The state of Florida and Miami-Dade County Public Schools have created and implemented a multi-tiered school and educator accountability system called Differentiated Accountability (DA). In line with Jeb Bush’s A + Plan, No Child Left Behind - and of late - Obama’s Race To The Top grant initiative that judge schools according to their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP); it was created to address fluctuating and failing test scores and school grades and in Florida’s public schools. The system places varied sanctions on schools and educators depending on the annual AYP report card letter grade and individual student test scores. The grades range from A for outstanding proficiency to F for failing proficiency. Currently, all the African-American high schools in Miami-Dade County (ten) are operating under the most extreme sanctions with the most extreme interventions mandated for schools under this system of “accountability.” Why is this so?
History has played a significant role. The majority of high schools in Miami-Dade County are segregated by race and ethnicity. Many factors have contributed to this “de facto” segregation: demographic change, gentrification, failed urban policies, the expiration of court ordered integration for public schools and staff placements, and the 2007 Supreme Court decision not to mandate integration. The failure of integration coupled with the DA’s performance has resulted in separate and unequal schools tantamount to pre- Brown v Topeka, Kansas and in line with Plessy v Ferguson. The schools are separate because they are 95 -100% African-American. How are they unequal? They have, by administrative dictate, less experienced and fewer credentialed educators, mandated annual 25% - 50% staff turnover rates, different and more restrictive contractual obligations for staff (established by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Letter of Understanding (LOU) signed by the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) and the school district.) They also suffer the continual threat of shut-down and subsequent move to turn African-American community schools into private- managed, unregulated, exclusive charters that will reduce the number of students able to enroll and eliminate the popular state financed athletic programs. Other community schools do not operate under this system of governance. For the most part, they are able to realize the Federal Constitution’s First Amendment that upholds that, “It is the collective freedom of the faculty member to teach free from pressure, penalties, or other threats by authorities or other persons inside or outside their institutions of learning. It is the freedom of the student to be taught by unrestrained teachers and to have access to all available data pertinent to the subject of study at an appropriate educational level.” Unfortunately, non-Black schools too have been forced to modify instruction for their populations that are “low-performers” as they contend with an over-emphasis on standardized testing. They also have been victimized by the "teaching to a test" phenomenon. However, they do not have to work under separate contract provisions or face the annual mandated staff changes that contribute to an air of "discord and dysfunction."
Are the sanctions and interventions implemented working? To date, the mandates and sanctions placed on high school staffs and students over a twelve- year period have not resulted in success for African-American high schools or many of their students that attend these schools (see the attached chart). In contrast, the state and district interventions have resulted in a failed test prep approach to teaching and learning inclusive of following:
•mandates for common blackboards and postings that list benchmarks and standards and leave little room for instructional use
•mandates for unilateral benchmark calendars that drive instruction that is disjointed, isolated and thematically disconnected
•mandates for excessive standardized testing – baseline, fall interims, winter interims, monthly, and spring testing followed by end of the year testing
•annual labeling of schools with demeaning letter grades (based on an ever changing formula according to standards that have not had public input or discussion)
•recruitment and reliance on inexperienced and non-certified Teach For America staff that lack an adequate and responsible amount of training in educational methodology and field experience in lieu of National Board Certified and veteran, experienced teachers with excellent annual evaluations
•a disproportionate amount of Black administrator demotions after state postings of below average grades for the schools
•a lack of school-site autonomy and local control by administrators and teaching staff, which stifles innovative, creative, and inventive problem solving and pedagogy
•the creation and fostering of continual “in flux” and non-stable communities
•pervasive retaliatory actions and displacements of educators and union building stewards who dissent
•a Memorandum of Understanding between the United Teacher of Dade and the Miami-Dade Public Schools for “sanctioned” schools that has a disproportionate amount of Black educators working under rigid and punitive contractual obligations not experience by those working in other schools
•chronic, intrusive classroom visits by state and district appointees
•holding teachers/administrators as the fault for unrealized success after they have been forced to adhere to the above listed interventions
Educators are held accountable and have suffered punishments for below average and failing school report cards as a consequence of the ”fix-up” interventions of which they have no control. The community has been held accountable and suffered as well. Recently, they were confronted with an attempt by the state to shut down two valued community schools, Miami Edison and Miami Central. Community engagement in effort to keep the schools open bought time for another year to improve, but has it gotten to the root of the problem at a time when Florida legislators have increased testing accountability, tied teacher pay to assessments, ended much of the due process previously afforded educators, and taken the cap off of charter schools and money for voucher programs?
The African-American community has to begin to question if education policies touted as reform are doing the job of reforming or promoting “choice,” which provides very little choices for the African-American students who attend segregated community schools, the educators who teach in segregated schools, the parents of these students, and the tax payers who are funding public education and the reforms that go along with it. They must ask is language manipulated by politicians and their corporate sponsors to push a profit making agenda that has no accountability and often engages, with impunity, in fraudulence. Furthermore, they must ask is the achievement gap being used to marginalize and exploit minority students and educators for the monetary gain of a few.
Educators, parents, and students must seek answers that may have to come in the form of court decisions that decide if accountability systems such a DA conflict with the rights granted by the First and the Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution. In the meantime, African-American parents have to consider opting their children out testing that has questionable motive and is wrought with negative consequences for their children, their children’s educators, and their communities.