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Voters and political leaders had high hopes for Florida's pre-K program. Now legislators call the standards for implementation unrealistic.
Education research makes a powerful point about young children: The earlier they begin to learn, the better chance they have in life. That was the driving force behind a 2002 constitutional amendment to require prekindergarten classes in Florida and the reason a task force led by Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings concluded that those classes must be small and led by qualified teachers.
As Jennings puts it: "I don't know how you reach a high-quality program if you don't have standards."
The state Legislature, curiously, is headed in a different direction. It has the job this year of designing a pre-K system of education, getting ready for a program that will welcome children in the fall of 2005. So far, though, lawmakers are treating 4-year-olds like unwanted stepchildren.
"We have a pre-K program that is in significant peril," says David Lawrence, a retired newspaper publisher who helped lead the campaign. "The amendment says very clearly that this is to be high quality. . . . This isn't babysitting. It's not child care and day care. It's supposed to make a difference in school readiness."
Jennings and Lawrence and the experts who were assigned by Gov. Jeb Bush to study prekindergarten established five basic rules of operation: 1) Every pre-K teacher must be certified and, by 2013, possess a college degree; 2) The classrooms should not have more than 20 children and not more than 10 for each teaching adult; 3) The school day should be six hours, just like kindergarten; 4) Schools that offer pre-K must be accredited by the second year; 5) The system should be administered by the Department of Education.
To date, none of those standards, not one, exists in bills that are being kicked around in the Legislature.
"I view what came out of the task force as the ideal, perfect scenario," says Rep. Ralph Arza, R-Hialeah, a cosponsor of the House bill. "There are many factors that will ultimately determine the reality of universal pre-K implementation. The biggest reality is the cost of implementing an unrealistic plan."
Get that? Teaching 4-year-olds in small classrooms with sufficiently trained adults is "unrealistic." Arza's goal, and apparently that of House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, is simply to be cheap. Forget standards. Forget quality. Hand out small vouchers to day care centers and hope for the best.
This is a revealing moment. Prekindergarten was almost universally blessed by political leaders when voters were asked to endorse it. Bush, legislative leaders and Education Commissioner Jim Horne praised it. Horne said at the time that "this investment should save the state millions of dollars that otherwise would go to remedial education, the criminal justice system and social services."
So now the rhetoric meets up with reality. Lawmakers are listening to some day care center operators who want no part of state oversight. One of them recently compared DOE to "Hitler." So the Legislature seems content to fashion a program that will aim for the lowest common denominator. A telling indicator is that many lawmakers say they don't even want pre-K to be associated with DOE, that it should be overseen by the Agency for Workforce Innovation. The House bill offers a reimbursement rate, $2,500 per child, that is barely half the amount the state told voters would be necessary and would virtually exclude public schools from participating.
Jennings has her own response for the second-rate approach: "You get what you pay for. If all we're concerned about is money, we might as well open up a large auditorium and let the children come in."
Florida has a sad legacy of getting what it pays for, on overcrowded and crumbling highways, with social services too overwhelmed to protect abused children, in community colleges that are forced to turn away students because classes are full. But the pre-K initiative was to be about something different. It was to be about planning ahead, about investing in children so they get the right start in their lives. It was to be about providing hope.
In the Capitol, lawmakers apparently have little interest in such aspirations. They would rather tell 4-year-olds to fend for themselves.