Florida’s per-student spending is $3,000 below the national average.

Editorials in the Gainesville Sun and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune this week took Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature to task for not living up to the Florida Constitution, which says it’s the state’s paramount duty to make adequate provision for a high-quality public education system.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20160127/OPINION01/160129774/1076/opinion?p=2&tc=pg

The Gainesville editorial quotes our state Sen. Don Gaetz, who in commenting on Gov. Scott’s budget proposal, said: ““I cannot support a budget proposal that would place 80 percent of the burden of increased school taxes onto local property taxes and local school boards. I don’t think that’s right.”

The Legislature is two weeks into its two-month session. The Sun editorial listed these key points for Floridians to keep in mind when it comes to education funding:

The proposed $7,221 per-student spending is only $95 more, not adjusted for inflation, than Florida’s peak level in 2007-08 — ensuring that the state’s funding remains more than $3,000 lower than the national average.

• The proposed increase of 1.5 percent is modest, representing a $476 million rise in a $20 billion K-12 budget.
• State revenue, such as sales-tax collections, would amount to only $50 million of that increase; the balance, $426 million, would come from county-level property tax revenue raised through the “Required Local Effort.” (The RLE, as it’s known, is the property tax rate that school districts must levy to be part of the statewide funding system.)

And here’s another thing to consider. When former Gov. Jeb Bush launched his A+ Plan for Education, which gave birth in 1998 to rigorous student and school testing known as FCAT, Florida had one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country. Bush’s goal and the Legislature’s goal were to fix that.

But after millions of dollars, including $250 million Florida paid over four years to a British company to administer the test, Florida today still has one of the lowest high school graduation rates.

Of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, only eight have a lower high school graduation rate than Florida, according to the U.S. Education Department and the National Center for Education Statistics. Iowa has the best graduation rate in the nation at 90; the District of Columbia the worst at 62. Florida’s graduation rate of 76 percent only exceeds Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and the District of Columbia.

http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/tables/ACGR_2010-11_to_2012-13.asp

Think of all the dollars Floridians spent on FCAT for 16 years. Think of all the handwringing and the thousands of headlines the media devoted to FCAT scores for 16 years. And our high school graduation rate remains at the bottom of the list?

With Florida’s per-student spending $3,000 below the national average and its high school graduation still one of the worst in the nation, it’s time for the Legislature to get serious about public education.

The Gainesville Sun editorial does a great job of pointing that out.