Print edition: 
When it comes to school reform, one advocate told local leaders Tuesday, "I'll have what Florida's having."
Matthew Ladner, vice president for research at the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute and author of the "Report Card on American Education," spoke to local educators and others at a breakfast hosted by the Kansas Policy Institute.
Ladner said Kansas, despite scoring a D-plus for education reform on the report card, performs better than average on overall student achievement.
"The message here is not that Kansas is bad or Kansas public schools are bad," he said. "I'm just here to make suggestions about how Kansas schools could be improved."
One state showing marked improvement, especially in closing the achievement gap for black and Hispanic students, is Florida, he said.
In 1999, Florida enacted a "cocktail" of reform measures aimed at boosting under-performing students and schools. Reforms included: grading schools, A through F, based on student test scores; offering vouchers for students with disabilities and tax credits for low-income students; expanding alternative teacher certification; offering schools and teachers bonuses for achievement; and banning "social promotion" for students who don't have basic literacy skills by the end of third grade.
"At the time these things were all very theoretical," Ladner said.
They also were controversial. People criticized the retention policy, for instance, as being cruel to students. With few exceptions, Florida third-graders who fail basic literacy assessments do not advance to fourth grade.
"It's tough medicine," Ladner said. "But it sends a message to parents that if Johnny has homework, maybe you better take that seriously."
Since instituting the reforms, Florida has seen test scores rise among all student groups, but especially among Hispanics, Ladner said. Hispanic students in Florida now outscore or tie the statewide reading average of all students in 31 states, based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Florida's "next great debate," like the rest of the country's, Ladner said, will focus on teacher quality and what to do about underperforming teachers.
"We have a system that treats teachers as if they're interchangeable widgets... We pay them the same, treat them the same. And they're not interchangeable."
Walt Chappell, member of the Kansas Board of Education, asked Ladner how Kansas could rank 7th for education performance on his report card when only 36 percent of fourth-graders scored proficient or above on the NAEP reading exam.
"We're grading on a curve when we compare ourselves to other American states because America is not a high-achieving country," Ladner said.
"We need to start measuring student learning gains, comparing those with individual teachers, and rewarding teachers who are great. Those teachers who are showing negative gains need to be doing something else with their careers."
