Among other problems, the proposal that lawmakers will be asked to adopt this week calls for shorter-than-acceptable days and larger-than-acceptable classes.
Published December 12, 2004
In vetoing the Legislature's uninspired prekindergarten plan last spring, Gov. Jeb Bush said lawmakers had ignored the constitutional amendment that voters approved two years ago. "The amendment specifically demands "high quality,' " he wrote, "because research tells us that only a high quality learning opportunity leads to improved educational outcomes for children."
Why, then, is the governor so eager just five months later to embrace a plan that is virtually indistinguishable from the one he vetoed?
The pre-K plan that lawmakers will be asked to adopt as they gather in Tallahassee this week is still only three hours a day, still allows the classes to be taught in the beginning by child-care workers instead of requiring teachers with degrees, still accepts unreasonably large classes for 4-year-olds, still relies primarily on religious schools at a time when courts are questioning the constitutionality, and still generally snubs public schools. The plan also doesn't put the Department of Education fully in charge, a deficiency Bush previously deemed his "foremost" concern. More telling, it aims to get the job done for roughly $2,000 per student - a little more than half of the amount Georgia spends and less than half of what Florida voters were told it would cost.
This is the prekindergarten that has been scripted by Senate President Tom Lee and House Speaker Allan Bense, the one that is intended to make quick work of the special session. In announcing the agreement, they barely allowed for the possibility that lawmakers might have thoughts of their own (Bense said he would "look forward to hearing from the members"). Caught in a cross-fire of criticism from early learning advocates, they simply clung to the fiction that a three-hour day-care program is "high quality." Sen. Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey, who helped broker the deal, went so far as to suggest that "you don't measure the success of a pre-K program by the number of hours." Really? The amount of time spent in class with a teacher is irrelevant to learning?
The fate of 4-year-olds now rests with 160 lawmakers, each of whom has to answer to the same voters who have insisted that the state quit cheating schoolchildren. The amount of daily instructional time for students in K-12 is already among the shortest in the United States, and only one other state spends less per capita on education. In recent years, voters have mandated smaller classrooms even when told that the cost would be extraordinary and have imposed local taxes on themselves to improve their schools.
The question for lawmakers is one of representation. A higher quality program with longer days, smaller classes and college-educated teachers has been urged by education leaders, children's advocates, the business-backed Florida TaxWatch and the task force led by Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings. The models for such a program already exist in such places as Georgia and Oklahoma. The research overwhelmingly supports such standards. And voters backed a prekindergarten program with a price tag of $4,320 per child. So the question is this: What constituency would lawmakers be serving by being cheap with 4-year-olds? Who is demanding a third-rate prekindergarten?
Bush, in his last term as governor, may have signed off on mediocrity. But lawmakers will have to explain their votes back home. They will have to answer to parents who may find that prekindergarten is little more than short-term babysitting. They will have to explain why the state was willing to settle for less, and they will fool no one with the sophistry that this is a first step. This is a statement of priorities, and the plan on the table treats 4-year-olds as though they are an unwanted burden.
