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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 3, 1999

News Release

NEA President Says Florida Voucher Plan Won’t Improve Schools

Small classes, modern schools, skilled teachers, and resources needed

ORLANDO, Fla. – Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association (NEA), today said Florida’s school voucher plan “will not improve Florida’s public schools,” and suggested that the plan’s true aim “is to discredit, defund – and eventually destroy – public education.”

In his keynote address to NEA’s Representative Assembly, Chase told the nearly 9,000 delegates that “the main problem with vouchers is that they don’t pass the most important test of any education reform: they don’t improve student performance. In both Milwaukee and Cleveland, students in voucher schools are doing no better than their counterparts in the public schools. In addition, vouchers strip desperately needed resources away from the schools that need them the most.

“We know what we need to improve struggling schools,” Chase said. “Smaller classes, high standards and expectations, talented educators, involved parents, modern schools, and adequate resources will contribute to helping all of Florida’s students perform at higher levels.”

With 78 Florida schools branded with an “F,” and with no systematic state program to help them improve, Chase said the task facing Florida’s political and educational leaders is clear -- address weakness head-on with proven solutions.

“It takes a lot of hard work to improve a school, but educators know what to do, and so does the state of Florida,” Chase said. “Just a year ago, the Florida Department of Education reported on the many successful strategies that schools, teachers, and parents employed to reduce the number of “F” schools from 158 to only two in three years.

“First of all, it will take more resources, because in most cases, these schools are serving large numbers of at-risk students in low-income neighborhoods,” said Chase. “By their very nature, these students require more attention and more one-on-one instruction to improve their academic achievement. That means additional time, energy and resources for teacher training and professional development.

“In Florida, they found that after-school and Saturday tutoring was an essential part of the solution,” said Chase. “They also learned that additional training for principals, extended school days, activities to promote parental involvement, and ongoing, rigorous assessments were all part of the formula for improving schools.

Chase hailed NEA’s Keys to Excellence for Your Schools (KEYS) initiative as a prime example of a proven program to improve schools. KEYS has been used by NEA members in more than 300 schools across the country, helping them measure the strengths and weaknesses of their schools and to choose the reforms that will work. He cited schools in Winter Park and Kissimmee, Fla. as examples.

“Using the KEYS survey, faculty at the Aloma Elementary School in Winter Park learned they needed to improve their communications among grades and across grade levels around professional concerns,” Chase said. “They focused on reading and writing, and within two years, 82 percent of the school’s students were writing at a successful level.

“At Horizon Middle School in Kissimmee, teachers and their principal embraced KEYS just last year, and have already identified communications, fundraising, and professional development as important objectives,” said Chase. “The school has brought in a curriculum resource person for the staff, to enhance professional development for teachers.

“As a teacher for 25 years, I can tell you that when it comes to school improvement, one size does not fit all,” Chase said. “Every school I’ve worked in – and visited over the years – has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and these unique sets of circumstances are critical to understand before a plan of school improvement can be embraced effectively. If we could get every one of our 87,000 public schools to use KEYS to make the right choices for school improvement, all 53 million students would benefit.

“Rather than label our schools, students, and teachers as ‘failures’ – as Governor Bush is inclined to do – I’d much rather see public schools focus at the outset on the very real and hard work of identifying what needs to be done to achieve success,” said Chase.

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The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing more than 2.4 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support personnel, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.

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