Florida! Or Floriduh, depending upon your opinion of its educational practices that, like the Dark Arts of the Harry Potter series, are “… Many, Varied, Ever-Changing, And Eternal. Fighting Them Is Like Fighting A Many-Headed Monster, Which, Each Time A Neck Is Severed, Sprouts A Head Even Fiercer And Cleverer Than Before. You Are Fighting That Which Is Unfixed, Mutating, Indestructible.” (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 6.)

Yet, hope arose after the 2023 legislative session, in which the latest education bill included a provision that the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) submit recommendations to the legislature to reduce burdensome requirements and make it possible for public schools to compete with charters on a more even basis.

While many believed that it would be an exercise in eliminating unnecessary paperwork and reports, it seems that some have more substantive changes in mind. In particular, these three areas have been mentioned:

• Contracts: Allow teachers to receive three-year contracts instead of annual contracts once they have completed four years of effective or highly effective beginning of career teaching. Moreover, districts would be permitted to use years of service and degrees earned as part of their criteria for determining salary schedules.
• Testing: Eliminate third grade retention based upon reading scores from the state test. Take a moment, reread that sentence, and let the significance sink in. Also, eliminate graduation requirements for high school students that mandate passing scores on the Algebra 1 exam and the 10th grade reading test.
• Class size: The legislature long ago neutered the voter-passed class size amendment including fines assessed upon district’s who failed to meet it. Yet, districts have been required to submit plans on how they will reduce class sizes to the specified limits even though they have no incentive for even attempting to implement the plans. Under one proposal, plans are no longer needed. Also, districts would gain more discretion in how to use their capital funds and would no longer have to offer surplus property to charter schools. (Source: Tampa Bay Times Gradebook.)

While these are only proposals and they face considerable opposition, given Florida’s hell-bent-on-privatization governor who has achieved one-man rule in the way he has imposed his will upon a cowed legislature and perhaps judiciary and the long arm of Jeb Bush and his foundations that exercise an outsized grip on policy in the state, it is remarkable that they have been mentioned at all.

For that matter, it is remarkable that the legislature even asked for ideas to reduce the burdens upon public schools and that included a recognition that they have to compete in a marketplace in which they are disadvantaged. Then again, this may turn out to be a Trojan horse like Tennessee, which is flirting with refusing all federal funds, Title One and the like, in order to not bother with essential educational rights of students and parents that states must accept in order to receive funding.

It’s doubtful anything substantial will happen, Still, we can dream, can’t we? Maybe Florida, which initiated many of the terrible, harmful practices in our schools, is ready to reform the reforms.