Florida's progressive education reform a model for the nation – and Obama

The empty bookshelves piled up in the walkways of Nap Ford community school are a reminder of what a high-stakes business education in Florida has become; the surplus furniture is all that remains of a nearby school that closed this summer after being graded an "F" two years in a row.

Jennifer Porter-Smith, principal of Nap Ford, needs little reminder. Her own school was downgraded to an F two years ago.

"It was devastating," she recalled. "We pulled the team together and said the state is basically saying we are failing children – what are we going to do about it?"

For over a decade now, schools in Florida have been graded from A to F based on the performance and progress of their pupils in reading, writing, maths and science tests. A-grade or improving schools are rewarded with extra money, while schools receiving the lowest grade twice in a row face closure.

It is a part of a package of reforms introduced under former governor Jeb Bush, which have become a model for other states and has been echoed in Barack Obama's education policy.

The downgrading had a galvanising effect on Porter-Smith's school.

"We became very strategic and very focussed," she said. "How do we equate what is happening in the classroom with student performance?

"We could have beautiful lesson plans, but are students understanding what is going on?"

Within a year, the school's grade had gone from an F to an A. The school's staff worked equally hard both years, the principal says, but focused more on preparation for testing in the year they were awarded the top grade.

Since leaving office, Bush has become an advocate for education reform; setting up a non-proft foundation and touring the country to advise Republican politicians.

In his speech to the Republican convention, the former governor emphasised the progress made by black and Hispanic children in Florida, who are now more likely to graduate from high school than their counterparts in other states.

The racial dimension of education reform is significant; its proponents often call it the "civil rights issue of our generation". The appeal to conservative politicians who need minority voters is obvious.

As well as grading schools, the Bush measures included requiring third graders to pass reading tests before they could move up to fourth grade, creating a merit pay system for teachers, and extending parental choice by encouraging the creation of independently run charter schools.

At school level, the impact of the reforms has inevitably been messy. A school's grading has become crucial. Nap Ford is a small primary school – teaching from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade – in a tough urban setting where 98% of pupils are on free or reduced lunches, an indicator of poverty.

"Because we're such a small school, one child can be five or six percentage points," Porter-Smith said. There are 153 children in the school, but only the upper two grades take the tests.

There is a high rate of teacher turnover. In one class a new teacher left after a single day. That particular class had six teachers in three months.

The principal said: "A lot of the urban community are disproportionately taught by new teachers, who are going to have a challenge managing the classroom. Children get multiple years of that."

Being downgraded prompted the school to question what it was doing. But it also made life harder as philanthropic funding dried up.

The principal said: "When you have a year where a school gets an F, fundraising becomes harder, everybody wants to back someone who's doing well."

That in turn made it impossible to pay for a longer school day, which was one of the measures the school had introduced to support its pupils.

A study which looked at the impact of Florida's school grading found that it had a detrimental effect on teacher turnover. The research by economists Li Feng, David Figlio and Tim Sass said that: "Schools that were 'shocked' downwards – and thus faced the most pressure to improve – lost more and higher quality teachers."

The Florida model is now being imitated by states across the country, inspiring new legislation in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Indiana.

Obama has praised Bush as a "champion of education reform", and the changes in Florida are mirrored in many elements of the president's signature education initiative Race to the Top.

The Obama initiative is a competition for federal funds, awarded to states that embrace changes including charter schools and performance pay for teachers.

The reforms in Florida have put greater pressure on the school system in two ways; by increasing accountability for schools and teachers, and by giving parents more options than just their local public school.

The state has a tax credit scheme that encourages companies to sponsor scholarships at private schools for families of modest means. It has also backed the creation of charter schools. There are now over 500 charters in the state, educating nearly 180,000 students in the last school year.

The management of charters can be contracted out, allowing private education firms to make profits from running schools. One such firm, Academica, runs nearly 100 schools in the state.

Michael Kooi, director of school choice for Florida, suggests that charters have made a difference by spurring change in the public system.

"Before [charter schools] they had a captive audience and now there's competition, let's face it," Kooi said.

"In order to keep kids they've improved for one thing but also provided more options to kids as well.

"That might [mean] just taking more of a math focus at high school, or maybe that you take fine arts classes."

During the election campaign, Obama has downplayed school choice in favour of speaking about investment in education.

Jeb Bush, by contrast, used his convention speech to compare choosing between schools with the freedom to shop around for flavored milk in a supermarket. "They even make milk for people who cannot drink milk," he said. "Shouldn't parents have that kind of choice in schools that best meets the needs of their students?"

The gap between the two parties is narrower than it seems here. In the past, Obama's administration has lauded charter schools as "laboratories of innovation".

The confrontation in Chicago has emphasised the consensus between the parties on charters. Though never officially a part of the dispute between Rahm Emanuel and the teachers' union, the mayor is pushing to expand the number of charters in the city.

Common to both parties is an anxiety that the US is being outpaced by Asia while politicians and teachers dispute the details of change. Bush noted that China and India are producing "eight times more engineering students each year" than the US.

Obama, more emolliently as far as his public sector supporters are concerned, declared: "I don't believe that firing teachers … will grow the economy or help us compete with the scientists and engineers coming out of Asia."

Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education Association, a teachers' union, said the state's school system has been a Petri dish for reform.

"Since Jeb Bush was elected governor we've been a laboratory for all kinds of corporate influence on public schools, without any input from teachers or credible education researchers," Pudlow said.

Further change lies ahead. Last year, the current governor of Florida, Rick Scott, brought in new legislation which will overhaul the way teachers are paid. The Student Success Act means at least half of a classroom teacher's evaluation will be based on students' gains in standardised tests. Pay rises will be based on these evaluations, replacing a system in which teachers' evaluation is based entirely on a principal's assessment. But the statewide tests only cover reading, writing, maths and science, meaning that some teachers' evaluation will be based on subjects they have not taught.

Pudlow said: "Let's say you're a history teacher, there's no [standardised test] for history, but the law says you have to be evaluated on testing. If you're a history teacher you have to be evaluated by standardised tests given in subjects you don't teach."

Even if school districts can evolve new tests to cover these subjects, the union argues that it will be difficult to measure teacher performance in areas such as physical education and music.

At the heart of the argument over merit pay is a clash between the natural desire of governments to gather data and map performance, and the view of many teachers that school is a broad experience that resists being captured in test results.

Nancy Hunter, who teaches at a high school in Leesburg, Florida, says that her subject is essentially unquantifiable. She teaches "Freshman Foundations" – a class in life skills that teaches children how to be "good citizens", Hunter said.

"I'm going to be evaluated on tests they're taking one day in the year and they may be kids I've never set eyes on.

"It's flawed in taking one day of one test rather than what I do day in and day out."

Whoever wins the presidential election, the outcome is likely to disappoint teachers like Hunter. The mood in the US has shifted away from a belief in trusting professionals to one that emphasises scrutiny of schools through testing and parental choice. There will be more schools that fail to make the grade and end up as a pile of furniture in a corridor.