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For a better Florida
The politics of pre-K
What will Toni Jennings' prekindergarten plan look like when lawmakers get done with it?
By JON EAST, Times Staff Writer
Published February 29, 2004
Amid the financial strain gripping public schools and universities, Florida is getting ready to embark on a new endeavor. In fall 2005, it will offer schooling for all 4-year-olds, and the question facing lawmakers designing the plan this year is one that has become emblematic in public education: Do we want the deluxe or economy model?
Not surprisingly, some lawmakers are saying cheap will do.
Ask Bev Kilmer, chairwoman of the House Education K-20 Committee, why she would shorten the prekindergarten school day from six to four hours, and she says, "It is not the state's responsibility to provide day care." Ask whether she thinks these schools should employ the highest quality teachers, and she throws up her hands: "It's going to be hard to find people with bachelor's degrees who want to spend four hours a day with 4-year-olds."
The debate over prekindergarten plays out against the backdrop of an education system that has been starved for money in recent years. Although Gov. Jeb Bush is proposing a 2004-05 budget that would increase overall education spending by 7.1 percent, much of that money simply restores some of the losses in the past three years.
Community colleges, which had to turn away 35,000 students in the fall, would get $104.5-million more. Universities, which have been forced to accept 22,000 new students with no additional state money, would get $144-million. The increase Bush proposes for K-12, once the costs of new students and constitutionally mandated class size reductions are factored in, amounts to 2.2 percent per student.
"What's important for us is to not lose more ground or get a tuition increase that merely offsets a loss in general revenue," says David Colburn, provost of the University of Florida. "Our student leaders say to us, "Our tuition has increased, but what do you have to show for it?' The answer, in the last three years, is not much."
In an election year, lawmakers don't want to appear indifferent to the financial needs of public education, and they are lauding the governor's budget plan as a good starting point. But the problem is, the governor builds his spending plan on $1.6-billion in one-time money, including $738-million to be taken from trust funds that were created and pledged for other purposes. And the following budget year, the state also will begin universal prekindergarten, which could cost anywhere between $300-million and $600-million a year.
That prekindergarten program, which is mandated under a constitutional amendment that Bush supported and voters approved in 2002, is aimed at giving young children a head start on school. Prekindergarten will be voluntary, but education officials estimate that roughly 70 percent, or 151,000, of the state's 4-year-olds will attend the first year.
To get ready for these children, the state first has to put together a prekindergarten framework. That task has been led by Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings, who as a Senate president helped write the current law on school readiness programs. Jennings has produced remarkably broad support for the initiative. In a political sense, her most amazing feat might be that she is aiming to put most of this new venture in the hands of private schools yet has avoided the histrionics that usually attend the voucher debate.
Clearly, part of the reason that public school educators are not fighting for a bigger share of the prekindergarten program is that they won't be paid enough to make ends meet. The state already has been cutting back reimbursements for preschools for poor children, causing 20 school districts to drop out. For the universal prekindergarten plan, the reimbursements might be cut back even more. Jennings' task force is projecting the state will spend $3,200 for each student, which is less than most districts now receive and won't come close to covering the cost of additional public school construction and certified teachers' salaries.
"You may see some of the smaller districts that are interested in providing pre-K," says Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, "but most of the urban districts just don't have the space or the money for it."
The other reason preschool privatization has drawn less ire from public educators is the manner in which Jennings devised her plan. She began with a task force that included public teachers, private educators and proponents of the amendment, who worked carefully through research and established common goals for quality. As such, the standards she proposes for prekindergarten stand in sharp contrast to the lack of those for voucher schools in K-12.
This session, in fact, lawmakers will be dealing with two voucher programs, McKay Scholarships for disabled students and Corporate Tax Scholarships for poor families, that were created so casually and administered so recklessly that they have become the subject of multiple administrative and criminal investigations. Senate Education Committee Chairman Lee Constantine is writing a bill to implement some minimum financial protections to ensure schools don't pocket money for students who don't exist and testing standards to ensure students are learning. The Florida Catholic Conference, whose private schools teach a large portion of voucher students, would go even further, requiring full standardized testing and school accreditation. Yet these accountability efforts already are encountering resistance in the House, where Speaker Johnnie Byrd has said voucher students' parents are "the best accountability system that God ever invented."
Compare that approach with the one Jennings seeks for 4-year-olds. Under the prekindergarten initiative, the state would establish standards for teacher qualifications, class size, number of instructional hours, student testing and school accreditation. Not one of those is currently in law for the McKay or Corporate Tax scholarships.
In prekindergarten, Jennings and her task force determined that there should be no more than 10 children per instructor and that the quality of the teacher is the most critical component. But they also had to deal with the reality that the state faces a shortage of qualified teachers, which makes recruitment difficult. So the plan is to require, in the first year, that each prekindergarten teacher be certified as a "child development associate," which is currently required for basic day care. Within eight years, each teacher would be required to possess a bachelor's degree.
"We have to be realistic about the capacity as we start," says Jennings. "Yet we are saying we recognize that the real achievement of the child has everything to do with the educational ability of the teacher. All the research shows that."
Better qualified teachers also cost more, which is not lost on lawmakers. This is where the legislative dumbing-down of prekindergarten might begin.
Two easy ways to cut costs are to shorten school days and hire less qualified teachers. Some early drafts of prekindergarten legislation do both: 1) The school day would be reduced from six to four hours, requiring parents to pay for before- and after-school care (though poor families may apply for federal money); and 2) Teachers would be required to meet only the child development associate standard, not the higher standard for college degrees, and Kilmer says she sees no reason to ever require degrees.
What is revealing about such low ambitions is that the prekindergarten plan enjoyed broad political support when it was presented to voters. The amendment, engineered by Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, was endorsed by the governor, Education Commissioner Jim Horne and most legislative leaders.
At the time, Horne said, "The research on the positive effects of prekindergarten education is among the strongest in education," and, "This investment should save the state millions of dollars that otherwise would go to remedial education, the criminal justice system and social services."
Horne's remarks were accompanied by education agency projections that pegged the cost of prekindergarten at $4,282 per student. That number was derived by adding inflationary costs to the reimbursement for readiness programs at the time, which had few of the educational standards the Legislature is being asked to adopt. As the bills come due, though, the dollars are disappearing. Already, $4,282 has become $3,200 or less, and the bidding seems to be going lower, not higher.
Florida, which ranks 49th in per capita education spending, is looking for the economy model again. At a time when elementary schools are dropping social studies curricula and universities are holding classes in movie theaters, Florida is heading down a familiar path with prekindergarten. Despite its good intentions to provide real educational opportunity for young children, it is preparing to treat 4-year-olds just like the rest.
[Last modified February 29, 2004, 01:15:11]
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