Published: August 19, 2006 | By Dan Gelber | Washington Post Response

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried to impart some of the education lessons learned in their states in their Aug. 13 op-ed column, "How to Help Our Students." As a Florida legislator and parent of children attending the state's public schools, I feel obligated to warn the public that no one should follow Florida's example.

According to federal statistics, while Bush's self-labeled "A+ plan" has been in place, Florida's high school graduation rate is dead last in the nation for the second consecutive year. When confronted with this devastating statistic, rather than try to figure out why our kids aren't graduating, Jeb Bush's administration called for an overhaul of the way high school graduation rates are calculated.

In the column Bush called for rewarding and retaining teachers, despite the fact that Florida's teachers are paid more than $6,000 below the national average. Asked about this statistic, the administration called for an overhaul of the way teacher salaries are calculated nationwide.

Bush also called for revising the federal No Child Left Behind Act to focus on more than just promoting "proficiency." Bush is well-informed about this problem. His grading system has made mere competence the sole goal and organizing principle of Florida's public schools. For the past seven years, school grades were premised almost entirely on whether schools moved students to minimal competence in primarily two subjects. Administrators and teachers became totally obsessed with devoting resources to get students to pass, and only pass, those few subjects tested. Other core subjects are ignored. Enrichment and advanced programs are becoming scarcer.

How many parents have the singular goal of sending their children to school to pass just two subjects? Most want a school where children can reach their fullest potential, where mediocrity is not the ceiling but the floor.

Florida, and other states, could craft accountability systems that measure more of the things that matter. Don't grade the schools on just two subjects but on lots of them, including civics, literature, advanced math and social studies. Evaluate high schools on how well they graduate their students and place them into colleges. Is an elementary school able to provide physical education, music and art? How do students perform on national exams? If these factors were the ingredients of a school's grade, administrators and teachers would be rewarded, and not penalized, for paying attention to them. Unfortunately, these recommendations have been rejected by the governor and the Legislature in Florida.

Of course, if you graded on all these factors the shortcomings of public schools would become obvious. So, rather than demand that underfunded schools perform in all the ways that matter, our state has basically shot the arrow into a wall and drawn a bull's-eye around it. Other states could do well by avoiding Florida's example.

-The writer, a Democrat representing Miami Beach, is the incoming minority leader of the Florida House of Representatives