Opinion: Randomly writing A+ checks

Teachers and students at Palm River Elementary School in Tampa should indeed take a bow for their improved scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but don't mistake Gov. Jeb Bush's ceremonious check presentation there on Wednesday for a cohesive education policy.

"When you work hard and your teachers do all the right things, your teachers and principal get to decide how to spend some extra money," Bush told cheering students in the school's cafeteria. But the $57,406 bonus he gave Palm River, and the $76-million he is handing out to 842 schools across Florida, don't correlate quite so neatly to learning gains in the way the governor suggests.

The A+ Education Plan, now into its third year, was supposed to reward and punish schools based on whether their teachers were doing a good job. Instead, it generally assesses schools based on whether their students were smart to begin with, not whether they were taught well. That's because the grading system judges the performance of teachers in each of Florida's 2,450 public schools mostly by the results of one standardized test, and it's not clear whether the use of annual testing information, scheduled for next year, will make much difference.

Though the governor is careful in his public relations efforts to draw attention to schools such as Palm River, where students with economic disadvantages made commendable gains in math and reading, the larger truth about his $76-million bonus plan is that much of the state's money goes to schools where, comparatively speaking, it is least needed. The bulk of the money still goes to prosperous schools with advantaged students.

Take the $147,136 bonus to Stanton College Prep in Duval, an accelerated academic choice school that selects its students (fewer than 4 percent on free and reduced lunch) based largely on their ability to score well on tests. Or the $127,935 bonus to Suncoast High in Palm Beach County, a choice and International Baccalaureate school that also selects all its students based on their academic abilities. Or the $150,226 to Pine View School for the Gifted in Sarasota County, a school that accepts only students, in grades 2-12, who have already demonstrated superior intelligence. Did these schools do well because of incentives or admission policies?

Until the governor can admit that his A+ grading system is seriously flawed, he will go on handing out bonus checks -- and school vouchers, for that matter -- in a strangely random and mostly political way. If he weren't so sold on his business model for education, he might find that, even without the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, many teachers "do all the right things." They just wish their governor would, too.

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