Don’t Implement Reforms Based on a Struggling Model

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

• Education policy changes designed to improve early childhood literacybshould be modeled after policies employed in states that perform best on early childhood literacy outcomes rather than on Florida’s failing reform efforts.
• Retaining students solely on the basis of one standardized test score increases the dropout rate and does not improve early childhood literacy.
• The proposed school grading system would unfairly label schools as failing on the basis of standardized test scores without providing the requisite support for these schools to improve.