The Floridation of Arizona Education: Summing up

by David Safier

I've written 4 posts on the Floridation of Arizona Education (listed and linked at the end of the post). I can only conclude:

1.  "The Florida Educational Miracle" is way over-hyped, courtesy of hype-meister Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute. It's quite possible the package of reforms have improved students' achievement levels, though not to the extent Ladner leads us to believe. And any improvements are the result of what Ladner calls a "tapestry of reforms," many of which cost money.
2. The parts of the "Florida Miracle" Arizona wants to implement — holding back poor readers in the 3rd grade and scoring schools' performance on an A-F scale — will have little or no effect on Arizona's student achievement, especially if we continue de-funding our schools.

Ladner admits in his paper, "Demography Defeated," that he can't pinpoint what reforms were responsible for what improvements — which is perfectly reasonable. When you have a number of reforms enacted together or one after the other, it's impossible to tease out their separate effects. From what I've read, I would guess that holding back 3rd graders wasn't the most important reform Florida implemented. It was the increased emphasis on reading instruction, which included pumping money into teacher training and reading coaches for students. But that's only a guess.

I'm willing to bet that no one in Arizona's state legislature or the DOE has looked into the idea of 3rd grade retention in a serious way. Republicans have simply jumped on the G.I. bandwagon and taken its pronouncements as the gospel truth. (I wonder if any other states have also held back elementary school students with low reading scores, and if the states' results on reading tests increased as a result. I don't know the answer. I don't remember hearing anything about it from Ladner. Strange.)

And if you want irony, here it is. Rep. Rich Crandall (R-Mesa), who is pushing the 3rd grade retention bill, admits there will be some additional costs attached to the program. His solution? Steal money from the state's early childhood development programs.

There are few things a large majority of educators agree on. One of them is the value of pre-K education to promote later educational attainment, especially for children from low income families. Of course, there are pre-K deniers, who are only slightly more credible than global warming deniers. But most educational research indicates the biggest bang from your educational buck comes from making sure children have the opportunity to take part in high quality early education programs.

Here are my earlier posts about The Floridation of Arizona Education:

• Introducing: The Floridation of Arizona Education
• The Floridation of Arizona Education: Reading scores
• The Floridation of Arizona Education: Dropout rates
• The Floridation of Arizona Education: a "tapestry" of reforms