A new analysis reveals the county, once considered an education leader, may have lost its direction.
Published November 28, 2004
Each spring, Pinellas public schools graduate some of the top scholars in Florida, sending them off to prestigious universities and to the promise of prosperous lives. Pinellas leads all urban counties in Florida in the percentage of students who head to college and the SAT scores they receive in the process.
But, as Times writers Thomas Tobin and Donna Winchester reported in a revealing survey of Pinellas education gauges, that laudable record has masked a more disturbing one. Throughout Pinellas schools, as measured by the FCAT, large numbers of students are failing to measure up.
Of Florida's seven most populous counties, Pinellas rates last in the percentage of black students whose reading and math scores place them at or above grade level, last in the performance of Hispanic students, last in the performance of white students, next to last in the gap between white and black students, second from last in the performance of poor students. Last year, Pinellas was the only of the seven districts to post no gains in the percentage of students passing the reading and math tests.
Says Jan Rouse, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction: "I think we've rested on our laurels a bit."
There is danger in reading too much into the results from one standardized test and even greater danger in reading too much into state-issued school grades or federal-issued failure standards. But the raw test scores in math and reading do tell a worrisome story. They suggest Pinellas is letting down far too many of its schoolchildren and that a county that in the 1980s was deemed an education leader has lost some of its vision, if not its direction.
Ask teachers. Morale is so low they at first rejected their contract earlier this year. They complain of unproductive interference and constant changes in the classroom - what they call the "flavor of the month" - and not just from the overbearing reform laws passed in the state Legislature and U.S. Congress.
Ask administrators. Their own satisfaction with public education dropped from 70 percent in 1998 to 56 percent in 2001.
Ask parents. The rate of private-school enrollment in Pinellas is twice that of comparable districts nationally.
The historic push for improvements such as full-day kindergarten, enhanced curriculum magnets and International Baccalaureate programs has given way, in part, to distractions outside the classroom. Rouse says she thinks the district's preoccupation with its new choice student assignment plan has diverted attention from classroom achievement, and she may well have a point. But the decisionmaking process that led to choice may itself be emblematic of the problem.
The choice plan flowed from a decision by the School Board, in 1998, to try to end its long-running federal desegregation court order. The board members at the time said they were tired of the extent to which cross-county busing was draining money and focus from the classroom. Yet the plan the board later approved as the substitute for court-ordered busing brings longer bus rides, more bus routes, more bus riders, at least $6-million more in annual busing costs and more interference with the classroom. High school students now start classes at 7:05 a.m., thanks in part to a district that put the needs of a transportation system ahead of the needs of students.
Pinellas' new superintendent, Clayton Wilcox, has shown a refreshing willingness to challenge the status quo. He might begin with an administrative culture that has tended to demonize its occasional public critics. It is a culture that has penalized principals who dare to take risks, that too frequently inserts its attorney into the middle of education decisions, a culture in which obedience to rule and procedure is more important than the goals those rules are designed to advance.
Linda Lerner, the School Board's longest-serving member, told Tobin and Winchester the test scores were a "wake-up call." The fact that it took a newspaper to ring the morning alarm is itself indicative of the problem.
