1. ESSER Funds and Fiscal Realities

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, a lifeline during the pandemic, faced a cliffhanger. These federal dollars had bolstered schools, but their expiration loomed large. The budgets for both PreK-12 and higher education institutions were under the microscope. As the clock ticked, districts grappled with the impending funding gap, risking teacher layoffs and program cuts.

2. Deregulation and High Stakes Testing

Last year’s expansion of school choice had a ripple effect. In 2024, lawmakers doubled down on deregulation, aiming to free public schools from policies that districts viewed as cumbersome. While some hailed this as a step toward flexibility, others felt like the legislature did not go far enough. Popular proposals that would have ended the harsh consequences of high stakes testing failed in negotiations between the House and the Senate.

3. Social Media Regulations for Minors

In an era of tweets and TikToks, social media regulations became a hot topic. The legislature grappled with safeguarding minors online. Lawmakers attempted to balance free speech and protecting students. The resulting policy does not target specific platforms and applies to platforms “where at least 10 percent of daily active users are children younger than 16 who use it for two hours or more a day; that uses “addictive” features, such as infinite scrolling; and that uses algorithms that analyze user data to handpick content for users.”

Chronic Abseenteeism and the Future of Education

Despite committee hearings and public statements from legislative leaders, the chronic absenteeism crisis was never addressed. Districts continue to grapple with a high number of student absences.

Pay attention to the candidates on your ballot for school board, the state House, and the Senate. Be ready to vote on August 20th and November 5th. It will be up to advocates and voters to demand policies that empower students, elevate student voices, engage families and the community, and involve students in the solutions.

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The post The 2024 Florida Legislative Session: What’s in store for schools? appeared first on Alliance for Public Schools.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, “Simon, a Tallahassee Republican, said he had intended only to give schools more flexibility in how they allocate recess minutes, particularly on shortened class days, and not to remove recess. He pulled the section that would have altered the mandate as the bill and its companions (SB 7000, SB 7002) gained bipartisan approval from the Fiscal Policy Committee.

Angela Browning, one of the parents who led the push for recess in 2017, said separately from the meeting that “recess moms” statewide cheered the quick response to their concerns. Simon “has clearly heard us on this issue and we appreciate that authentic daily recess periods will continue for Florida’s elementary school students,” she said.”

In spite of the recess provision, parents and educators applauded the bill which removes many state regulations including drastic changes to the current testing policies. However, former Gov. Jeb Bush and his education foundation have criticized the bill. “Bush wrote a column opposing Simon’s call to stop using state tests to determine whether students get promoted from third grade and graduate from high school. Both are key pieces of the accountability plan that Bush steered into law more than 20 years ago.

Simon said “nothing could be further from the truth” than suggestions the bill sought to lower standards. He said removing the third grade retention requirement would encourage teachers to focus on children’s reading needs earlier. Deleting the graduation test requirements would allow juniors and seniors to take courses other than reading remediation, he said.

“Let’s stop dancing behind the facade that (universities and employers) are looking at these 10th grade tests,” Simon said. The time has come, he argued, to “fix the system.”

These proposals have been the priority of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples. Her priority bills deal with the penalties for class size violations, teacher contracts, and when students can take the General Educational Development.

“School board members and superintendents from across the state applauded the attempt to strip away restrictions that have prevented districts from being innovative as families have been offered a growing number of education options, including charter schools and private school vouchers.

Still a wild card in the debate is the Florida House, where one committee has had preliminary conversations about deregulation but has not released any bills.”

Click here to send a quick thank you to Sen. Simon and committee members for listening to parents and advocates. Tell them you support their efforts to remove harsh penalties tied to state testing. We make it easy to advocate so use our tool to send your message with two clicks.

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A record number of test takers met none of the ACT’s benchmarks for success. This means their results in English, reading, math and science predict they are unlikely to earn Bs or Cs in entry-level college coursework.

From the New York Times, “For the 1.4 million ACT test-takers in the high school class of 2023, the average composite score on the exam was 19.5 out of 36, the lowest score since 1991, according to the nonprofit. Forty-three percent of students did not meet any of the subject-matter benchmarks, up from 36 percent in 2019.

These test takers were high school freshmen when the coronavirus pandemic interrupted their educations, sending many of them into months of online learning. The achievement declines on the ACT are broadly in line with pandemic-era trends from other national exams.”

However, it’s impossible to interpret the cause of the scores. Major changes have occurred in both college admissions and high school testing practices during that time.

Just 43 percent of college applicants submitted SAT or ACT scores last year, according to a report from Common App, down from 74 percent before the pandemic. That change has been driven by colleges embracing test-optional admissions policies, in part because of concerns that the exams are unfair to low-income students.

At the same time, ACT grew its business with state education systems, according to data from the nonprofit, meaning that, in the high school class of 2023, about 748,000 students took the test during the school day, for free, up from 590,000 students in the class of 2021.”

Regardless, the year over year declines in the test scores remain troubling. ACT CEO Janet Godwin acknowledged in a statement, “The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career.”

Schools must address the impacts of the pandemic on learning loss in a holistic way. Additionally, programs that support college and career readiness and allow for multiple pathways to a diploma must be a priority to ensure success for all students.

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Consider, for example, Los Angeles Unified, one of the nation’s largest school districts, which showed surprising gains on the recent federal tests relative to other large cities. The district was quick to credit the positive impact of their COVID-19 intervention strategies. Over the same three-year period, however, district enrollment fell nearly 10 percent. That dramatic enrollment decline, which varied by multiple student traits, confounds in an uncertain way any effort to view overall test-score changes as a reliable measure of the true changes in student learning.

Student enrollment was predicted to bounce back after pandemic restrictions and remote learning models were lifted.

Current enrollment data indicate that a broad return to public schools simply did not happen. Fall 2021 enrollment in K-12 grades actually fell nationally for a second year in a row, though by a more modest amount, roughly 130,000 students. A second year of declines in 1^st grade enrollment indicates the children who avoided public kindergarten in the pandemic’s first year did not merely skip ahead to 1st grade. Additionally, though kindergarten enrollment bounced back somewhat, it was still far below its pre-pandemic levels, indicating substantial numbers of families didn’t redshirt their children.

Locally, Florida is experiencing stagnating enrollment or slight gains this school year. From Axios,

By the numbers: Miami-Dade counted 4,765 more students this year than last year, bringing its total enrollment to nearly 325,000 in its latest count (Sept. 1).

• Broward County experienced a 2% decrease, according to a preliminary count from the first day of school in August.
• Palm Beach County enrollment saw a slight increase of about 350 students (0.2%), according to its latest calculations released Aug. 31.

From the Tampa Bay Times,

Hillsborough is seeing the result of a slow but steady shift that began more than two decades ago in Florida, fueling education policy debates ever since. Charters, which are publicly funded but privately operated, have always been controversial.

A decade ago, about 6% of public school students in the county attended charters. The number has inched up each year and is now nearly 17%, or close to 37,000 students in 58 schools. Statewide, charters make up 13% of public school enrollment. In Pinellas County schools, it’s 7% and in Pasco County it’s 9%.

If charters continue to grow at the current rate in Hillsborough, they could make up 30% or 40% of the district’s enrollment in the next decade. A change of that magnitude can’t help but affect the district’s traditional schools. It already has.

Charter proponents say their schools provide competition, pushing regular public schools to improve. But when families leave traditional public schools to attend charters, state funding goes with them. This year, that adds up to more than $300 million in funds that no longer flow to the Hillsborough school system.

Alternative choices like charters and private schools or even homeschooling may not be the sole reason for declining public school enrollment as noted by the author.

Recent federal population estimates provide more definitive evidence the enrollment declines experienced by many public schools will endure. During the pandemic, overall population growth was the lowest ever recorded in U.S. history. And the population of school-age children in the United States, those 5- to 17-years-old, actually fell by over a quarter million. This overall decline means some of the enrollment loss during the pandemic simply reflects declining birth and immigration rates rather than an active choice not to attend public schools.

Taken together, these patterns imply state and local education leaders should plan immediately for the serious challenges (and potential opportunities) enduring enrollment losses imply for their COVID recovery efforts. The financial implications of enrollment loss have already begun to pressure districts to discuss school closures as well as teacher layoffs. Adapting to this new normal in a way that preserves community engagement and limits further learning disruptions to students will compound the already difficult task of addressing the pandemic’s direct impact on student learning and engagement.

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The idea is that 3rd grade is a pivotal time for literacy instruction: After that year, reading demands across subjects get a lot bigger. Kids are expected to be able to read word problems in math, directions in science, primary sources in social studies.

Research has borne out that it’s harder for students to succeed if they’re not proficient by 3rd grade. One landmark study found that students who couldn’t read on grade level by then were four times less likely to graduate high school on time than their peers who could.

But whether requiring struggling students to repeat that 3rd grade year will lead to better results is a different and more complicated question. Research findings on the policy are mixed, and have to be weighed against the negative social and emotional consequences of holding students back a grade. Many studies show only short-term academic gains, while others demonstrate greater likelihood of adverse outcomes like bullying.

Many states require evidence-based reading instruction (“the science of reading”) and use the state tests as the measurement of those instructional practices. But- as EdWeek points out, there is not a lot of research or evidence to back up mandatory retention policies and a closer examination of these policies is warranted.

“Though we might see them together in legislation, the science of reading has a very strong evidence base, and retention policies don’t,” Allison Socol, the vice president of P-12 policy, practice, and research for The Education Trust.

“I’m very glad to see a growing conversation about making sure that all students have strong foundational skills early on, because we know how important that is,” she said. “But the research is pretty clear that, particularly for students of color and other underrepresented student groups, that retention in the long run isn’t effective—and in fact can be harmful.”

In fact, research shows retention’s academic gains have a brief time horizon and fade quickly over time. Behavior issues associated with retention may also play a harmful role.

Researchers have also found negative consequences for students who repeat an elementary grade—students who are held back are more likely to be suspended in the next few years afterward, and students who are old for their grade are more likely to be bullied or exhibit bullying behaviors. There’s an equity concern too: Black and Latino students are consistently more likely to be retained than white students.

Certain studies show that there may be benefits with retention policies but only when states required schools to develop reading support plans for the retained students and to place those students with a highly effective teacher. This begs the question- was the benefit caused by the extra year or from the individualized supports the student received?

The message resonates with Hiller Spires, a professor emerita of literacy and technology at North Carolina State’s College of Education…“If you just keep a kid back, and there are no customized supports, whatever happened that didn’t make a kid successful is going to happen again,” Spires said.

North Carolina’s new reading law, passed in 2021, requires districts to adopt more detailed intervention plans for struggling students. This, along with state-provided training for teachers and reading specialists in each district could make retention more effective, Spires said.

“I would be optimistic, but at the same time, I don’t think that retention is the answer,” she said, citing the possibility of unintended consequences like emotional difficulties and low self-esteem.

In the end, it’s hard to pull apart the factors that led to improved achievement. Take a 2019 study, where English learners in Florida saw big gains after 3rd grade retention. Those retained students received at least 90 minutes of daily, targeted reading instruction from high-performing teachers.

“The question that this study raises for me is, was it being held back, or was it the targeted reading intervention?” asked Socol of EdTrust.

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This year’s scores show declines in both reading and math at grades 4 and 8 for the majority of states in 2022, according to results released Monday. Average national reading scores in 2022 reverted back to levels last seen in the 1990s, and math scores saw the largest declines ever recorded in that subject. More from USA Today:

In 2022, average reading scores in fourth and eighth grades decreased by three points from 2019, and average math scores in fourth and eighth grades decreased by five and eight points respectively, the test results show. The test, which involved 446,700 students at 10,970 schools, across all states at the beginning of the calendar year, is scored on a scale of 0 to 500.

“Results in today’s Nation’s Report Card are appalling and unacceptable,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters. “This is a moment of truth for education.”

Many assessment experts anticipated a decline in overall scores caused by the pandemic. So while the results are not unexpected, they are still concerning. More from K12Dive :

Historically, drops have only been by a couple of points. So declines in the 8-point range, such as in math, are especially troubling, National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy Carr remarked. 

Carr said she had expected a steeper decline in math than in reading, considering parents are more comfortable teaching their children reading than math at home. 

The results tell much of the same story already shown by research and in prior tests, such as NAEP long-term trend assessments released over the summer.  “Everything is pointing in the same direction,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute. “The pandemic and the resulting disruptions to learning were really bad for student achievement.” 

Nonetheless, Carr said, there are some “reasons to be hopeful.” 

In 26 selected big city districts — which represent about 9% of the nation’s public school children and have worked to close gaps for historically marginalized students — the majority showed reading scores that were steady compared to 2019 in both grades. 

Education researchers and assessment experts have theorized the longer schools were closed, the larger the learning lags. However, Carr warned there is no such direct link in the latest NAEP results.

“We cannot find anything in this data that says that the results we are looking at can be solely primarily attributable to differences in how long students stayed in remote learning,” she said. 

While it could be a factor, she said, there are many other things that could be contributing to the declines and need to be studied more extensively. Among those factors are mental health and behavioral challenges, according to Carr. 

NAEP’s data identifies achievement gaps. For example, scores diverged in 4th grade math for Black and Hispanic students compared to White students, for female and male students, and for those eligible for free and reduced-price lunch compared to those not eligible. No race — including White students — experienced a statistically significant improvement in average scores. Some gaps narrowed while scores for Black and Hispanic students stayed steady or declined at a slower rate.

The gap widened between higher- and lower-performing students. “Now what we’re seeing is students at the bottom of the distribution dropping even faster,” Carr said. And where students at the top previously showed improvement or held steady, they are now instead dropping as well — just not as steeply as their lower-performing peers. 

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Thanks to your overwhelming advocacy, you saved Bright Futures! In addition, your emails and calls helped pass the Purple Star Campus bill, the School Safety Act, and important Early Learning legislation. These bills will provide additional protections for students and families including our youngest learners.

The 2021 Florida Legislative Session ended with the passage of the General Appropriations Act- the budget- which will go into effect July 1st. The legislature only allocated a portion of the federal stimulus funds intended for schools.

We must continue to advocate for students, educators and public schools on issues like COVID relief spending, vouchers, and teacher evaluations.

To learn more about the budget and other issues you care about, read the update below and visit the Advocacy Dashboard to take action for children and Florida’s public schools. The following are specific issue updates and ways you can advocate:

Show Teachers Your Appreciation

An emergency order issued by the governor waived many of the harmful impacts from state testing. However, the order did not go far enough to protect educators who have gone above and beyond for children. Unreliable student test results may still be included in their performance evaluations. Tell the governor and lawmakers educators deserve protection, too. 

Governor Signs Voucher Bill

The governor signed a bill that drastically expands voucher programs. These programs drain millions of dollars from public schools, colleges and universities every year by paying for children to attend unregulated, privately owned schools with no accountability or oversight. Tell the governor to support Florida’s students by investing in public schools.

You did it! Bright Futures bill dies

Because of your emails, calls and tweets, a bill to change Bright Futures as we know it avoided passage by the House. This bill eliminated Bright Futures and Benaquisto Scholarship funding guarantees to divert funds to other items like the expensive voucher bill (see above). The $600 book stipend was striped from this year’s budget but it could be funded in future years. Thank you for your advocacy!!

Tell the Governor to Release the Funds

The state budget was passed in the last days of the legislative session. Lawmakers used federal stimulus relief to create a $101.5 billion balanced budget and allocated only a portion of the federal, COVID relief money. An initial outlay of money was distributed yesterday to districts but billions of stimulus dollars intended for schools have yet to be released. Tell the Governor to release the funds for students today. 

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Districts must submit their reopening plans to the Florida Department of Education by July 31st via a template that will be provided on July 9th. The draft of the template requires districts to sign off on a series of assurances including pledging to open schools five days per week beginning in August and providing “robust progress monitoring” to ensure students are not falling behind.

Screenshot of the FDOE draft template for district reopening plans taken 7-7-20

Numerous questions were submitted via the webinar. FDOE staff responded to questions surrounding plans for the 2021 Florida Standards Assessment. A question was posed, “Are you going to seek a federal waiver for FSA testing for 2020-2021?” Unequivocally, they replied, “No we are not.”  They stated they want to understand the impact of the learning loss as a result of school closures using the test data.

Staff repeatedly mentioned that if districts have no changes to business as usual, they do not have to submit a plan. However, they encouraged districts to consider the “health and safety” of students and the community when making such a decision.

There will be another webinar once the template is released. FDOE staff will assist districts with completing the form in order to submit it by the deadline of July 31st. Stay tuned…we will keep you updated.

Click here to send an email to Governor DeSantis. Tell him your thoughts on annual testing during a pandemic and on the safe reopening of Florida’s schools.

Make sure you are registered to vote at your current address and have requested a vote by mail ballot.

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