in the state system as a whole slightly exceeded the proportion of Blacks in Florida’s general population, just as it does today. Then, Blacks constituted 15 percent of the freshman enrollment but only 14.2 percent of the state’s population. Today, Blacks constitute somewhat more than 17 percent of first-time-in-college students and 14.6 percent of the population.65 Today, Blacks are still concentrated in less prestigious institutions, particularly in the community colleges, just as they were in 1977. Florida relies heavily on community colleges and FAMU to provide undergraduate opportunities for Black students. In 1977, again, Blacks comprised 17 percent of the community college enrollment and 12 percent of four-year institutions’ enrollment,66 but more than half of the four-year enrollment was concentrated in a single institution, FAMU.67 While planning One Florida, Bush’s staff considered two steps that would have adversely affected the distribution of students among institutions. First, the staff suggested a special scholarship for students from poor communities—disproportionately minority—that could be used only at community colleges. Second, they proposed creating a three-tier higher education system in which the University of

230

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

Florida and Florida State would occupy the most prestigious top tier, emphasizing research and advanced training, and FAMU would occupy the lowest tier, emphasizing undergraduate education. Both steps would have ossified the state’s delegation of educating Black college students to permanently less prestigious institutions. The community college scholarship idea never saw the light of day, but the threetier plan did, and FAMU vigorously opposed it, as did other universities assigned to the lower tiers. 68 Florida has relied upon community colleges to meet the demand for higher education, and there are substantial barriers to transferring to four-year programs. Like its predecessors, the Bush administration has sought to create articulation agreements that will improve community college students’ chances of transferring successfully to state universities. However, the administration has not successfully addressed two historic challenges, first, to increase the proportion of Black students in community college academic tracks and, second, to ensure that they can use the community college as a springboard to the universities.69 Beyond the freshman year, Blacks are increasingly underrepresented in the predominantly White universities. In 2001, a little over 12 percent of all baccalaureate degrees were awarded to Blacks, quite an improvement over 1977, when only 7.1 percent were, but nearly one-third were awarded by FAMU (32 percent). The rest of the system only awarded 8.6 percent of its bachelor’s degrees to Blacks.70 At the master’s level, 11 percent of degrees are awarded to Blacks, but only 8.25 percent outside of FAMU. The exclusion of Blacks from doctoral programs is even more striking. Only 6.4 percent of all doctoral degrees were awarded to Blacks. Professional schools in some ways provide greater opportunities to Blacks than doctoral programs; 12.3 percent of professional degrees were awarded to Blacks, but these tended to be concentrated in pharmacy and law. No degrees in dentistry were awarded to Black males in 2001, and less than 1 percent of the degrees in dentistry were awarded to Black females.71 Blacks who receive advanced degrees tend to be concentrated in education. The Commission on Civil Rights argued in 1981 that this resulted from the scarcity of jobs for Black Ph.D.s outside historically Black universities’ education programs. If, however, we are to increase the number of Black faculty in areas outside education, particularly tenuretrack faculty, it is essential to increase the number of Ph.D.s awarded to Blacks in other fields. At the master’s level, 31 percent of degrees awarded to Blacks were awarded in education, compared to 25 percent

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

231

for all races. The concentration for women was even more striking. Thirty-five percent of degrees awarded to women were in education; this applied to both White and Black women. At the doctoral level, 35 percent of degrees awarded to African American men were awarded in education, and 46 percent of those degrees awarded to African American women were awarded in education. For Whites, 16 percent of all doctorates awarded to men were in education, and 25 percent of doctorates awarded to women were in education. Curiously, although the Bush plan has no provision for increasing the number of Black Ph.D.s outside education, it lists among the accomplishments of One Florida a drop in the number of Blacks in graduate programs in education in 2001.72 CONCLUSION When Bush and key leaders of his administration adopted the language of preferences in announcing One Florida, they were using language at the heart of the more bitter conservative arguments against affirmative action. Even while some parts of that language disappeared from later defenses of One Florida, the governor had successfully set the terms for later debate. Opponents of One Florida, who were trying to preserve affirmative action, used the same language, trying to justify preferences. Using the language of preferences undercut their claim to be fighting for justice and rectifying injustice. Whether it was the governor’s intention, defining the debate in terms of preferences distracted attention away from the historical legacy of discrimination in Florida higher education. In reality, One Florida did not end preferential treatment for some applicants—legacies (children of alumni), those with special talents, and veterans—who have not felt the sting of prejudice and exclusion. One Florida did not end these preferences in university admissions. And while Bush allowed for the children of “poverty status” to be given consideration, the financial and other noneducational obstacles that contribute to lower graduation rates for special admissions cases under affirmative action also exist for many admitted as a first-generation college students. Thus, the University of Florida may consider whether an applicant’s family might contribute money to the university, it may even set aside slots for students from an underrepresented county, but what it may not do is consider those factors that have been the basis for persistent oppression in this society, race and, let us remind you, gender.73

232

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

It is true that Bush has pushed universities to develop race-neutral policies that will maintain or increase racial diversity on campuses. However, there are several concerns. First, it took the negotiations with the Office of Civil Rights and vigorous protests from citizens to compel the administration to create formal monitoring methods, such as evaluating university presidents on their efforts to promote diversity. Second, the current agreement between Florida and the OCR expired in 2003, and a new agreement is not fully in place. Now that Bush is nearing the end of his second term, one can only wonder whether he will be keen to renew that agreement or whether he will attempt to have Florida’s higher education system declared unitary, freeing the state from further monitoring by the OCR. Third, Bush will not be governor forever. Even if he is committed to maintaining or expanding diversity in the state’s colleges and universities, there will be fewer structures in place when he leaves office to ensure that his successors will act to promote opportunities for people of color at all levels of the state’s colleges and universities. The One Florida program may well achieve the governor’s goal of increasing minority access to universities without using “race-based” admission policies. Some of the program’s provisions may strengthen education in poor communities where Blacks are concentrated in the state. If these things happen, they will be all to the good. But the rhetoric discussed in this chapter highlighted a more negative, bitter side of the argument against affirmative action. In the context of Florida’s higher education history, Governor Bush’s announcement of the program assaulted the symbolic efforts of Black Floridians and their allies to upend the historical discrimination in Florida’s universities, starting with the flagship University of Florida. To those protesting One Florida in Tallahassee in 1999 and 2000, Governor Bush was ignoring recent history and current discrimination. They saw his plan as blocking actions necessary to reconstruct Florida’s university system and feared that were such plans to spread across the country they would undermine the reconstruction of U.S. society to make it a more hospitable place for themselves and for others struggling to overcome a legacy of discrimination. The governor’s announcement of the One Florida Initiative, his Equity in Education Plan, and other documents were surprisingly preoccupied with race and used rhetoric from the most intense arguments that affirmative action has abridged the rights of Whites. That rhetoric undercut the claim that One Florida was motivated entirely to improve education. Instead, the announcement

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

233

and accompanying documents presented an image of hard-working Whites who take the trouble to prepare for college while undeserving African Americans receive unearned opportunities. The issue of affirmative action and Whites’ opposition to it, as represented in One Florida, illustrates current understanding of racial policy in the United States, at least among many Whites. The belief that an absence of legal discrimination constitutes a condition of equality— defined as “colorblindness”—is central to this understanding. In this view, any policy that explicitly recognizes race violates this principle. Many opponents of affirmative action have appropriated the earliest principles of the civil rights movement (e.g., the wish Martin Luther King Jr. expressed that African Americans would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin) and claimed that affirmative action violates principles of colorblindness. By ignoring the historical origins of affirmative action in Florida higher education, by ignoring continuing inequalities, and by ignoring the preferences largely benefiting Whites that still remain in Florida universities, the rhetoric of One Florida appealed more to the bitter arguments against affirmative action than to the better instincts of Floridians. In doing so, we think this rhetoric helps to perpetuate existing privileges of social class and race. This rhetoric allows right-wing Republicans to attract White voters who resent what they feel are undeserved gains by Blacks.74 Political debate has become so narrow that it is difficult to address the discrimination Blacks in Florida face in housing and employment as well as in education and other issues that adversely affect their life chances.75 As Governor Bush seems to hint in his announcement, Blacks are consigned to a subordinate position in Florida.76 Desegregating state universities at all levels is important if Blacks are to liberate themselves from subordination. In addition, the state needs to engage in consistent efforts to broaden both educational and economic opportunities for all Floridians. NOTES 1. Peter Wallsten, “Quotas Foe Will Fight in Florida,” St. Petersburg Times, March 14, 1999. 2. The authors would like to thank LaSonya Moore, La Toyia Rushing, and Ann Flynn for their research assistance, and we would like to thank Lyman Dukes, Brett Jones, Harvey Kantor, and Jennefer Khattabi for their comments on a draft of this chapter.

234

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

3. Peter Wallsten, “Quotas Foe Will Fight”; Terry M. Neal and David S. Broder, “Affirmative Action Tears at Fla. GOP,” Washington Post, May 15, 1999, A1. This chapter makes extensive use of media analysis, drawing on newspaper, radio, and television stories about One Florida. It also examines a number of state documents; whenever possible, we use versions of documents available on the worldwide web. 4. American Civil Rights Institute, “Poll Indicates 4 in 5 Florida Voters Oppose Racial Preferences,” March 25, 1999, http://www.acri.org/news/ 032599.htm ( November 8, 1999), Miami Herald; Brad Bennett, Poll: Affirmative Action Would Die If Put to a Vote, http://aad.English.ucsb.edu/docs/ flvote.html. 5. Executive Order 99–281. 6. Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, Announcement of the One Florida Initiative (Tallahassee: 1999 [cited October 24, 2002]), available online at http://www.myflorida.org/myflorida/government/governmentinitiatives/one _florida/announcement. 7. PBS’s NewsHour, “One Florida” (aired June 2, 2000 [cited October 24, 2000]), http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june00/florida_62.html. For opponents’ argument that Bush was trying to limit minority and women turnout in the election, see various articles on the In Motion website at http://www.inmotionmagazine.com. 8. Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, Announcement of the One Florida Initiative (Tallahassee: 1999 [cited October 24, 2002]), available online at http://www.myflorida.org/myflorida/government/governmentinitiatives/one _florida/announcement. 9. Ibid. 10. Florida Board of Governors, “New First-Time-in-College Student Enrollment, State University System: Summer and Fall Terms, 1998 through 2004 with First-Day of Class Summer and Fall 2002 through 2005,” n.d., available at http://www.flbog.org/news/PDF/enroll_summer_fall_05.pdf. 11. Carol A. Williams, The Black/White Colleges: Dismantling the Dual System of Higher Education (United States Commission of Civil Rights Clearinghouse Publication 66), 6. 12. Thomas Jesse Jones (ed.), “Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States” 1, 38 (1916, reprinted New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 60. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Equal Protection of the Laws in Public Higher Education (1960). While the Morrill Act of 1890 that created land grant colleges had language prohibiting discrimination in admissions on the basis of race, it nonetheless made provision for separate but equal institutions “if the funds received be equitably divided” (7 U.S.C. Section 323, 1976). 13. Williams, Black/White Colleges. 14. Darryl Paulson and Paul Hawkes, “Desegregating the University of

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

235

Florida Law School: Virgil Hawkins v. Florida Board of Control,” Florida State University Law Review 1 (1984). 15. Algia R. Cooper, “Brown v. Board of Education and Virgil Darnell Hawkins Twenty-Eight Years and Six Petitions to Justice,” The Journal of Negro History 64 (1979): 1-20. Hawkins continues to be of interest; see Kimberly Anne Lopez, “One Man’s Fight Wins Victory for Black U. Florida Students,” Independent Florida Alligator (U. Florida), February 4, 2002. 16. Hawkins v. Board of Control, 162 F Supp 851 (ND Fla 1958). See U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Equal Protection, 89, 96; Williams, Black/White Colleges. In addition to using admissions tests to deny Blacks an opportunity to attend college, states began requiring recommendations from alumni or circuit court judges, set age restrictions, which affected Blacks more than Whites, and assessed the character of applicants, among other steps that made it difficult for Blacks to enter college. They began to require graduation from an accredited institution for admission to graduate or professional schools, which denied Blacks admission because Black colleges seldom accredited. 17. 42 U.S.C. Sections 2000d-2000d-6 (1976 and Supp. II 1978) Title VI states: No person in the Unites States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. 18. Compliance procedures required HEW to seek voluntary compliance from recipients of federal assistance “that have not eliminated the vestiges of the dual system. Failure to comply voluntarily could lead to the termination of or refusal to grant Federal financial assistance.” As an alternative, those refusing to comply voluntarily may be referred to the Department of Justice. 45 CFR section 80 8 (a)(b)(c)(1979), cited in Williams, Black/White Colleges 8, n. 76. 19. Adams v. Richardson, 356 F Supp (D.D.C. 1973); Adams v. Weinberger, 391 F Supp 269 (D.D.C. 1975); Adams v. Califano, 430 F Supp 118 (D.D.C. 1977). 20. Louisiana refused to submit a plan and Mississippi’s was rejected by HEW. Williams, Black/White Colleges, 9. 21. Williams, Black/White Colleges, 12. The next year, HEW approved plans from all of the other states except North Carolina. 22. Ibid., 10. 23. Steven L. Wasby, Race Relations Litigation in an Age of Complexity (Charlottesville: 1995), 39 ff.; Adams v. Bell, 743 F.2d 42 (D.C. Cir 1984). 24. Conversation with Martin Chen, staff attorney, Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, interview by author, October 10, 2000.

236

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

25. Laura Diamond, “One Florida Plan Taking Flak,” Florida TimesUnion, http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/022600/met_2253152. html, February 26, 2000. 26. Conversation with Martin Chen. 27. Toni Van Pelt, “Hudson Bay Speech,” http://www.teamnow.org/ zhudso.htm (cited May 7, 2003). 28. William Yardley, “Two Legislators Stage Sit-In in Bush’s Office,” St. Petersburg Times, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/index.html?ts= 1052321530 ( January 19, 2000). Pat Neal, “Florida Lawmakers Continue SitIn at State Capitol over Affirmative Action: Reporters Escorted Out,” CNN, January 19, 2000, http://edition.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/ 19/florida.sitin/index.html. 29. David Mark, “Thousands March to Protest Bush’s Affirmative Action Changes,” Associated Press, Florida Times-Union, http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/030700/met_march12noon.ht ml (March 7, 2000) [cited May 7, 2003]. William Yardley and Shelby Oppel, “Thousands Protest One Florida,” St. Petersburg Times, http://www.sptimes.com/News/ 030800/State/Thousands_protest_One.shtml (March 8, 2000) [cited May 7, 2003]. 30. “Statement of Governor Jeb Bush on ‘One Florida’: The Next Step Forward,” http://www.oneflorida.org/myflorida/government/governorinitiatives/one_florida/statementForward.html [cited May 8, 2003]. 31. Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1975). See Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F. 3d 932 (CA5 1996); Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003); and Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. ___ (2003). The Center for Individual Rights’ webpage (www.cir-usa.org) has several pages of information on each of these lawsuits and the development of the organization’s strategy. 32. Office of the Governor, Governor Bush’s One Florida Initiative Equity in Education Plan (Tallahassee, November 9, 1999, 2 [cited October 24, 2002]); retrieved from http://www.fldcu.org/borpubs/equity_education/education.pdf. 33. Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, Announcement of the One Florida Initiative (Tallahassee, 1999 [cited October 24, 2002]), http://www.myflorida. com/myflorida/government/governmentinitiatives/one_florida/announcement. 34. The way Bush positions himself as moderate is reminiscent of the way southern governors who were resisting desegregation during the 1950s and 1960s argued that if they went too far they might trigger an extreme reaction from rednecks or others opposed to desegregation. See, for example, William Chafe’s discussion of the politics of moderation in Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 42–70.

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

237

35. Office of the Governor, Equity in Education Plan, 1. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Office of the Governor, Equity in Education Plan, 2. Several scholars have pointed out that language like that in this passage pits poor Whites against Blacks. Dividing these two groups has been central to the Republican Party’s strategy to win southern states in presidential elections. See Steven Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of the Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Robert Huckfeldt and Carol Weitzel Kohfeld, Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). 39. Kathryn M. Borman, Tamela McNulty Eitle, Deanna Michael, David Eitle et al., “Accountability in a Postdesegregation Era: The Continuing Significance of Racial Segregation in Florida’s Schools,” American Educational Research Journal (2004). Also see chapters 5 and 9 in this volume. 40. Patricia Marin and Edgar K. Lee, Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State: The Talented 20 Program in Florida (Cambridge: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, 2003), vi. 41. For a more extensive discussion of the program flaws, read the entire report submitted by Patricia Marin and Edgar K. Lee, available at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/affirmativeaction/florida. php. 42. Marin and Lee, Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State, 37. 43. Ibid., 22. 44. Ibid., 21–22. 45. Ibid., 33. 46. The conservative argument that percentage plans should benefit African Americans attending segregated public schools is astonishing. According to this logic, exclusion in public schools becomes the basis for inclusion in higher education. 47. Marin and Lee, Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State10. 48. Ibid., 15 49. This program functions without centralized administration and has a multilayered mechanism for addressing issues of financial need, the college application process, and rejection from the colleges of choice. Additionally the program has not developed a way to monitor if students are accessing the system without problems. Finally, this system has the potential to continuously support White and Asian students while disenfranchising Black and Hispanic students. 50. Marin and Lee, Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State, 28. 51. W. Oliver Melvin, interview by the author, October 11, 2002.

238

LARRY JOHNSON AND DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS

52. Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence, Inc. and Fair Housing Continuum, Inc., Pinellas County Fair Housing Study, 2002. See also, “Not So Equal in Pinellas County,” Baynews9.com; online television news story (Tampa, October 8, 2002 [cited October 24, 2002]); available at http://www. baynews9.com/Search.cfm?storyid=6796&action=story&contentid=36. 53. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population by Sex, Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 2001 annual averages (cited October 24, 2002); available at http://www.bls.gov/lau/table12full01.pdf. 54. Also see Borman et al., “Accountability in a Postdesegregation Era.” 55. Sue Landry, “Foggy Racial Issue Casts UF Cloud,” St. Petersburg Times, March 4, 1990, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/index.html?ts= 1035654190. 56. Ibid. In November, 1990, the state board of regents named a White male, John Lombardi, university president over a Black female educator, Marguerite Barnett. 57. Landry, “Foggy Racial Issues.” 58. Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 59. Kenneth J. Osfield, From the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) to the Americans with Disabilities Act Twenty-six Years Later: Update of the Transition Plan 26 July 1992 and Self-Evaluation 26 January 1993 (University of Florida, Committee on Persons with Disabilities, 1998). 60. Barry Klein, “Black UF Freshmen Numbers Plummet,” St. Petersburg Times, August 12, 2001. 61. Ibid. On the concentration of Black faculty in education, see Williams, Black/White Colleges, and the State University System of Florida Fact Book 2000–2001 (Tallahassee: Florida Board of Education, Division of Colleges and Universities, 2001). 62. Office of Planning, Budgeting and Policy Analysis, Division of Colleges and Universities. 63. Barry Klein, “Black UF Freshmen Numbers Plummet.” Barry Klein, “Minority Enrollment Holds Steady,” St. Petersburg Times, September 6, 2001. 64. Klein, “Black UF Freshmen Numbers Plummet.” 65. Williams, Black/White Colleges, 21. In the other Adams states, Blacks constituted a greater share of the freshman class than they did the general population, as well, except for Georgia, where 26.1 percent of the population was Black, but only 18 percent of undergraduates were. For current figures, see Office of the Governor, Vision of One Florida. 66. Williams, Black/White Colleges, 22. 67. Williams Black/White Colleges, 23. 68. Office of the Governor, Equity in Education Plan.

One Florida, the Politics of Educational Opportunity

239

69. Ibid.; Gary Orfield and Faith Paul, State Higher Education Systems and College Completion: Final Report to the Ford Foundation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992); John Winn, interviewed by Kathryn M. Borman and Larry Johnson, September 12, 2002. This interview is discussed more fully in chapter 7. 70. Derived from Tables 29 and 30 in the State University System of Florida Fact Book 2000-200, 102 and 105. Figures for 1977 are from Williams, Black/White Colleges. 71. State University System of Florida Fact Book 2000-2001, Table 33, First Professional Degrees Granted by Discipline, Race and Sex, 2000-01. 72. One Florida Commission, Office of the Governor, Report to Governor, 38. 73. Klein, “Black UF Freshmen Numbers.” 74. Many of the essays in Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) examine the way Whites have taken over the language of equality to perpetuate their advantages. Kevin P. Phillips developed a southern strategy for Richard Nixon in 1968, explaining how Republicans could win support from southern Whites by using racially coded language and other techniques. See his The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1969). Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of the Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002) and Robert Huckfeldt and Carol Weitzel Kohfeld, Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989) explain how the Republican Party has used an appeal based on race to attract southern White voters of modest means even as the Party cuts taxes on millionaires and undermines the economic interests of working people. 75. Blacks in Florida are incarcerated at a higher rate than Whites and are more likely to be disenfranchised as voters. See Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters (New York: Penguin, 2003) for a discussion of these matters. 76. See James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) for a discussion of the ways the limited education afforded Blacks was central in their subordination.

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

9

Florida’s A+ Plan: Education Reform Policies and Student Outcomes

Reginald S. Lee Kathryn M. Borman William Tyson The last four chapters together describe the limits of Governor Bush’s policies—most notably, the focus on accountability without a parallel emphasis on resource allocation to promote equity. In this chapter we consider what many readers may think are among the most important outcomes of Governor Jeb Bush’s education reform policies: the academic achievement of students attending the state’s elementary and secondary schools. We begin by describing dramatic shifts in state education policy affecting elementary and secondary schools since 1999. Under this governor, educational initiatives emanating from Tallahassee have focused on explicit monetary incentives provided by the state to “high performing” schools (but until recently not to “failing” schools), as well as on privatization, particularly the creation of charter schools as links between high-stakes testing and K–12 public schools.1 In this chapter our analyses for the most part consider current inputs and outcomes for students (averaged within individual schools) across the state at the school level within each of Florida’s sixty-seven districts. We are particularly concerned with the important influences including academic programs, spending, instructional quality, and access to learning that schools exert on student achievement outcomes. 241

242

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

Because we rely on large-scale data collected at the school level and reported to district and state-level authorities (as described further on), our measures of school influences are inexact. These measures, for example, do not include classroom-level instructional variables. However, because we are able to measure school-level effects over time, we are able to report changes in student performance measured at the school level occurring across Florida school districts. We know that to achieve high standards, schools must encourage students to engage in learning with teachers adept at implementing an enriched curriculum and instructional program aligned with appropriate assessments. A school community environment that emphasizes collaboration as well as shared decision making and management among its teachers and staff constitutes another critical feature.2 In this regard, sustaining relationships among teachers, students, and families through a collaborative school culture decreases disciplinary problems. As described in chapter 6, this effort is not the only factor affecting the school environment, but it is crucial to any school’s effectiveness. Increasing both community involvement and extensive professional development for teachers and administrators also paves the way to enhanced student achievement.3 Despite these limitations, we can learn much about student outcomes by investigating data for the entire school-aged population in Florida that our data sets comprise. We know quite a bit about student careers and the school-level factors that are likely to affect them. For example, we can investigate such factors as the percentage of school staff that engage in full-time instruction, reasoning that students in schools with larger percentages of individuals working in instructional roles are more likely to gain access to academic learning than those who are not in such schools. In addition, the application of statistical methods that capitalize on the hierarchically organized administrative character of individual schools embedded in specific school districts allows us to have more confidence in our findings. We discuss the full set of variables and our analytic procedure in a subsequent section. BACKGROUND Following the desegregation of its public schools in the 1960s and 1970s, Florida’s state and local policies and politics in general did not lead to the development of segregated academies as in neighboring

Florida’s A+ Plan

243

states such as Alabama and Mississippi. In addition, Florida’s governors from early on in the state’s history have cultivated business interests with considerable fervor in contrast to other southern states where policies have traditionally and historically emphasized agricultural interests. This focus was strengthened in the 1970s with the onset of Florida’s industrial development. The economic expansion of the socalled New South meant the arrival of hundreds of thousands and then millions of domestic and international migrants. A huge national demographic shift occurred that is still underway, as well-trained workers and their families relocated to the Sunbelt along with service and production workers. By 1999 Florida’s population had grown to over fifteen million, making it the fourth most populous state in the union with demographers predicting it will overtake New York State, currently ranked third, before the next census. Workers in spin-off, lower-wage service industries along with well-educated technical workers created a large and varied market for goods and services. Many analysts attribute the growth of national and international markets as the catalyst for Sunbelt development and related educational policy aimed at creating “good” workers for Florida’s escalating industrial economy. Industry located near its markets and industrial growth generally stimulated labor migration, thus spurring additional migration and installing a strong “feedback” effect. The engineering corridor along Interstate 4 between Melbourne and Tampa and up the Space Coast offers a good example of this growth. Southern cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Tampa quadrupled in size between 1940 and 1980.4 The need for an educated workforce became preeminent. To assure the production of well-trained workers, Florida’s schools, it was reasoned, must be held accountable for the quality of their student graduates. As recently as the 1960s, however, under the governorships of both Farris Bryant (1961–1965) and Haydon Burns (1965–1967) who succeeded the architect of Florida’s contemporary educational policy, LeRoy Collins, conservative elements in the Democratic Party worked to block school desegregation as they simultaneously pursued efforts to attract new businesses into Florida. In a number of counties, rural and urban segregated African American communities were often (and continue to be) the least economically well-off and burdened with poverty. As chapters 2 and 4 describe, both desegregation and accountability since the early 1970s have changed the politics of education in

244

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

Florida. However incomplete, both desegregation and a push for accountability lay the foundation for more recent efforts to improve education in general and reduce achievement gaps. Under both Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles (1992–1998) and Republican Governor Jeb Bush, major policy emphases have included developing state standards governing teaching and learning in mathematics and reading (and in 2003, science) and creating an accountability system as manifested in Bush’s A+ Plan. We next turn to a discussion of this policy and its implications for Florida’s schools. PATTERNS OF FAILING SCHOOLS IN FLORIDA As described in chapter 5, the purpose of the Bush A+ Plan was the promotion of student achievement among all student groups. The underlying premise of the A+ Plan that “every child can learn and no child should be left behind” mirrors recent amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush concluded his education policy statement in the introduction to the bill by emphasizing that educational testing has the potential to narrow the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their peers. However, the focus on outcomes in the form of achievement test scores assumes that opportunities can and will be distributed equally among all students in all schools. But, in fact, outcomes of the A+ Plan have had differential consequences for schools and school districts. As one policy outcome, Florida statutes effective with the 1998–1999 school year began to require those schools failing to make adequate progress to be so designated under the creation of the School Performance Grade Categories (SF 229.57). We reiterate here the point made in chapter 5 that the stigma of F labels has not been distributed broadly or evenly across Florida’s school districts. Initially, F schools were concentrated in large urban counties such as Duval ( Jacksonville) and Dade (Miami). Many districts in the state have maintained a consistent number of A- and Brated schools over the period (1998-present) that Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (or FCAT) results have been used as one of the rating criteria. These districts are perhaps able to avoid becoming home to numbers of failing schools because they enjoy the continuing infusion of both industry and educated workers as in the case of Hills-

Florida’s A+ Plan

245

borough County (Tampa). In the next section we examine outcomes for students in the state of Florida under the A+ grading system. An explicit goal of Governor Bush’s A+ Plan is to assure the accountability of the state’s public education sector. The plan uses student performance on the criterion-referenced portion of the state’s high-stakes accountability measure, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), in reading, writing, mathematics, and science to determine the overall performance of schools. The School Accountability Report Guide issued annually by the state’s Department of Education Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment office outlines criteria determining a school’s status as an F, D, C, B, or A school. The grading criteria used to determine a school’s status have changed as expectations for student achievement have increased. In 1999 the Florida legislature required that schools receive a grade based in large part on student performance on the FCAT although attendance, discipline, percentages of students tested, and dropout rates were also considered. (Currently, attendance, discipline, and dropout rates are not part of the formula for assigning single-letter grades to schools.) In the first year of the plan’s implementation, school grades were based on the performance of students in grades 4, 8, and 10; students are now assessed in grades 3 through 10. Thus, a school’s annual grade is based on the performance of an increased number of students, allowing schools to get a more comprehensive handle on teaching and learning and also resulting in a school not being judged on the performance of one or two classes of students. If one looks simply at the proportion of elementary schools assigned the grades of A or B between 1999 and 2004, the education policies promulgated by Governor Bush appear to have improved the performance of Florida schools. Using the state-grade reported for each school, we find that 8 percent of elementary schools received an A grade in 1999, a proportion that grew to nearly 60 percent by 2004. Figure 9.1 provides a glimpse of the change in the distribution of school grades from an era of average or below to a period in which almost 80 percent of elementary schools earned an A or B grade in the most recent year reported. Fewer than 5 percent were labeled failing schools in 2004 compared with 33 percent the first year of grading schools. This is good news for state policy makers, parents, teachers, students, and district officials. But what about schools that struggle to meet increasingly demanding standards? One could take letter grades

FIGURE 9.1 Distribution of Florida Elementary School Grades 1999–2004

Florida’s A+ Plan

247

assigned to schools and calculate school district “grade point averages” which also suggest improved ratings when compared to state standards. However, a closer look at standard deviations associated with district means is warranted. Table 9.2 presents district averages for a commonly used measure of the level of poverty in a school along with the percent minority (Black and Hispanic) attending the school, regular education spending, and teacher experience. These figures along with the grade point average for each of Florida’s school districts show how resources influence student learning and subsequent achievement. The standard deviations calculated here show how school grades differ from the average across all schools, as a way to understand the variation in school grades both within a particular district and across all schools in the state. We calculated intraclass correlations to better understand how much of the variability in school performance outcomes is among districts and how much is among schools within and between districts. In a baseline model with no predictors, the intraclass correlation offers information about the clustering of schools on the dependent measure, in this case student achievement as measured by the FCAT at the school level. The variance in student/school achievement decreased among districts for a time at the outset. Figure 9.2 indicates graphically that in the early years of the A+ Plan districts even as they improved student outcomes (e.g., FCAT reading scores at grade 4) were increasingly less variable; however, more recently, the slope of that pattern has changed. Specifically in the first year that schools were assigned grades, 11 percent of the variance was among schools. This percentage dropped to 7 percent in the third year but rebounded to nearly 13 percent in 2004. Each of these analytic strategies leads to the conclusion that while schools are improving overall, the policy has not yet produced a district without any failing schools. The pattern of decline and rise is best explained by policy changes along the road to increased achievement for all. Perhaps districts have responded strategically over the past few years in order to decrease the number of failing schools. We can only speculate lacking the empirical evidence required to understand how districts might be addressing the problem of closing the achievement gap and increasing achievement for all. Because of the strong association between student achievement, race and ethnicity, and poverty, it might be fruitful to discuss of demographic profiles of Florida’s failing schools. During the first year of the A+ Plan (1999), no district had an exceedingly large concentration of failing schools. In fact, there were

Spending

Opportunity to Learn (OTL)

Per-pupil dollar expenditure for regular education program. Per-pupil dollar expenditure for at-risk education program. Per-pupil dollar expenditure for exceptional education program

Special Ed Spending

(continued on next page)

Percent of limited English-proficient students in a school served in English for Speakers of Other Languages programs.

Percent in Limited English Proficiency Program

“At-Risk” Spending

Percentage of total students with a primary exceptionality classified as mild, moderate, or severe. Does not include students in programs for the gifted.

Percent in Special Education

Regular Ed Spending

Percentage of total students enrolled in programs for the gifted divided by the October student enrollment.

School level variable indicating the rate of student mobility in SY1999-00. Calculated by dividing enrollments, reenrollments, and withdrawals by first-day enrollment.

Mobility Rate Percent in Gifted

School level variable indicating the percent of enrolled students in SY1999-00 eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Calculated by dividing number eligible by October student enrollment.

Percent in Free/ReducedPrice Lunch Program

School level variable indicating the percent of enrolled students in SY1999-00 identified as Hispanic. Calculated by dividing Hispanic enrollment by total enrollment times 100.

Percent Hispanic

Poverty

School level variable indicating the percent of enrolled students in SY1999-00 identified as Black. Calculated by dividing Black enrollment by total enrollment times 100.

Percent Black

Race/Ethnicity

Description

Variable

Category

TABLE 9.1 Description of Variables Included in Analyses

Achievement Outcomes

Percent of students in a school at the tested grades (5, 8, 10) achieving level 3, level 4, or level 5 on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Mathematics achievement at these levels indicates that students’ either had partial success (3), some success (4), or success (5) with the most challenging content articulated in the Sunshine State Standards (Florida State Board of Education, 1996). Percent of students in a school at the tested grades (4, 8, 10) achieving Level 3, Level 4, or Level 5 on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Reading Achievement at these levels indicates that students’ either had partial success (3), some success (4), or success (5) with the most challenging content articulated in the Sunshine State Standards.

Percent Reaching Level 3 or Higher in FCAT Reading

Percentage of enrolled students who served out-of-school suspension during the school year.

Percent in Out-of-School Suspensions Percent Reaching Level 3 or Higher in FCAT Math

Percentage of enrolled students who served in-school suspension during the school year.

Percent in In-School Suspension

Percentage of school staff that are instructional personnel.

Instructional Staff Percent

Percentage of enrolled students absent 21 days or more during the school year.

Total number of school staff.

Instructors

Percent Absent 21+

After summing in-state and out-of-state experience for a schools’ individual teachers, the average number of years teaching experience.

Average Teaching Experience

Access

At the school level, the percentage of professionals paid on a school district instructional salary schedule.

Instructional Salary Percent

Instruction

Description

Variable

Category

TABLE 9.1 (continued)

FIGURE 9.2 Variance Components Across Time

Florida’s A+ Plan

251

relatively few failing schools throughout the entire state. These schools were confined to Miami-Dade, Escambia, Orange, and Palm Beach counties. As we have noted previously, there is a “U-shaped” pattern of failing schools overall, with a dip during years three to four of the A+ policy followed by a return to a higher rate in the number of low-performing schools more recently. The highest poverty levels (as well as pockets of considerable wealth) are present in both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. Miami-Dade is home to Miami, a city ranked among the nation’s poorest. Escambia County is in the western panhandle of the state and although largely rural, the city of Pensacola is located here. Finally, Orange County is largely urban; Orlando dominates the county. In the second year of the plan, a smaller number of schools (9) were judged as failing, all in Miami-Dade, Duval, Escambia, and Putnam counties. At this juncture, the state stepped in, promising that students attending such schools would have the opportunity to attend charter schools while failing schools would be reconstituted. In addition, schools showing movement to status as A schools were provided incentives in the form of stipends awarded to teachers and principals. Bush elected to follow this policy as opposed to providing resources and assistance to beleaguered D and F schools. As shown in Table 9.2, fifty-eight elementary schools in 1999 had the misfortune of earning a failing grade while seventy-eight elementary schools experienced this outcome in 2002. Although initially the Bush policies applied carrots and sticks, current state policy requires struggling schools to report quarterly on their strategies and progress to improve student outcomes (Florida Department of Education, 2000). A major concern attending this policy of rewards and punishments is establishing a balance.5 The Florida School Recognition Program rewards schools that are assigned either a letter grade of A or boost their letter grade during the subsequent school year. The Florida 2002 legislature appropriated over 122 million dollars to award recognized schools at a rate of $100 per student. When some A schools in 1999 refused to take the funds offered by the state, dismayed that their colleagues in F schools still received no support to improve student performance, the Bush administration responded first by soliciting volunteers to serve as tutors and coaches for F schools. Beginning in 2002, the Department of Education has created a more formal Assistance Plus program to assist D and F schools in ways we consider helpful— resources are now targeted to these schools by the state in consultation

Alachua Baker Bay Bradford Brevard Broward Calhoun Charlotte Citrus Clay Collier Columbia Dade DeSoto Dixie Duval Escambia Flagler Franklin

School District 37.5 34.1 39.1 34.9 25.1 31.2 31.0 33.0 33.9 18.7 34.5 47.2 50.4 48.8 48.8 40.4 45.7 31.5 46.6

Percent Free & Reduced Lunch 45.0 16.9 20.1 25.4 22.0 57.7 13.7 14.5 9.6 15.5 41.5 28.8 88.2 41.7 11.0 49.7 41.7 22.1 17.2

Percent Minority 4252 3772 4270 4100 4134 4618 4204 4056 4230 3948 4657 4197 4608 4187 4137 3959 3942 3750 4900

Spending Regular Education 14.1 15.0 14.4 9.1 13.6 13.3 13.4 12.6 13.6 13.3 11.9 13.9 12.1 13.8 13.5 14.2 11.1 12.6 14.0

Teacher Experience in Years 2.944 2.000 2.500 2.286 2.880 2.392 2.500 2.824 2.625 2.846 2.219 2.000 1.906 2.400 1.750 2.078 2.379 3.200 1.667

District GPA 2.449 2.553 2.398 2.527 2.829 2.641 2.648 2.585 2.557 3.023 2.538 2.152 2.054 2.102 2.102 2.359 2.196 2.631 2.170

Predicted GPA

1

6 9

(continued on next page)

12 1

14

2

26

1

1

1

F Schools 2001–02

2

F Schools 1999–00

2

7

F Schools 1998–99

TABLE 9.2 District Profile with Grade Point Average and Predicted GPA Controlling for Poverty

Percent Free & Reduced Lunch 64.5 44.2 55.8 42.3 48.9 54.5 52.0 32.8 45.3 40.6 38.4 32.6 38.9 54.7 39.9 34.1 36.2 28.1 39.1 32.2

School District

Gadsden Gilchrist Glades Gulf Hamilton Hardee Hendry Hernando Highlands Hillsborough Holmes Indian River Jackson Jefferson Lafayette Lake Lee Leon Levy Liberty

TABLE 9.2 (continued)

93.6 6.8 52.7 21.2 56.1 55.1 59.7 14.7 38.2 48.2 4.7 2.8 34.1 67.8 21.0 25.5 33.0 43.9 19.6 14.7

Percent Minority 4807 4131 5157 4573 4271 4437 4207 3904 4132 4052 4271 4104 4141 4547 4270 3813 4049 4332 4166 4407

Spending Regular Education 14.5 13.9 12.1 15.4 13.0 13.6 11.1 15.9 13.7 12.5 12.4 13.1 15.9 17.1 13.7 12.7 13.1 14.8 15.0 16.0

Teacher Experience in Years 1.083 3.000 2.000 2.500 1.000 3.000 2.111 2.563 2.333 2.597 2.286 3.111 2.333 1.500 4.000 2.688 2.778 2.649 2.400 2.333

District GPA 1.621 2.242 1.889 2.302 2.101 1.928 2.006 2.592 2.209 2.354 2.420 2.598 2.405 1.922 2.373 2.553 2.488 2.735 2.399 2.611

Predicted GPA

1 1

1

2

F Schools 1998–99

1

2

4

1

1

2

F Schools 2001–02

(continued on next page)

F Schools 1999–00

Percent Free & Reduced Lunch 45.8 34.4 39.0 26.3 28.0 26.4 24.6 43.0 38.6 35.1 33.7 34.7 29.7 42.4 49.3 18.1 43.4 25.2 28.6 22.4

School District

Madison Manatee Marion Martin Monroe Nassau Okaloosa Okeechobee Orange Osceola Palm Beach Pasco Pinellas Polk Putnam St. John St. Lucie Santa Rosa Sarasota Seminole

TABLE 9.2 (continued)

55.7 33.0 31.1 24.7 30.9 12.4 21.2 30.9 54.1 47.8 50.1 12.8 27.5 35.8 36.3 16.2 42.1 9.1 18.9 31.0

Percent Minority 4421 4297 4021 3984 4824 3737 4227 4211 3934 3916 4443 4017 3987 4287 4148 4054 4235 3710 5030 3896

Spending Regular Education 16.5 12.6 13.2 12.8 11.4 12.4 15.4 14.9 12.5 9.7 12.3 12.7 13.6 13.0 13.6 12.3 10.6 13.7 13.0 13.4

Teacher Experience in Years 1.800 2.811 2.462 2.813 2.500 2.600 2.971 2.500 2.180 2.217 2.179 2.419 2.615 2.640 1.846 2.789 2.367 3.105 2.750 2.878

District GPA 2.193 2.543 2.402 2.791 2.740 2.789 2.844 2.280 2.413 2.522 2.564 2.532 2.685 2.297 2.086 3.042 2.268 2.824 2.719 2.910

Predicted GPA

2

(continued on next page)

1

7

8

2

F Schools 2001–02

11

F Schools 1999–00

7

3

F Schools 1998–99

Percent Free & Reduced Lunch 49.9 37.0 35.9 34.2 32.0 27.9 44.0 44.7

School District

Sumter Suwanee Taylor Union Volusia Wakulla Walton Washington

TABLE 9.2 (continued)

31.8 24.4 25.0 19.7 26.4 12.9 12.7 21.4

Percent Minority 3968 3854 4028 3621 . 3851 4354 4123

Spending Regular Education 14.6 16.3 12.2 11.2 13.5 13.2 10.5 16.2

Teacher Experience in Years 2.070 2.464 2.496 2.548 2.617 2.742 2.248 2.228

Predicted GPA

Number of Schools

2.500 1.500 2.000 2.500 3.017 3.000 2.500 2.000

District GPA

78

2

1

F Schools 1998–99

3

F Schools 1999–00

64

F Schools 2001–02

256

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

with the district and schools in question. Resources generally consist of help in the form of additional instructional staff to assist students who are most at risk. Our purpose here is to understand what factors contribute to the difficulties experienced by the state’s struggling schools and to put forward policies that might address these problems. STUDENT OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND ACCESS TO LEARNING We believe the intent of Brown was to increase educational opportunity. Specifically, access to learning is at the heart of this historic decision. The concept of opportunity to learn refers to several aspects of the learning process and is fundamental to the intent of the decision. For example, the amount of coverage that teachers undertake of the subject matter at hand varies by classroom and school. Within the same school, opportunity to learn can vary by student membership in a given track or instructional group. Students tracked in subject matter areas such as general science will be denied access to powerful concepts, strategies, and ideas provided to their peers in physics in the same high school. Researchers argue (and we concur) that tracking and coursetaking patterns are important organizational processes that differentiate students’ opportunity to learn. Students placed in advanced classes are more likely engaged in learning more complex and sophisticated mathematics and science and are also more resourceful in their approach to learning and have teachers who hold higher expectations for their achievement.6 When students are not present in school, they cannot learn. We believe that schools that have larger numbers of students either absent from school or otherwise not engaged in day-to-day classroom and school life due to suspensions and other alienating experiences are also likely to foster less overall student commitment to achievement. While the reasons for absenteeism are often laid at the feet of students and their parents, those who work in schools must shoulder the responsibility to create learning communities that facilitate opportunities for students and their parents, as well as school staff.7. Data Sources Data used to explore achievement outcomes among Florida school districts were obtained from Florida Department of Education databases

Florida’s A+ Plan

257

containing disaggregated data at the district and school level. The data set consists of information for approximately 1,600 elementary schools across sixty-seven counties. We used the Florida School Indicators Report (FSIR) School Level Data and the School Advisory Council Reports (SACR) for 2000 and 2001 to supplement school-level aggregate data on test results. We then proceed to include several variables grouped in different categories that ordinary least-squares regression indicated affected student outcomes in previous analyses. The description of the variables is in Table 9.1. Our basic task is to understand whether schools are more alike than different in terms of their student body compositions and to determine whether achievement outcomes are related to the racial/ethnic makeup of the schools and districts in Florida. Our measures are described further on and include variables ranging from attendance to suspensions at the individual school level as well as the percent of students achieving level 3 or higher on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (reading and mathematics) for 1999–2000. We used the FSIR file to examine the variation both within districts and across districts. We aggregated at the district level for variables not contained in the FSIR: District Level Data file. Measures Racial and ethnic representation in Florida schools. In carrying out our analyses, we consider several critical variables. As in chapter 5, our assumption is that race, poverty, resources, instruction, and access to challenging academic programs and coursework all contribute to the performance of students attending a particular school. We provide detailed descriptions of variables used on our analyses in what follows. In addition, Table 9.1 shows a complete listing of variables included in our regressions and provides a brief description of each of them. Florida metropolitan areas compare favorably to others nationally in the segregation of elementary students according to data reported by the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the University at Albany.8 Of the largest counties in Florida, only Miami-Dade ranked in the top 12 percent of 329 metropolitan areas (thirty-seventh among 329 MSAs) sorted using the index of dissimilarity (described in chapter 5). Although Florida’s population overall makes it one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation, when population diversity is examined county by county, it is clear that there

258

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

are wide-ranging variations. Florida’s minority student enrollment ranges from 5 percent in scenic and rural Holmes County (located in the Florida panhandle between Pensacola and Tallahassee) to 94 percent in the rolling hills of Gadsden County just outside Tallahassee. As mentioned, we used the index of dissimilarity to compare the distribution of minority and majority students in Florida school districts. In Florida, district measures of segregation range from 0.024 to 0.535; thus, in the least segregated counties (Union, Flagler) about 2 percent of minority students or White students would have to move to another school in order to evenly distribute the groups across all schools in the countywide district. In the most segregated counties (Franklin, Calhoun), over half the minority students would have to move to another school to distribute minority and White students evenly. Black students average nearly 28 percent of elementary school students across the sixty-seven Florida counties. At the middle and high school levels these figures drop slightly as Black children average 25.8 percent of the student population at the middle grade level and 23.5 percent at the high school level. Those proportions vary far more at the local level. Black children are 81 percent of elementary students in Gadsden, 71 percent in Jefferson, 60 percent in Hamilton, and almost half in Duval (47 percent) and Leon counties (48.2 percent). Hispanic students comprise almost 17 percent on average of students across all schools in all districts in the state. Hispanic students are a majority in two counties—Miami-Dade and Hardee (both 51 percent)—and also constitute a substantial presence in the elementary membership for six other counties, Collier (32 percent), DeSoto (24 percent), Glades (30 percent), Hendry (41 percent), Hillsborough (20 percent), and Osceola (20 percent). However, with the exception of Collier County, a pattern similar to that for the Black elementary student population emerges; as the percentage of Hispanic students in a district increases, we see a concomitant increase in the size of the standard deviation, again suggesting segregation of these students by school. Overall, in eleven Florida school districts, students who are members of minority groups comprise the majority of the student membership (Broward, Miami-Dade, Gadsden, Glades, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Jefferson, Madison, Orange, and Palm Beach). In seven other districts, minority students comprise more than 40 percent of the enrollment. In most districts Black students represent the majority of the minority student enrollment—but in Collier, Miami-Dade, Hardee, Hendry, and Osceola counties, Hispanic students are the largest minority group.

Florida’s A+ Plan

259

Poverty in Florida’s schools. We use two indicators, the percent of the school’s enrolled students eligible for the Federal School Lunch Program and mobility, the number of students who enroll for the first time, reenroll (return to the school), or withdraw during the school year. While we have no measure of lunch program participation at the high school level, 55 percent of students attending Florida’s public elementary schools were eligible for either free or reduced-price lunches in 1999–2000, while 46 percent of middle school students were eligible. In most school districts more than 30 percent of students attending elementary and middle schools are eligible; in forty-nine of the sixty-seven districts, over half are eligible; and in eleven districts more than 70 percent of elementary students are eligible. In Gadsden (85.2 percent), Hamilton (79.2 percent), and Jefferson (80.6 percent) counties, the eligible percentages hover around 80 percent. In Florida schools the mobility rate averages 35 percent at the elementary level (ranging between 18 and 60 percent for individual counties), 31 percent for middle schools (with a range of 15–52 percent), and 33.5 percent for high schools (13–80 percent). The relationship between lunch program eligibility and mobility is moderately positive at the elementary level and more positive at the middle school level (with bivariate correlations of .37 and .56, respectively). As discussed later, variations in poverty account for much of the variation in student achievement outcomes. When considered by itself, race explains about 41 percent of the variability in achievement at fifth grade, 52 percent at the eighth grade, and 39 percent at tenth grade. Not surprisingly, when we added the percent of students in a school eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and the rate of student mobility in the school we were able to explain almost 61 percent of the variance in achievement at fifth grade and 70 percent at eighth grade. Because reporting of lunch status is problematic at the high school level, we were only able to add the mobility rate to our model, increasing the variance accounted for to 58 percent. Participation in categorical programs/opportunity to learn and student access. Schools organize students into various instructional programrelated groupings ostensibly for the purpose of addressing individual student needs. These categories include advanced courses or programs for gifted students, as well as special education and limited English proficiency programs. However, another way to consider such categorical program structures is to view them as opportunities to learn. Those

260

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

placed in gifted programs may expect to be provided curriculum and instruction in line with advanced level course content. Conversely, those placed in either limited English proficient or in programs constructed for students with disabilities will have fewer opportunities to gain exposure to advanced level coursework. As Tamela Eitle reasons in chapter 5, differential opportunities provided by these categorical programs may also represent tools for the creation and maintenance of second-generation segregation. We examined the percentage in the school of these three groups (gifted, limited English proficient, and students with disabilities) for all enrolled students. Statewide, the mean percentage of students enrolled in programming for the gifted at the district level ranges from 0.2 percent to nearly 10 percent (averaging 4.2 percent). Interestingly, several of the districts with a larger percentage of Black or Hispanic students in their schools also have a large percent of students enrolled in programs for the gifted (e.g., Alachua at 9.9 percent; Brevard, 5.1 percent; Miami-Dade, 6.8 percent; Hillsborough, 5.6 percent; Lee, 8.0 percent; Palm Beach, 9.9 percent; St. Lucie, 5.0 percent; and Volusia, 9.8 percent). Several of these districts are home to major universities or have major population centers (e.g., Alachua County, home to the University of Florida). Conversely, figures for exceptional education programs indicate a different trend. The percentage of students enrolled in programs for students with disabilities ranges from 10 percent (Miami-Dade) to almost 30 percent (Dixie) with a mean of 15.6 percent (with an intercounty standard deviation of 6.5 percent). While one might not expect to find a relationship between disability and giftedness (although a positive relationship might reflect school districts’ ability to identify students in need of services—a good thing or a bad thing depending on instructional consequences for students), it is revealing that we find an inverse relationship between these program categorizations and race. While the size of the gifted program is inversely related to the percent Black in the school, albeit weakly (r = -.17), there is almost no relationship between the size of programs for students with disabilities and race (r = -.06) at the elementary level. The relationship between the percent Black and disability program size becomes slightly positive at the middle school level (r = .14). The lower relationship at the elementary level may be attributed to the relatively higher rates of speech and language services in younger ages and the relatively late eligibility of individuals receiving special education services (more common in grades 3 and up than below third grade).

Florida’s A+ Plan

261

Teacher experience. We examined teacher experience at both the school and district levels. We were interested in the extent to which more or less experienced teachers were distributed across Florida school districts, assuming that more experienced teachers are also more effective at promoting student achievement. Thus, the relationship between teacher experience and student outcomes was of particular concern. Overall we found that the average number for years of teaching experience in Florida counties is 13.4 years (with a standard deviation of 1.59), with a low of 9.1 years in Bradford County and a high of 17.1 years in Jefferson County. It is at the high school level that we find the most experienced teachers averaging just over 14.0 years (2.9) while the average is 12.2 years (SD = 2.8) for elementary and 12.6 years (SD = 3.1) for middle school teachers. This result indicates little variability in mean teacher experience across the sixty-seven districts in the state. While years of experience teaching may be one measure of the quality of instruction, the percentage of teachers holding advanced degrees provides yet another, perhaps better indicator of teacher quality. Several of Florida’s larger school districts have the largest percent of teachers holding specialist degrees (Alachua), doctorates (Alachua, Miami-Dade), and master’s degrees. When the percent of students achieving level 3 or above on the FCAT mathematics test is used as an outcome measure, teacher experience explains about 7 percent of the variance in mathematics achievement at fifth grade and less than 1 percent at eighth grade and tenth grade. Examining Achievement Outcomes The aim here is to explain the variability in student achievement outcomes among Florida school districts. Our student achievement outcome variable is composed of average student outcomes in reading and mathematics at grades 4, 8, and 10. We built our models using race, poverty, categorical programs, spending, teaching, and attendance variables. At each level of analysis we conceived the variables as a block, adding race (e.g., Black, Hispanic) followed by poverty (percent eligible for free or reducedprice lunch, mobility)—blocks that include exogenous variables—factors over which schools have no control. Next we consider demographic characteristics of Florida schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and then explore relationships among possible explanations. We then used multiple regression to study the relationship between student achievement averaged at the school level by grade

262

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

tested (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test at grades 4, 5, 8, and 10) as the dependent variable and several independent variables (student poverty, student mobility, student race, education spending, teacher preparation and experience, student opportunity to learn, and student access). We wanted to determine which variables affected student achievement and estimate the magnitude of the effects found. Using a theory-driven stepwise regression approach entering blocks of variables, we built models adding first those variables over which schools have no control, such as poverty and race, and in subsequent steps added school programs, school spending, teacher attributes, and lastly student engagement or opportunities to learn. In the analyses presented here (Tables 9.3–9.8), we consider outcomes in the context of district-level differences. Florida’s sixty-seven school districts are organized at the county level. Florida has been among a handful of states to adopt equalization funding formulas for all public schools in the state. We should therefore not expect to see differences in resources (as measured by per-pupil allocations) influencing school outcomes one way or another since resources should be relatively equal across the state. Nonetheless, we take this resource variable and a number of others into account in carrying out our analyses. Other variables we consider include those that might not only vary across schools but that also can make a considerable difference in student outcomes. These include teacher experience and preparation as well as years of education. (See Table 9.1 for a description of variables). Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald argue that teacher experience has a considerable impact on student outcomes with higher student achievement associated with more years of teaching experience. In addition, we examine other important teacher variables including whether or not the teachers at a given school are teaching in or out of field, and the amount and types of professional development.9 RESULTS In order to address the question of which student-, school-, and district–level features best predict student achievement as measured by the average student performance at the school level on Florida’s FCAT exams in reading and mathematics, we completed several regression analyses (see Tables 9.3–9.8). It is clear that student poverty as measured by the percentage of students eligible for the federal lunch program, not surpris-

Florida’s A+ Plan

263

ingly, is the best predictor of student achievement in mathematics and reading and measured by the FCAT for students at each grade level tested averaged at the school level. The percentage of students eligible for the federal lunch program across the sixty-seven counties ranges between 18 and 64 percent with a mean of 38 percent. Achievement is negatively related to poverty (percent of students on free and reduced lunch) in both mathematics and reading at the fourth, fifth, eighth, and tenth grades. In addition to student poverty, we also find that the percentage of minority students enrolled in a given district’s schools is also negatively related to achievement at all grade levels tested with one exception, tenth grade reading. When percentages of Black students alone are considered, this pattern persists while results are mixed for Hispanic students. For Hispanic students, negative relationships appear at the fourth and eighth grades for mathematics and reading but not at the fifth or tenth grades. On the positive side, regular district spending appears to be greatest in those districts with the greatest apparent needs, based on results we have just presented. In other words, spending is greatest in those districts with greater numbers of economically pressed students and with large numbers of both Hispanic and Black students. (This result is consistent with the finding in chapter 3 that the Florida Education Finance Program has some equalizing effects.) Finally, student attendance is negatively related to student performance on FCAT tests in both mathematics and reading at all levels, reinforcing the point that students cannot learn if they do not attend class. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, we found that teacher experience was not highly related to student achievement as measured by student performance on Florida’s high-stakes tests. In fact, the single statistically significant relationship here is at fifth grade for mathematics. This result is clarified perhaps when we consider another indicator of teacher quality—percent of teachers holding the master’s degree. In this case, with the exception of students’ performance in fourth grade reading, there are positive relationships for all remaining grades and for both mathematics and reading. One aspect of our findings for both mathematics and reading that bears discussion concerns the negative impact on student outcomes of two dimensions of our Teachers/Instruction measure. Both Instructors and Instructional Staff can be seen as proxies for school size, a variable that previous research10 reveals to be important in its relationship to student performance. Both smaller classroom size (which we do not measure) and smaller school size are positively related to student outcomes.

264

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

Reading achievement. As described earlier, poverty explains much of the variability in reading achievement at the fourth grade (68.8 percent) and eighth grade (74.5 percent). Mobility has an impact at the middle and high school levels but does not have a negative effect at the elementary school level, perhaps because programs at this level are less variable. It is not until high school that students are likely to encounter a “shopping mall” of course offerings. It is clear from these findings that schools with larger numbers of students enrolled in gifted programs and with fewer in either programs for the disabled or for those with limited English speaking skills (especially in the elementary grades) also have more positive achievement outcomes. In addition, teachers with more education, particularly those who possess the master’s degree, appear to be effective as previously elaborated. Overall, virtually all the independent variables entered into our regression equations can be seen as having a strong effect on our measure of student outcomes, and the results are stronger for reading than for mathematics. In Tables 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5 we present the results of our theory-driven regression approach for reading achievement. At each grade level modeled we find our largest effects to be poverty and race; however, the change in variance explained as indicating improvement in our models we see at the fourth grade (Table 9.3) considering opportunity to learn (programs, access), school spending, and instructional variables allow us to explain an additional 8.3 percent of the variance in reading achievement. At eighth grade (Table 9.4) these variables explain nearly 12 percent more of the variance in reading achievement. The picture for reading achievement at the tenth grade level (Table 9.5) is complicated because our poverty variable block only includes the mobility rate; however, the correlation between poverty and mobility in our Florida schools data set is .39 (p < 0.001). We see a large effect for the program block indicating that student exposure to the curriculum explains nearly 30 percent of the variance in reading achievement. Adding spending and instruction to the model explain additional variance that might be described as small yet significant. Mathematics achievement. We tested three achievement models, one for each grade level tested by the mathematics FCAT. Our models explained 68 percent of the variance in mathematics achievement at the fifth grade, 80 percent at the eighth grade, and 77 percent at the tenth grade. However, results of our hierarchical regressions were somewhat different at each level. Specifically we found that while the

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

.768

Model R2

.761

0.000

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions .712

0.000**

-0.300*** -0.022* 0.513*** -0.223*** -0.122**

78.155 -0.253*** -0.168***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

-0.288*** -0.026* 0.506*** -0.213*** -0.113**

79.204 -0.255*** -0.175***

Model 3 OTL

0.000

-0.352*** -0.038***

79.893 -0.234*** -0.171***

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.581

68.554 -0.475*** -0.332***

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.781

-0.001 0.103*** 0.059 -0.095*** -0.077***

0.000*

0.000

-0.299*** -0.008 0.463*** -0.217*** -0.104*

82.598 -0.240*** -0.155***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.3 Regression Estimates, Fourth Grade Reading Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.794

-0.001* 0.078** 0.084 -0.090*** -0.072*** -0.706*** -0.047 -0.430***

0.000*

0.000

-0.232*** -0.008 0.436*** -0.141** -0.127**

84.259 -0.238*** -0.153***

Model 6 Access

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

.845

Model R2

.843

0.001

.742

0.000

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions

-0.253*** -0.181*** 0.697*** -0.564*** -0.020

62.924 -0.211*** -0.135***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

-0.238*** -0.170*** 0.730*** -0.525*** -0.018

66.195 -0.213*** -0.135***

Model 3 OTL

0.000

-0.417*** -0.199***

68.696 -0.147*** -0.031

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.497

55.110 -0.460*** -0.273***

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.850

0.001 0.110*** -0.083 0.001 0.012

0.000

0.000

-0.241*** -0.169*** 0.661*** -0.613*** -0.025

61.102 -0.218*** -0.149***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.4 Regression Estimates, Eighth Grade Reading Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.863

0.001 0.122*** -0.096 0.028 0.011 -0.393*** -0.042*** 0.016

0.000

0.000

-0.212*** -0.125*** 0.583*** -0.539*** -0.084

60.916 -0.206*** -0.144***

Model 6 Access

.701

Model R2

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

0.000 0.000

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions .685

-0.172*** 0.546*** -1.339*** -0.254

50.720 -0.218*** -0.204***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

.388

-0.138*** 0.612*** -1.316*** -0.299*

54.707 -0.212*** -0.196***

Model 3 OTL

0.001

-0.263***

42.908 -0.197*** -0.139***

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.177

35.532 -0.229*** -0.159***

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.716

0.001 0.168** 0.034 0.009 -0.045

0.000

0.001*

-0.175*** 0.464*** -1.258*** -0.325*

42.582 -0.206*** -0.197***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.5 Regression Estimates, Tenth Grade Reading Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.721

0.001 0.197*** 0.006 0.012 -0.045 -0.145* 0.013 -0.059

0.000

0.001*

-0.161*** 0.417*** -1.176*** -0.257

42.445 -0.180*** -0.202***

Model 6 Access

268

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

race and poverty blocks explained most of the variance when entered first, the effect of programs (gifted, Exceptional Student Education, and Limited English Proficiency) increased from fifth grade to tenth grade with the magnitude expressed following Cohen’s definitions for effect sizes rather closely. At tenth grade we have a large effect while the effects of program placement or the opportunity to learn are small at the fifth grade and moderate at the eighth grade. We also found small effects for access to education (attendance and suspensions), which also affect students’ access to learning. In Tables 9.6, 9.7, and 9.8 the results of our theory-driven regression approach for mathematics achievement are displayed. At each grade level modeled we find our largest effects to be poverty and race; however, considering the change in variance explained as indicating improvement in our models we see at the fifth grade (Table 9.6) that opportunity to learn (programs, access), school spending, and instructional variables allow us to explain nearly 8 percent of the variance in mathematics achievement. At eighth grade (Table 9.7) these variables explain just over ten percent of the variance in reading achievement. Mathematics achievement at the tenth grade level (Table 9.8) must be measured differently due to the absence of free and reduced-price lunch in the poverty variable block, although the relationship reported earlier between poverty and mobility in our Florida schools data set provides some confidence that our model explains the variance in mathematics achievement at tenth grade. After controlling for poverty and race we are able to explain an additional 19 percent of the variance in mathematics achievement. The largest effect is associated with academic programs while the other blocks explain little additional variance. There is little doubt that access to high-quality instruction, defined as the opportunity to learn, is a primary vehicle for schools to use in addressing the effects of race and poverty that we find so profoundly affect achievement outcomes. Race and poverty. Poverty and race are difficult to separate in any discussion of public schools. Florida is no different, although the strength of the relationships between racial/ethnic background and poverty differs for Black and Hispanic students. As the Black population within a school increases we find a strong positive relationship with poverty indexes (r = .63) while the relationship is much weaker, although positive, as the size of the Hispanic population grows in a school (r = .22). Teacher preparation. The education level of teachers in Florida school districts is positively related to achievement as measured by the FCAT

.652

Model R2

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

0.000* 0.001

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions .644

-0.371*** -0.004 0.629*** -1.319*** 0.087

67.787 -0.163*** -0.140***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

.606

-0.351*** -0.009 0.627*** -1.259*** 0.104*

70.747 -0.160*** -0.142***

Model 3 OTL

0.000*

-0.449*** -0.014

71.669 -0.103*** -0.014

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.408

58.126*** -0.407*** -0.216

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.655

0.000 0.048 0.116* -0.056 -0.030

0.000*

0.000*

-0.370*** 0.002 0.604*** -1.312*** 0.100

69.394 -0.154*** -0.130***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.6 Regression Estimates, Fifth Grade Math Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.679

0.000 0.017 0.151 -0.049* -0.021 -0.863*** -0.053 -0.557***

0.000*

0.000*

-0.288*** 0.002 0.572*** -1.215*** 0.074

71.323 -0.150*** -0.127***

Model 6 Access

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

.777

Model R2

.772

0.001

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions .702

0.000

-0.262*** -0.183*** 0.611*** -0.594*** -0.023

76.382 -0.286*** -0.177***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

-0.252*** -0.168*** 0.648*** -0.473*** -0.016

80.017 -0.273*** -0.163***

Model 3 OTL

0.001

-0.386*** -0.210***

81.889 -0.237*** -0.073*

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.521

68.726 -0.533*** -0.301***

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.781

0.000 0.120** 0.082 -0.017 0.006

0.000

0.001

-0.252*** -0.162*** 0.552*** -0.659*** -0.025

74.402 -0.285*** -0.180***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.7 Regression Estimates, Eighth Grade Math Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.804

0.001 0.134*** 0.062 0.020 0.004 -0.566*** -0.066*** 0.011

0.000

0.001

-0.208*** -0.101* 0.439*** -0.548*** -0.064

74.520 -0.268*** -0.183***

Model 6 Access

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

.575

.745

.752

-0.001

regular-ed spending % teachers with master’s teachers’ average experience total instructors % instructors % students absent 21+ days % in-school suspensions % out-of-school suspensions

Model R2

0.000

-0.235*** 0.504*** -1.145*** -0.186

87.421 -0.432*** -0.289***

Model 4 Spending

at-risk spending

-0.207*** 0.569*** -1.162*** -0.189

84.865 -0.439 -0.295

Model 3 OTL

0.000

-0.313***

73.898 -0.421*** -0.218***

Model 2 Poverty

special ed spending

.394

65.096 -0.459*** -0.242***

Intercept % Black % Hispanic

% free/reduced-price lunch % mobility % gifted % special education % limited English

Model 1 Race

Variable

.759

0.000 0.096 0.222 0.031 -0.008

0.000

0.000

-0.234*** 0.435** -1.052*** -0.308

74.859 -0.424*** -0.287***

Model 5 Instruction

TABLE 9.8 Regression Estimates, Tenth Grade Math Achievement, Florida Public Schools, 2000

.766

0.000 0.141* 0.185 0.034* -0.013 -0.214** -0.029 -0.056

0.000

0.000

-0.212*** 0.357** -0.915*** -0.224

75.382 -0.386*** -0.287***

Model 6 Access

272

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

scores. For example, we found a positive correlation between the percentage of teachers holding the doctorate and mathematics achievement at grades 5, 8, and 10. There was also a positive relationship for reading achievement at grades 8 and 10. While the numbers of such highly educated teachers are small, districts that employ more educated teachers tend to have a smaller percentage of students eligible for the federal lunch program (r = -.27, p < .05). A LONGITUDINAL LOOK AT ACHIEVEMENT Application of statistical methods for analyzing hierarchical data structures leads us to present first a traditional school effects model using data at two levels of organization, elementary schools within Florida school districts. Our interest is in school outcomes as a function of school (level 1) and district (level 2) predictors. We then proceed to present school growth models for the 1,600 elementary schools nested within sixty-seven Florida school districts. These models allow us to model changes in reading and mathematics achievement over time. Our basic two-level model employs a linear district growth model at the first level and at the second level takes into account random effects not associated with district-level covariates. Essentially at level 1 we examine the within-district variation in school performance on the FCAT and the between-district variation at level 2. We reorganized the dataset provided by the Florida Department of Education so that for each school we had a grade for each year (e.g., six records per school). We considered 1999 our base year by coding time equal to zero. Thus we considered three sources of variability—within districts, in the intercepts, and in the slopes for time. We considered a model in which the intercept represents achievement at baseline while the slope indicates the change in achievement over time Thus, beginning with 1999 as time zero, we find schools with a C-average (2.11) over time gained just over one-quarter grade point per year (.266). Testing the variance components of interest indicates variability that might be explained by district-level covariates (e.g., poverty, minority population, teacher preparation). We next modeled reading and mathematics achievement using the percent of students achieving level 3 or higher on the FCAT as the outcome variable. This variable indicates the percentage of students who are at standard or above on the criterion-referenced portion of the test.

Florida’s A+ Plan

273

Equations A two-level model is presented. The school-level outcome, Readij uses two models—a school-level (level 1) and another at the district-level (level 2). At the first level a school’s outcome is the intercept for the school’s district plus random error associated with the ith school in the jth district. Readij = B0j + rij At level-2 (district level) district level intercepts are the overall mean plus the random deviations from that mean

β0j = γ00 + μ0j Thus the multilevel model becomes Readij = γ00 + μ0j+ rij (School reading scores = state mean + district means + error) The unconditional model (run separately for each year) can be separated into two parts: a fixed part representing the overall intercept (mean statewide fourth grade reading achievement) and two random effects. The first effect represents the intercept for the districts while the second represents the within-district residual. Thus we know reading achievement overall (Florida’s fourth grade students tested) as well as the variability in district means and the deviations of the schools from that mean. We calculated intraclass correlations for the baseline model of reading outcomes (.88). The intraclass correlation indicates the proportion of variance in reading outcomes between districts. Across the five years presented we find that the percent of the total variance between schools decreases from 16.5 percent in the 1998–1999 school year to 10.6 percent in the fourth year (2002) before rising to 14.3 percent in the final year for which we report data. (With random effects, there is no single coefficient that is interpretable in the same way as coefficients in ordinary least-squares regression.) We began with an unconditional model to look at the variation in reading (grade 4) and mathematics achievement (grade 5) during the five year period from 1998–1999 through the 2002–2003 school year. The percentage of fourth graders reaching level 3 or higher on the

274

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test rose from 49.1 percent to 58.9 percent during this period. Fifth grade mathematics achievement increased during this period from 35.9 percent to 49.5 percent. Figure 9.3 presents the percentage of students reaching level 3 or higher by year. We proceeded to enter time as a predictor in an unconditional growth model. In the growth model framework, our unconditional model provides information about the average value of reading (47.50) and mathematics (37.61) achievement across schools in the first year along with the average slopes across schools (reading = 2.15, mathematics = 2.96). The average slope provides information about the average gain in schools over time. And so we see in the case of mathematics that achievement grows at the rate of nearly 3 percent per year. Fourth Grade Reading Our analyses indicate that positive changes in reading outcomes occur statewide over time evidenced by the average percentages of students reaching level 3 or higher among the districts (47.3 percent) and by the positive value for the average slopes across districts (2.12). Our baseline model indicates that the average school district in Florida began with 47 percent of its fourth grade students achieving level 3 or higher on the FCAT reading, gaining 2 percent each year thereafter that students were tested. After controlling for levels of poverty in schools (percent of students eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program) we find a substantial reduction in the variance among districts from 351 to 163, and we note an increase in levels of achievement (70.6 percent) with a similar slope, 2.0 (in annual percentage gains of students achieving at least a level 3). Controlling for poverty increases the variability among schools somewhat in terms of student achievement in reading at fourth grade. Modeled as a random effect, school influences on these percentages does not have a single coefficient. Across the state, however, we conclude that the school-level free and reducedprice lunch program participation accounts for a substantial amount of district-level variation in the percentages of students meeting state standards in fourth grade reading achievement. Fifth Grade Mathematics Analyses of FCAT mathematics at grade 5 indicate that positive changes in mathematics outcomes occur statewide over time evidenced

FIGURE 9.3 Florida Fourth and Fifth Graders Achieving FCAT Level 3 or Higher

276

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

by both the average percent of students reaching level 3 or higher among the districts (37.5 percent) and a positive value for the average slopes across districts (2.96). Our baseline model indicates that the average school district in Florida had nearly 38 percent of its fifth grade students achieving level 3 or higher on the mathematics portion of the FCAT and gained 3 percent per year tested. After controlling for levels of poverty at the school level (percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch program) we find a substantial reduction in the variance among districts from 296 to 127 along with an increase in levels of achievement (60.2 percent) with a slightly lower slope, 2.78 (gains by year tested). Controlling for poverty increases the variability among schools when the outcome is student achievement in mathematics at grade 5. CONCLUSION Despite protestations to the contrary by members of the current governor’s administration, it is clear that factors such as the proportion of students within schools identified by minority status and poverty status have an impact on school-level achievement outcomes. Bush administration policies argue that race and poverty may affect achievement outcomes but should not, and that accountability policies are designed to close achievement gaps. It is clear that different racial and ethnic groups in Florida have differential access to the benefits of schooling. It is also obvious that when students are present in school, when they have access to programs for the gifted, and when they are instructed in reading and mathematics by teachers who have acquired advanced degrees, students have the opportunity to achieve well on high-stakes tests such as the Florida FCAT. The implications for policy are clear. Resources in the form of funding allocations and curricula are necessary but not sufficient elements for assuring success for all students. In addition to these baseline assets, student achievement is fostered when conditions in schools are such that students’ teachers are well educated and when students are provided high-level academic coursework throughout their educational careers. In addition, students who participate as learners in desegregated school contexts are likely to both acquire more complex and more nuanced ideas about their own future opportunities and their current pathways to successful outcomes.11

Florida’s A+ Plan

277

Florida, as in the rest of the South, had to respond more completely to the Supreme Court’s rulings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, than did their counterparts in the North. This in large part resulted from the decision in the subsequent 5-4 Milliken case in 1974 that banned interdistrict busing in all conceivable circumstances.12 Many proponents of desegregation assumed improved facilities and increased resources would lead to improved outcomes. However, Coleman’s 1966 report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, demonstrated that schools in the South were not significantly less well equipped with respect to numbers of books in school libraries, science laboratory equipment, and the like.13 Some of the Coleman data, however, suggested that teachers in rural schools in the South were less well prepared than their counterparts in other regions of the nation. Results also pointed to decreased achievement in reading (the only academic area analyzed by Coleman) for African American students beginning in grade 4. Following the Brown decision, public schools in the South achieved a measure of integration; however, this trend began to reverse itself by the 1990s. Studies undertaken by sociologists of education in the past twenty years, including Oakes14 and Stevenson, Schiller, and Schneider demonstrated that African American students were likely to be tracked throughout their schooling into less academically challenging coursework and as a consequence to be less likely to have acquired the courses and course sequences necessary to apply successfully to prestigious colleges and universities. Efforts to study the longterm effects of segregated school experiences suggest that life experience mirrors school experience.15 In other words, individuals in adulthood are likely to occupy occupations characteristically held by members of the same ethnic group. In general, this means that African Americans are more likely to be employed in less well-paying jobs that provide less satisfaction and fewer opportunities for advancement over the long term. More recently, Harvard University researchers examining data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data report Latino students are increasingly segregated in the nations’ public schools. Florida was ranked seventh among states in terms of White students’ exposure in public schools to Black and Hispanic students.16 In Florida the percentage of Black and Hispanic students in a school attended by the typical White student was 28.4 percent in the

278

REGINALD S. LEE, KATHRYN M. BORMAN, AND WILLIAM TYSON

year 2000. In several largely urban school districts in Florida, courtordered desegregation plans have controlled the contact between Black and White students as in the counties of Duval (with Jacksonville), Hillsborough (Tampa), Orange (Orlando), and Pinellas (St. Petersburg). Hispanic or Latino students were not considered in the original desegregation cases; however, this was altered as a result of the 1973 Keyes decision. In Keyes v. Denver School District, the Supreme Court determined that desegregation efforts should address physical as well as linguistic separation, thus for the first time the right of Latino students to attend desegregated schools was recognized. Throughout our analyses and discussion of results in this chapter, we have been interested in how segregated schooling (e.g., the isolation of students whose race and poverty levels are similar) influences the allocation of resources including funding and access to academic programs, as well as the quality of instruction. Specifically, we have reported on the effects of these factors on student achievement outcomes in mathematics and reading. With reference to policy, our results underscore the importance of providing educational programs that allow all children to achieve to high standards and to be prepared for college attendance as an outcome. When students remain in segregated settings in isolated rural and urban enclaves they are less likely to experience the talented teachers and excellent academic programs that those in more affluent settings take for granted. In addition, the community context for segregated and economically disenfranchised school settings does not generally provide the resources in the form of opportunities for employment and enriching experiences that propel individuals’ lives forward. Neither Florida nor the nation can afford to ignore these realities. NOTES 1. Legislation under State Law 6A-109981 requires each school designated as a D or F school with respect to student performance should include in its school improvement plan the “unique demographic characteristics of the school.” In addition, districts are instructed to devise plans for “increasing individualized assistance and intervention for each of their D and F schools at “increasingly intensive levels so long as the school continues to be so designated.” Most recently, plans statewide have emphasized volunteers as the source for assistance to failing schools.

Florida’s A+ Plan

279

2. Michael Fullan, The New Meaning of Educational Change, Third Edition (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001). 3. Thomas Hatch, “What Does It Take to Break the Mold? Rhetoric and Reality in New American Schools,” Teachers College Record 102, 3 (2000), 561–89; David R. Colburn and Lance deHaven-Smith, Florida’s Megatrends: Critical Issues in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). 4. Raymond A. Mohl, Searching for the Sunbelt: Historical Perspectives on a Region (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990). 5. E.g., Sherman Dorn, “Alternatives for Florida’s Assessment and Accountability System,” Education Policy Studies Laboratory Policy Brief EPSL-0401-107-EPRU (Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona State University, April 2004), available online at http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/ EPSL-0401-107-EPRU.pdf. 6. Adam Gamoran, Instruction and the Effects of Schooling (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987); David L. Stevenson, Kathryn S. Schiller, and Barbara Schneider, “Sequences of Opportunities for Learning,” Sociology of Education 67, 3 (1994), 184–98. 7. Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research. Available from http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/SchoolPop/ Spsort/sort_d1.html. 8. Larry V. Hedges, Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald, “Does Money Matter? A Meta-analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School Inputs on Student Outcomes,” Educational Researcher 23, 3 (1994), 5–14. 9. Valerie E. Lee and Julia B. Smith, “High School Size: Which Works Best and for Whom?,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 19, 3 (1997), 205–28. 10. Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: The New Press, 1996). 11. James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1966). 12. Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 13. Jomills H. Braddock and James M. McPartland, “Social-Psychological Processes That Perpetuate Racial Segregation: The Relationship between School and Employment Desegregation,” Journal of Black Studies 19, 3 (1989), 267–89; Marvin. P Dawkins and Jomills H. Braddock, “The Continuing Significance of Desegregation: School Racial Inclusion in American Society,” Journal of Negro Education 63, 3 (1994), 394–405. 14. Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2003), available online at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/resegregation03.php.

This page intentionally left blank.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kathryn M. Borman is professor of anthropology and affiliated with the Alliance for Applied Research in Education and Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Dr. Borman was the director of the Consortium for Educational Research in Florida, the starting point of this book, and has extensive experience in educational reform and policy as well as evaluation studies. Currently she is working with the American Institutes of Research and NORC on the OERI-funded National Longitudinal Evaluation of comprehensive School Reform directing the focus study of forty schools in five districts. She was recently awarded an NSF ROLE grant, “Understanding Factors that Sustain Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Career Pathways” and most recently (2005)an NSF STEP II grant “Effects of College Degree Program Culture on Female and Minority Student STEM Participation.” She served as the editor of the AERA journal Review of Educational Research and is the founding editor of the International Journal of Educational Policy, Research and Practice and Educational Foundations. Additionally, she is involved in training graduate students for research. Deirdre Cobb-Roberts is an associate professor of social foundations of education at the University of South Florida. She received her doctorate from the University of Illinois. She is the author or co-author of many articles and book chapters on the history of higher education and multicultural education and coeditor of Schools as Imagined Communities (2005). She is currently working on a book documenting the academic and social experiences of African American students at two land grant universities in the post-World War II era. Sherman Dorn is an associate professor of social foundations of education at the University of South Florida. He received his M.A. in demography and Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Dorn was the associate director of the Consortium for Educational Research in Florida, the starting point of this book, and he is the

281

282

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

author of Creating the Dropout (1996) and coeditor of Schools as Imagined Communities (2005). He is also the author or coauthor of various articles and book chapters on the history of special education, graduation, and high-stakes accountability policies. He is currently the editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives, an online journal available at http://epaa.asu.edu. David Eitle is an associate professor of sociology at Montana State University. He received his B.A. in criminology and his M.A. in sociology from the Ohio State University and his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University at Bloomington. His research interests include the influence of school factors on student deviance, how social stratification influences the distribution and the social control of crime, and the testing of criminological theories. Some of Professor Eitle’s recent publications appear in such journals as Criminology, Sociology of Education, Social Forces, Justice Quarterly, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Tamela McNulty Eitle is an associate professor of sociology at Montana State University. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at Indiana University in 1998. Dr. Eitle studies race, ethnicity, and education with a particular focus on social inequality in U.S. public schools. She is interested in the ways in which education reproduces and legitimates social inequalities and with the relationships between local opportunity structures and educational opportunities and outcomes. She is currently studying the impact of accountability reform for schools, teachers, and students. Her research has been published in Sociology of Education, Social Forces, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and elsewhere. Larry Johnson is an assistant professor of social foundations of education at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He received his doctorate from the University of Utah. He is a historian of education interested in stratification in higher education, the development of community colleges, and struggles to create equality in higher education. His scholarly publications have included journal articles and books in the history of education. Reginald S. Lee is a research associate with the Alliance for Applied Research in Education and Anthropology and a doctoral candidate in

About the Contributors

283

the Department of Educational Measurement & Research in the College of Education at USF. He collaborates with other researchers and assists doctoral students with data analysis and design issues. His primary areas of research focus on minority student misrepresentation in special education and appropriate methodological approaches for evaluating under and over representation of African American students in specialized programs in public schools. He has also worked to understand students’ engagement during instructional activities. In addition he has collaborated on community-based evaluations focused on community or education issues. Deanna L. Michael is an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She received her M.A. in history from Louisiana State University and her Ph.D. in higher education and social foundations from Georgia State University. Her research interests include President Jimmy Carter’s development as an educational policy maker, the history of educational policy in southern states, and the development of kindergarten education in the southern states. Dr. Michael has a manuscript about President Carter’s background as an educational policy maker under review and has published an article in Paedagogica Historica about state policy makers. Barbara Shircliffe is an associate professor of social foundations of education at the University of South Florida. She received her doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Shircliffe’s research has focused on the desegregation of historically Black high schools in Florida. She is the author of Best of That World (2006) and coeditor of Schools as Imagined Communities (2005). William Tyson is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of South Florida. He earned a PhD in Sociology with a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies at Duke University in 2004. Dr. Tyson studies race, ethnicity, gender, and education with community influences focus on high school course-taking and achievement and structural influences on university campus life. His current research examines patterns of course-taking and achievement among Florida high school students.

This page intentionally left blank.

INDEX

A Nation at Risk (1983), 96–97, 98 A+ Plan, 3, 7, 9, 14, 15, 85, 102–107, 117, 124, 133, 135, 141, 142, 145, 149, 155, 185, 194, 241–79; Assistance Plus, 251, 256; F schools, 244–56. See also school accountability Abney, Everett, 34 achievement gap. See student achievement Adams v. Califano (1977), 216 Adams v. Richardson (1973), 39–40, 215–16, 227 adequacy in education, 14–15, 53, 77 admissions policies. See under higher education, Advanced Placement, 212, 221 affirmative action, 2, 4, 8–9, 10, 211–39; and 2000 election, 212; and “colorblind” rhetoric, 233; and preferences rhetoric, 219–24, 231 African American community, 5–6 African American high schools, historically, 24, 33–34, 37, 143 African Civilization Society, 20 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 20 Alabama, 243 Alachua County, Florida, 32, 71, 74, 148, 260, 261 Allen v. Wright (1984), 216 America 2000, 97–98 American Civil Rights Institute, 211–12

Americans with Disabilities Act, 228 Arkansas, 19, 216 Askew, Reubin, 54, 59–60, 77, 91–95, 191 Atkins, Clyde Atlanta, 243 “back to basics,” 83 Backman, Carl, 196 Baker v. Carr (1965), 58. See also Reapportionment, Florida legislative Bendix (corporation), 95 Bethune Cookman College, 24 Bing, E. L., 36–37 Black caucus in Florida legislature, 218 Blake High School (Tampa), 35, 36, 37 Blueprint 2000, 97–102, 103–104, 106. See also school accountability and Sunshine State Standards Bradford County, Florida, 261 Braxton v. the Board of Public Instruction, 137 Brazill, Nathaniel, 153 Brevard County, Florida, 260 Brogan, Frank T., 101, 102, 196, 198 Broward County, Florida, 28, 32, 34, 123, 148, 149 Broward, Napoleon Bonaparte, 187 Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955), 5, 20, 25–27, 38–39, 40, 86, 90, 137, 215, 256, 277

285

286

INDEX

Brown, Hyatt, 192 Bryant, Farris, 243 Burns, Haydon, 243 Bush v. Holmes (2006), 12, 105. See also under vouchers Bush, George H. W., 97–98 Bush, George W., 2, 85, 117, 150, 212, 244 Bush, John E. ( Jeb), 1–12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 30, 44, 46, 53–54, 55–56, 77, 85–86, 102–107, 117, 118, 119, 145, 149, 150, 185–209, 211–39, 241, 244, 245, 251, 276 business leaders, 6 Business/Higher Education Partnership, 193 Caldwell, Millard, 56, 89 Calhoun County, Florida, 258 California, 229 capacity of schools. See adequacy in education Cardenas, Alberto (Al), 203 Carpon Springs meeting (1898), 22 Castor, Elizabeth (Betty), 98, 101 categorical programs, 259–60; minority participation in, 260 Center for Individual Rights, 211–12; political and legal strategy, 219–20 centralization, 13–14, 84 Chamber of Commerce, Florida, 2 Chatterji, Madhabi, 11 Chiles, Lawton, 97–102, 193, 244 choice, private-school. See vouchers choice, public-school, 3, 7, 29, 86; Florida school grades and, 105 Christian, Floyd, 29, 30 Citizens Committee on Education, 59, 91, 92 Civil Rights Act (1964), 29, 39, 47, 215, 277 civil rights movement, 23–25, 89

class sizes, 120, 124, 125–26. See also under Florida constitution Colburn, David, 228 Cold War, 86, 89 Coleman report, 277 College Board, 212 Collier County, Florida, 258 Collins, LeRoy, 26–27, 243 Commission on Civil Rights (federal), 216, 227 Commission on the Future of Florida’s Public Universities, 190 Commissioner of Education, 189; and education governance, 89, 106 Conant, James B., 86 Connerly, Ward, 194, 200, 211–12, 219, 228 Consortium for Education Research in Florida, 5 Cook, Valerie J., 162 Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program. See under vouchers Costenbader, Virginia, 162 Counts, M. Reid, 156 county school systems. See under individual county names Crews, Gordon A., 156 Dade County, Florida. See MiamiDade County Dallas, 243 Davis, Edward D., 24–25 Daytona Beach, 33 Debra P. v. Turlington (1979, 1983), 94, 96. See also minimum competency tests deHaven-Smith, Lance, 212–13 demographic changes: and higher education, 225–26; post-World War II, 6, 19, 57, 58, 90, 107; recent, 65, 120–22, 155, 243; urbanization after World War II, 6

Index

desegregation. See segregation and desegregation Desoto County, Florida, 258 DeVane, Barbara, 217–19 Dewey, John, 88 Dillard High School (Broward County), 34 Dimitouleas, William, 142 disorder in schools. See school violence District of Columbia, 161 diversity in education, 6–7. See also under demographic changes Dixie County, Florida, 260 Douglas, Dexter, 195 Due, John, 142 Dunbar High School (Lee County), 143, 144 Duval County, Florida, 23, 24, 32, 87, 133, 137, 140–41, 244, 251, 258, 278 Education Excellence for Florida, 201, 202 education funding: 1974 increase in state, 65; competing priorities for, 101–102; and cost of living, 55, 71; elementary-secondary differences in, 55, 70–74; and Florida lottery, 77; racial inequalities, 23; reform of, 53–82, 64–65; required local effort, 62–64; and school accountability, 54, 65, 84; substitution effects in, 67, 74; and tax ratio study, 60, 63; technocracy and politics in, 56, 75–78; wealth effects in, 65–66, 67–70 Education Governance Reorganization Transition Task Force, 198 “education governor” rhetoric, 83 education reform: breadth of, 1–4, 9, 16; and business interests, 95–97, 243 (see also business leaders and

287

Chamber of Commerce); and competing priorities, 101–102; continuity of, 9; dissent from, 2; and economic development, 88–90, 243–44; and human-capital rhetoric, 97; national context for Florida, 12–16, 97–98; and past discrimination, 94; and privatization, 105 Edward Waters College, 24 Egerton, John, 40 Eisenhower Committee on Government and Higher Education, 187–88 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), 29, 67, 84, 85, 90–91. See also No Child Left Behind Act (2002) Eminent Scholars Endowment Fund, 191 English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). See Limited English Proficient (LEP) Equity in Education Plan, 220–23 Escambia County, Florida, 25, 251 Eyler, Janet, 162 Fabisinski Committee, 27 FCAT. See Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests (FCAT) Federation of Labor, Chicago, 88 Flagler County, Florida, 258 Florida A&M University, 4, 5, 8, 22–23, 24, 28, 33, 38–44, 47, 187, 199–200, 218, 224, 229, 230; accreditation of, 22; law school, 199–200 Florida Atlantic University, 198 Florida Bar Association, 200 Florida Board of Control, 20, 28, 187, 215 Florida Board of Education, 4, 89, 106, 189, 198, 200–201

288

INDEX

Florida Board of Governors, 186 Florida Board of Regents, 4, 8, 185, 188, 189, 200; politics of, 190–93 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests (FCAT), 2, 14, 100, 102, 103, 120, 129–33, 138–39, 146, 149, 163, 169, 172, 223, 244–45, 247, 249, 261–76; math test, 130, 131; reading test, 130, 132; writing test, 100, 163 Florida constitution: 1968 approval of, 189; 1978 higher education amendment (failed), 191; 1998 amendment, 76, 106, 194–95; 2002 class-size mandate, 11, 53, 77–78; 2002 higher education amendment, 186, 201–03; 2002 prekindergarten mandate, 11–12; and vouchers, 12, 105 Florida Department of Education, 32–33, 99–100, 103–104, 119, 185, 189 Florida Education Association (FEA), 34 Florida Education AssociationUnited, 96 Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), 6, 15, 60–64, 90, 91, 263; effects of, 56; political negotiations, 61–62; stability of, 54–55, 75–78 Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act (2000), 195, 198, 200–201 Florida International University, 200, 224 Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, 188 Florida lottery, 77 Florida Normal Industrial Institute, 24 Florida partisanship, 198

Florida School Recognition Program, 100–101, 104–106, 251 Florida school system size, 75–76 Florida State Library, 5 Florida State Teachers Association (FSTA), 24 Florida State University, 4, 13, 22, 40, 192–93, 198, 200; medical school, 199 Florida Supreme Court, 76 Florida Writes! See Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test Floridians for Education Reform, 202 Floridians Representing Equality and Equity, 218 Fort Lauderdale, Florida. See Broward County Franklin County, Florida, 258 Freedman’s Bureau, 20–21 Fryer, John, 140 Gadsden County, Florida, 24, 158, 258, 259 Gallagher, Thomas, 195–97 Garms, Walter, 59 gas crisis of 1973, 190 Gibson, Robin, 201–202 gifted education, 259–60 Gilbert, John, 25 Glades County, Florida, 258 Glazer, Nathan, 219–20 Gore, George W., Jr., 43 Gottfredson, Denise, 157 Gottfredson, Gary, 157 Graham, Daniel Robert (Bob), 2, 8, 95–97, 106–107, 185–209 Gratz, Jennifer, 220 Green v. New Kent County School Board (1968), 30–31 Green, Willie, 144 Griffith, Noah, 24 Grunow, Barry, 2000 shooting of, 153

Index

Grutter, Barbara, 220 Gulf County, Florida, 33 Hamacher, Patrick, 220 Hamilton County, Florida, 258, 259 Hardee County, Florida, 258 Harvard University Civil Rights Project, 224–25 Hawaii, 120 Hawkins et al. v. Board of Control (1952), 25, 28–29, 39, 40, 215, 216 Hendry County, Florida, 258 Herbert, Adam, 4, 193, 196, 199, 218; three-tier plan of, 199 Herrington, Carolyn, 94 Heubert, Jay, 109 high school graduation requirements, course requirements, 95, 96 higher education, admissions, 211–39; admissions policies, 10, 46; admissions tests, 212, 225; Black enrollment in doctoral programs, 230–31; expansion of, 188–89; Greeks and race, 227; minority enrollment in, 227–29; minority enrollment in, 228–29; politics of, 186–190; reorganization of, 2, 8, 11, 106–07, 185–209; standardized tests in, 191 Hill, Tony, 217–19 Hillsborough County, 5, 7, 23, 24, 27, 28, 32, 33–38, 87, 258, 133, 135–137, 148, 149, 163, 243, 244–45, 260, 278 Hodges, William Terrell, 140 Holmes County, Florida, 258 Honeywell, 95 Hopwood, Cheryl H., 220 Horne, Jim, 198, 203

289

Houston, 243 human capital, 219. See also under education reform I–4 corridor, 243 Iadicola, Peter, 160 individualized education plan (IEP), 11 Individuals with Disabilities Act, 2 Ingraham v. Wright (1975), 160 intelligence tests, 88 Jacksonville, Florida. See Duval County Jefferson County, Florida, 258, 259, 261 Jennings, Toni, 200 Jim Crow Era, 19, 20–23 Johns Committee, 188 Johns, Charley Eugene, 188 Joint Legislative and Executive Commission on Postsecondary Education, 192 K-20 education system, 1, 185, 195. Kennedy, John F., 189 Keyes v. Denver School District (1973), 278 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 233 Kingdon, John, 186, 194 Kirk, Claude, 31–32, 59 Kirst, Michael, 59 Kovachevich, Elizabeth A., 136 Krentzman, Ben, 32 Ku Klux Klan, 26 Lake County, Florida, 147–48 Laub, Jill, 154 Lauritsen, John, 154 Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), 28 law schools in Florida, 4. See also under individual universities

290

INDEX

Lawson, Alfred (Al), 200 Lee County, Florida, 32, 33, 142–45, 148 Lee, Edgar K., 224–25 Leon County, Florida, 32, 148, 149, 258 Levin, Henry, 108 Limited English Proficient (LEP) students, 119–120, 123, 259–60 localism. See centralization Los Alamos National Laboratory, 192–93 Lowndes, John F., 195 Ludwin, William G., 160 Madison County, Florida, 258 magnet schools, 7 Maiden, Jeffrey, 66–67 majority-Black school districts, 123 Manatee County, Florida, 31–32, 149 Manning v. School Board of Hillsborough County, 136 Marin, Patricia, 224–25 Markson, Samia, 162 Marshall High School (Plant City), 35 Marshall, Thurgood, 25 Martinez, Robert (Bob), 96 Mautz, Robert, 187, 190 McDaniel, Vernon, 25 McDonald, Victoria-Maria, 94 McKay Scholarship Program. See under vouchers McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950), 39 McLendon, Michael, 194 medical schools in Florida, 4. See also under individual universities Meek, Kendrick, 217–19 merit pay, 3 Miami-Dade County, Florida, 7, 23, 24, 27, 28, 32, 34, 65, 71, 87, 119, 123, 133, 141–142, 148,

149, 243, 244, 251, 256, 258, 260, 261 Mickelson, Roslyn, 46 Middleton High School (Tampa), 35, 36, 37 Milliken v. Bradley (1974), 277 Mims v. Duval County School Board, 137 minimum competency testing, 77, 94. See also Debra P. v. Turlington minimum foundations program in Florida, 56–58, 89–90 Minor Wisdom, John, 27 Mississippi, 243 Moore, Harry T. and Harriette, 1951 murders of, 25 Moore, John H., 137 Morrill Act, 22 Motley, Constance, 28 multiple regression, 67–70 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 11, 108 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 5, 6, 25, 34, 57, 89, 137, 140, 142, 142–44, 188, 218; Florida branch, 98–99; Legal Defense Fund, 28, 36, 39–40, 215–16 National Commission on Excellence in Education, 96–97. See also A Nation at Risk National Governors Association, 97–98 National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 192–93 National Organization of Women, Florida, 217, 218 National Science Foundation, 15–16 New England College of Law, 215 New Jersey, 64 New York (state), 243

Index

New York City, 71 Neyland, Leedell, 34 Nichols, Joseph D., 160 Nixon, Richard M., 31 No Child Left Behind Act (2002), 2, 12, 13, 14, 15, 84, 85, 108, 117, 150, 244. See also Elementary and Secondary Education Act Noble, David, 188 North Carolina, 12, 31 NSF, 108–109 Office of Civil Rights (federal), 8, 29, 39–40, 45, 47, 215–17, 218–19, 232 Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA), 99 Oklahoma, 216 One Florida, 8–9, 185, 194, 211–39; and achievement gap, 222–23; community colleges and, 229–30; culture-of-poverty rhetoric of, 222; empirical studies of, 224–26; Florida A&M University and, 229–30; gender and race in, 213–14; governor’s office sit-in, 217–19; modifications to, 218; and past discrimination, 223–24, 226–31; protests of, 232; public hearings on, 218; rhetoric of, 219–24, 231; and state politics, 217–19; substance abuse rhetoric of, 222. See also Talented 20 Plan opportunities to learn, 256–72, 276, 278 Opportunity Scholarship Program. See under vouchers Orange County, Florida, 23, 32, 33, 59, 123, 133, 148, 149, 251, 258, 278 Orchard Villa School, 28

291

Orfield, Gary, 44 Orlando, Florida. See Orange County Osborn, Thomas W., 20–21 Osceola County, Florida, 148, 258 Owens, Tom, 66–67 Palm Beach County, Florida, 28, 32, 123, 133, 148, 149, 251, 258 Pasco County, Florida, 29, 146, 147 Peabody Education Fund, 21 Pensacola, Florida. See Escambia County. Petway, Thomas, 196, 202–203 Pinellas County, Florida, 32, 55, 65, 163, 226, 278 Plant City, Florida, 34 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 22 policy entrepreneurs, 194 policy streams, 186, 194 Polk County, Florida, 147 Pork Chop Gang, 58, 63. See also reapportionment of Florida legislature (1967) Porter, Gilbert, 34 Postsecondary Education Planning Commission, 196, 200 Prekindergarten, 101–102. See also under Florida constitution Putnam County, Florida, 251 Race Relations Information Center, 41–42 Raise Achievement in Secondary Education (RAISE), 95–97 Reagan, Ronald, 216 reapportionment of Florida legislature (1967), 54, 58, 63, 65 Reconstruction, post-Civil War, 5, 20–21 Reed, Charley, 192, 193, 200 “reverse discrimination” rhetoric, 219–24. See also under One Florida

292

INDEX

Richardson, Elliott, 216NAACP, 216 Rickover, Admiral Hyman, 86 Roberts, Carolyn, 202, 203 Rodriguez v. San Antonio (1973), 58–59 Ruffier, Joan, 202 Russell, Leon, 98–99 Saint Petersburg, Florida. See Pinellas County Santa Rosa County, Florida, 147 Sarasota County, Florida, 32, 33, 146, 147 Saunders, Robert, 25 Scheiffer, Robert, 192–93 Scholtz, David, 89 school accountability, 6, 12, 14, 43, 53, 77, 83–116; 1971 Florida Accountability Act, 91–95; and administrators, 104; and education funding, 84; and finance reform, 54, 65; business metaphor of, 86, 87–88, 97; and choice, 105; continuity in, 86; displacement of responsibility in, 84–85, 97; and education funding, 92, 93; and learning gains, 104; and Limited English Proficiency (LEP) programs, 104; and past discrimination, 14, 86, 117–52; and privatization, 105; and public choice, 105; and School Advisory Councils, 98–99, 100, 105, 106; and school grades, 103–106, 133, 134; and segregation and desegregation, 117–52; and special education, 104; State Student Assessment Test, 93–94; test-based, 92; and vouchers, 105 school administration: and accountability, 104; history of, 87

school discipline, 7–8, 153–83; corporal punishment, 161–61, 163–64; criminalization of behavior, 154; expulsions, 7–8; Florida statistics, 163–64; historical, 160; metal detectors, 154; misconduct and, 166; policy, 160–66; and race, 162–63; and segregation and desegregation, 167–71; social theories of, 156–60; suspensions, 7–8, 163–66; use of police and resource officers, 154; zero-tolerance policies in, 154. See also school violence school disorder. See school violence school grades, 103–106, 133, 134, 135; Assistance Plus, 251, 256; criteria, 245; distribution of, 245–47; F schools, 105, 106, 134, 244–256; and Limited English Proficient (LEP) programs, 104; multilevel analysis, 272; OLS regressions, 247, 252–55; racial composition and, 145–49; rewards, see Florida School Recognition Program; and special education, 104; variation in, 247, 250; vouchers and, 105. See also school accountability school law, Florida, 4 school violence, 7–8, 153–83; and climate, 168–69; and FCAT scores, 169; Florida statistics 156–60, 164, 166; public perceptions of, 154, 160; shootings, 153–54; social theories of, 156–60, 167–68. See also school discipline Scott, J. Irving, 23 “seamless” education system. See K20 education system segregation and desegregation, 5, 6–7, 10, 13, 19–51, 57, 77, 86–87, 89, 90, 107, 117–52,

Index

242–43; 1866 school law, 20–21; 1869 school law, 21; 1885 constitution, 21; 1895 school law; 1956 Florida Pupil Assignment Law, 26–27, 28; and Black flight, 36; and Black teachers, 34; and busing, 32–33, 36; Catholic nuns arrested in 1915, 21–22; closing of Florida junior colleges, 40–41; closing of all-Black schools, 33–34, 37, 143; court orders, 27, 29–32, 133, 135–137, 140–145; disproportionate burdens on Black institutions, 43; extent of, 28, 44–45; and “freedom of choice” plans, 29, 86–87; and Florida A&M University, 38–44; higher education, 213, 214–17; Hillsborough County, 33–38; index of dissimilarity, 66, 127–29, 169–70, 257–58; Miami-Dade biracial, triethnic committee, 141; military bases, 28; residential segregation, 226–27; and school accountability, 117–52; and school discipline, 155, 167–71; and school grades, 145–49; and school violence, 155; second-generation, 163, 175; segregation academies, 242–43; statistics, 277–78; and White flight, 36 Serrano v. Priest (1971), 58–59 Sessums, T. Terrell, 59, 60 Singleton v. Jackson (1965), 29–30 Smith, Walter, 34 Smout, Charles, 64 social capital, 14 social control, 7, 154, 160–66, 167 “Space Coast,” 189 space program, 188–89 special education, 259–60 Spencer Foundation, 5

293

Sputnik, 86 St. Petersburg, Florida. See Pinellas County St. Lucie County, Florida, 260 standardized testing. See Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests (FCAT) standards in education, 3, 99–100. See also school accountability State Board of Community Colleges, 185 State Normal College for Colored Students (Florida A&M University predecessor), 22. See also Florida A&M University state poverty, 88 states’ rights, 26 student achievement, 9, 10; and A+ Plan, 241–79; classroom factors, 242; math, 264, 268, 269–71; multilevel analysis of, 272, 273–76; patterns in, 261–72; racial/ethnic gap in, 129–33; reading, 264, 265–67; school environment factors, 242 student enrollment: K-12, 23, 87, 120–22; minorities in higher education, 214, 228–29; minorities in K-12, 258; postsecondary statistics, 196 student poverty, 9, 67, 123, 135, 259 student race and ethnicity, 9. See also segregation and desegregation Sunshine State Standards, 99–100. See also school accountability and Blueprint 2000 superboard. See under higher education Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), 30, 31, 32, 137 Sweatt v. Painter (1950), 39

294

INDEX

Talented 20 Plan, 4, 211–39. See also One Florida and higher education: admissions Tallahassee, Florida. See Leon County Tallahassee Community College, 42 Tampa, Florida. See Hillsborough County teacher licensure, 3–4; exam, 93 teacher pay, career ladder, 95, 96; merit pay, 95 teacher poverty, 89 teacher quality, 15; and experience, 124, 261; and loan forgiveness, 96 teacher salaries, 57; equalization lawsuits, 5, 23–24, 24, 57 teachers unions, 2. See also Florida Education Association teaching units, 57–58 Texas, 12, 229 third-grade retention, test-based, 84 Thrasher, John, 196, 198, 199, 200 Truman Commission on Higher Education, 187–88 Turlington, Ralph, 60, 61–62, 64, 191 Turney, Hilda, 24 Tyack, David, 109 Union County, Florida, 258 university boards of trustees, 4; 1972 proposals for, 189–90; appointments, 198 university governance. See Higher education, reorganization of University of California Berkeley, 228

University of Florida, 8, 13, 25, 192–93, 215, 232, 260; African American performance at, 228; Alligator newspaper, 227; Blue Key club, 227; discrimination at, 227–29; law school, 28; minority enrollment at, 228–29; minority faculty at, 227, 228–29; White Student Union, 227 University of Michigan, 220, 228 University of Texas, 220 urban schools, 13 urbanization, 13, 19, 107. See also under Demographic changes Van Pelt, Toni Villalobos, Alex, 200 Virginia, 19 Volusia County, Florida, 28, 32, 260 vouchers, 3, 10, 11, 14; corporate tax-credit, 105; failing schools (Opportunity Scholarship Program), 2, 11, 12; students with disabilities and (McKay Scholarship Program), 11; research on, 11 Ward, Leslie E., 162 Washington County, Florida, 229 West Palm Beach, 33. See also Palm Beach County Westinghouse, 95 Wetherell, T. K., 198 Williams, Carlton, 36 Williams, DeWitt Everett, 24 Williams, John, 5 Winn, John, 195–97 York, E. T., 190–91, 201

EDUCATION

EDUCATION REFORM IN FLORIDA Diversity and Equity in Public Policy Kathryn M. Borman and Sherman Dorn, editors In Education Reform in Florida, sociologists and historians evaluate Governor Jeb Bush’s nation-leading school reform policies since 1999. They examine the startlingly broad range of education policy changes enacted in Florida during Bush’s first term, including moves toward privatization with a voucher system, more government control of public education institutions with centralized accountability mechanisms, and a “superboard” for all public education. The contributors arrive at a mixed conclusion regarding Bush’s first-term education policies: while he deserves credit for holding students to higher standards, his policies have, unfortunately, pushed for equality in a very narrow way. The contributors remain skeptical about seeing significant and sweeping improvement in how well Florida schools work for all students. “While the book covers the state of Florida, the issues in Bush’s first term are ones that face all states and that are playing out in essential ways in many administrations. The contributors take a broad, historical look at these issues, and then narrow in on the specifics of current policies, practices, and levels of achievement. They find that Florida has a long way to go to create diversity and equity in education.” —Jean Anyon, author of Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement At the University of South Florida, KATHRYN M. BORMAN is Professor of Anthropology and SHERMAN DORN is Associate Professor of Education. Borman has collaborated on and coedited many books, including Meaningful Urban Education Reform: Confronting the Learning Crisis in Mathematics and Science, also published by SUNY Press. Dorn is the author of Creating the Dropout: An Institutional and Social History of School Failure. State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu