Bush's Liberty City Charter School scores a D

A spokesman for the governor, who is no longer directly connected to the school, says the grade isn't unexpected.

By JO BECKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 26, 1999

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush got a firsthand look at how difficult it can be to meet the tough new standards the state has set for public schools.

A Miami charter school Bush co-founded three years ago received a D on the state's controversial new A through F grading system.

The Liberty City Charter School graded low because it did not

Bush backers come from many camps

meet the minimum requirements on the state's reading and writing tests. Its students scored a 24 on the state's FCAT comprehensive reading test and 45 on the Florida Writes test. By contrast, the state average for schools was 70 for the reading test and 73 for the writing test.

Overall, 78 Florida schools received F grades and 600 got D's in the statewide accountability report that was released on Thursday. The giant report card -- which goes hand in hand with Bush's effort to reform schools -- has angered teachers, but forced everyone to take a look at how Florida's schools are doing.

Bush's spokesman Cory Tilley called the Liberty City school's grade "a bump in the road" and said that overall, the governor was pleased with the school's performance.

"When people are trying to serve low-income students that historically don't perform as well academically, obviously when the school first starts their grades may not be at the top," Tilley said. "But it's important, so people shouldn't worry about the stigma of a grade -- just work to improve it."

The school's principal, Katrina Wilson-Davis, isn't making any excuses about the D grade. Wilson-Davis said that while the she is a "little taken aback by the new grading system," she believes in it.

"I feel this way -- and it's hard for me to say this -- but if we don't educate our children, I don't care who started this school, we have to ask ourselves: "Should we remain open?' " she said Friday. "If we're given a fair chance and the resources and a little time and we don't cut it and we have to be closed down, so be it."

Liberty City Charter School serves 181 students from one of Miami's most economically disadvantaged areas.

Bush set up the school in the 1990s, after losing his first bid for the governorship, and resigned from the board when he was elected last November. He remains a vocal supporter of charter schools, which have more freedom to operate because they have been freed from many of the rules and laws that govern traditional public schools.

Bush has vowed to transform Florida's public schools with the new grading system by using it to launch the nation's most far reaching voucher system. Students at schools that receive F's for two out of four years will be eligible for public funds that can be used for tuition at private schools or another public school within their district.

But critics of Bush's voucher plan say that Liberty City Charter School's experience ought to show the governor that more school choice and less government interference is not necessarily the answer to the public education system's woes.

"It's very ironic that in this world, where everyone is more closely scrutinized and we're all struggling to meet higher standards, that this school that was set up as a model of how it should be done is a failure," said David Clark, spokesman for the FTP-NEA, the state's largest teachers union and a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week challenging Bush's voucher plan. "It's only evidence of what we've said all along -- educating children is a difficult thing to do."

In fact, state statistics show that Liberty City Charter School did worse than most of the traditional public elementary schools that its students would have otherwise attended.

In order to receive a failing grade, the school would have also had to fail to meet minimum requirements on the state's math test. That would have been impossible because the school only serves kindergarteners through fourth-graders, and the math test is given in the fifth grade.

The school's supporters point to a number of factors they say contributed to this year's low scores. Mark Wallace, a member of the school's board of directors, said the school grew, adding at least 50 new students that "didn't have the benefit of a Liberty City Charter School education." Unlike traditional public schools, Wallace said, Liberty City included the scores of its special needs students in its average.

Last year, the school was lauded for its performance on other standard tests, showing a marked improvement over its first year in operation. And this week, knowing the school's D grade, the Miami Dade School Board renewed its contract with Liberty City Charter School.

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