Dr. Matthew Ladner
The vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute — a center-right think tank in Phoenix — points out that since Florida instituted some major educational reforms, the reading scores of all of its students has risen dramatically. The most eye-popping number concerns fourth-grade reading scores of Florida’s low-income Hispanic students. In 1998 — the year before the reforms were implemented — Hispanic kids in Florida who took part in the state’s free and reduced lunch program scored 187 on the exams conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the most respected source of K-12 academic data.
In 2009, Hispanic children on the free and reduced lunch program scored 218. As a general rule of thumb, 10 points on the test roughly equates to one grade level. So, in the space of a decade, Florida’s low income Hispanic students improved their scores by three grade levels.
What’s more, the NAEP score for all of New Mexico’s fourth-graders — rich, poor, white, African-American and Hispanic — is 208. That means that a low-income Hispanic 9-year-old in Florida is outpacing the average New Mexican fourth-grader by one full grade level. Here’s the data:
And consider this: Florida spends an average of $8,862 per student. New Mexico spends $9,368 — more money per student, with significantly worse results.
Given New Mexico’s abysmal high school graduation rate, Dr. Ladner told an audience in Albuquerque Wednesday (July 28) that New Mexico needs a dramatic change in the way it’s treating its students:
What exactly is Florida doing right?
Dr. Ladner says it’s a combination of things — something he calls “the Florida cocktail.”
Under then Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida instituted a number of reforms in 1999 including:
- Parental Choice Florida has the nation’s largest school vouchers program, as well as 379 charter schools and the largest school tax credit program in the country
- Grading Schools Schools are graded clearly, with an accountability program that has real teeth. A great school gets an “A”, a mediocre school gets a “C”, and a failing school gets an “F”
- Alternative Teaching Certification Half of all the new teachers in Florida come through the alternative certification route. So if a retired physicist who wants to teach high school physics passes the alternative certification exams, he/she can become a teacher
- Social Promotion Ban By the end of the third grade, Florida students must learn basic literacy skills. If they haven’t mastered those skills they repeat a grade.
- Just Read Florida Recognizing that some methods of teaching reading are better than others, Florida lawmakers revamped the early childhood literacy curriculum and instruction
Dr. Ladner is giving a presentation in Las Cruces Thursday (July 29) at noon and is appearing at noon at the Woman’s Club in Santa Fe on Friday (July 30). The presentations are sponsored by the Rio Grande Foundation, a free market think tank based in Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Journal wrote a front-page article about Ladner and the Florida success story in Wednesday’s edition and published this editorial from Paul Guessing of the Rio Grande Foundation earlier this month.
