Payson Roundup

1. Expand parental options through robust school choice programs

Parental choice creates a decentralized, bottom-up system of accountability of schools to parents that’s vital for reform.

2. Grade all schools A, B, C, D or F according academic performance and make students receiving two F grades in any four-year period eligible for a school voucher.

Arizona fails to rally community support for school improvement by using vague descriptors such as “Performing” to describe school performance.

3. Curtail social promotion for students not reading in the third-grade.

Students scoring at the lowest level on the reading portion of the state exam should be required to repeat the third-grade with extra reading interventions.

4. Provide alternative teacher certification. Fifty percent of new Florida teachers come through alternative routes — largely mid-career professionals that test their way into the teaching profession.

5. Reform reading instruction emphasizing phonics-mandatory teacher retraining for grades K-3.

6. Provide a financial incentive for schools and teachers to get students to pass AP exams.

The number of Florida Hispanic and African American students passing AP exams has more than tripled since 1998 and the number of Hispanics passing AP exams in Florida is eight times greater than in Arizona.

Source: Goldwater Institute