Arizona schools look at Florida as reform model
The reforms, approved by the Legislature of Arizona in recent years, will be eliminated by 2013. They include stopping the progression of a child of the third year in the fourth year that the student can read, labeling of schools with grades letter A, B, C, D and F, and teacher evaluation and directors based largely on student achievement, measured in part by the test results.
But the question is, will these reforms have the same positive effects in this state as they did in the other? Florida has adopted reforms before the 2007-09 recession, which emptied the coffers of the national state.Arizona does not have the money to fully implement the reforms of Florida, such as teacher training, bonuses for schools that improve or free preschool.
Among the gains experienced in Florida was a narrowing of the gap between test scores of low-income students and minorities and those of their wealthier peers and white. Fill this gap has been the elusive goal of decades of educational reform.
Arizona is desperate to improve student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, the "Report Card Nation."
Results of Arizona have been dismal.
State average fourth-grade scores have lagged behind the national scores for a decade, and is ranked in Arizona near the bottom in both its fourth and eighth grade. At the same time, Florida fourth-year math and reading scores caught up in the nation in 2003 and have since passed.
Some researchers remain skeptical. They say that the reforms of Florida, while net earnings close so far failed to prove their long-term value because the primary school students do not maintain their progress as they move in primary and secondary eighth.
Christopher Emdin, professor at the Pedagogical Institute of Columbia University, rejects the reforms of Florida that is nothing new and already abandoned by the educational community, because studies indicate they do not work in the long term.
"In reality it is a regurgitation of old ideas being resold under the change," said Emdin.
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