I just read (in Reason) that about half of Florida students are participating in some kind of school choice program. So I thought: Wow, things must be looking up in Florida, right? Academic achievement must be soaring because of all that freebie market competition.
I thought I’d go check out the NAEP site. For those of you who don’t know, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the longitudinal test created by the education establishment to let us know how they’re doing at the job of educating kids.
(So far, what it’s told us is that since 1970, we’ve more than tripled spending — adjusted for inflation — while seeing no measurable increases in student achievement. That’s how they’re doing.)
It turns out that in Florida, the situation after school choice is pretty much the same as the situation before school choice: less than half of students are proficient in math and reading. (The actual percentage has been virtually unchanged for the last 15 years.)
The thing is, this is exactly what we should have expected to see in Florida. And it’s what we should expect to see in New Hampshire, as we start pouring money into Education Freedom Accounts.
So 15 years from now, when EFAs are being funded at $20,000 per student, and we still have fewer than half our kids reaching proficiency in reading and math, no one should be surprised.
