Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

As a product of a public school myself and a teacher at the college level since 1993, I believe that supporting our schools is one of my highest responsibilities as an elected official. Since I was elected in the fall of 2000, I have visited our public schools over 400 times and have worked hard to understand the concerns of our teachers, students and parents.

Here in the state of Florida, we are doing our best to give the necessary resources to teachers and principals at the local level, as opposed to administrators in Tallahassee, let alone Washington. Since I began my tenure in the Legislature, Brevard County schools have seen a major increase in funding. From the 2001-02 school year to the 2008-09 school year, the district's operating budget grew from $5,681 per student to $7,563 per student. Currently, a class of 20 students receives $151,260 in classroom funds.

Our state has seen steady and constant improvement by students everywhere. I applaud the hard work of our teachers, students and our parents. In Brevard County, students are graduating at a rate of 93% and performing better than ever when compared with their peers around the state and nation. Florida students now rank in the top 10 in performance and lead the nation in overall improvement.

Education is the foundation of opportunity, and as a teacher I am pleased to see the continued, full implementation of Florida's A+ Plan. It is a program that rewards success, promotes accountability, and creates opportunities for parents who lack the financial resources to take control of their kids' education. This has proven to be the best way to shake up the education monopoly and to introduce competition (whether through private, charter, or home schooling), incentives, and consequences into a once failing system. The only way to improve education is to have the energy, determination, and belief to take on a status quo that has too often allowed social promotion, protected ineffective teachers, and given administrators precedence over parents.

The initiative which perhaps best illustrates our state's increasing emphasis on incentives and competition to spur student achievement is the School Recognition Program. Under the School Recognition Program, any public school that earns an "A" grade or improves by one letter grade from the previous year is eligible to receive a special financial award independent of the funds regularly appropriated to that school.

I have had the honor personally to present hundreds of checks to schools in my district. I can attest from firsthand experience the pride which students and faculty alike feel in their accomplishments, the value which students learn to attach to hard work, and the motivation which this recognition affords them to continue to excel.

I support the Corporate Tax Credit (CTC) Scholarship Program, which provides tax incentives to corporations to fund privately administered scholarships for students from low-income families who seek to attend private or out-of-district public schools. It permits poor students whose parents cannot otherwise afford a private school education a way to escape underachieving schools. Last year, 17,000 poor children received privately funded scholarships of $3,500 each. Not only has the CTC program has saved taxpayers $140 million in three years, funding for public education increased over those same years by $2.1 billion.

Despite the excellent progress we have made under the leadership of Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, more work remains to be done. As a state we must always continue to improve our educational system. We must implement strategies to reduce the administrative burdens on school districts and school district personnel, especially teachers. We must do more to ensure that Florida is able to attract and retain teachers who are qualified and quickly dismiss those who are not. We must adopt some form of teacher testing and peer review to verify the skill and competence of those to whom the education of our children is entrusted. If we continue to work together to improve our education system, we can make sure that our students have the skills they need to find success in an increasingly competitive economy.

Source