Andrew Spar: Supporting public education means we must address critical issues head on

This year’s results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a troubling trend for Florida: our students are falling behind. When the scores came out, state and national politicians expressed shock and awe, asking, “How could this happen?” But I think we know the answer. Over the past 25 years, Florida has adopted policies and laws that have driven teachers out of the profession, created enormous bureaucratic red tape for teachers and districts to follow, and, worse, limited the curriculum and learning opportunities for students.

So, the important question now is: what do we do about it?

No matter what party line you follow or what your background is, we can all agree on a few simple principles: that every child in our state deserves a free, world-class public education that prepares them for success and that every Floridian should be able to afford to take care of their families.

In order to move public education forward in our state, we must address the hard truths and facts about where we are today. The numbers don’t lie – Florida’s children are being failed year after year by bad policy. We can’t selectively celebrate graduation numbers and progress monitoring assessments while ignoring the reality: plummeting SAT scores, thousands of students left without a qualified educator in their classroom, and almost rock-bottom average teacher pay. The latest NAEP scores are only a symptom and help expose the long-term consequences of underfunding public education.

In Florida, anti-public education politicians have set up a lose-lose environment for many public school teachers and education staff professionals. Talk to any educator, and you will hear how they must work two, three, or even four jobs just to make enough money to provide for their own families. No one wants to see members of their communities struggling to survive. Low salaries and an over-politicization of the profession have led to the exodus of experienced educators and have meant fewer educators are even willing to enter the profession. This isn’t just a problem for teachers; it’s a crisis for our entire community.

The teacher shortage crisis is more than a statistic. It’s a daily reality for students across the state. Thousands of students are sitting in classrooms without a qualified teacher halfway through the school year. Over the past three years, the number of courses taught by out-of-field teachers—those who do not have training or certifications in the subject they are teaching—has jumped 16%. Even as classrooms are being staffed, they are increasingly being filled with interns, long-term substitutes, or international teachers brought in to patch the holes.

Florida is one of the wealthiest states in the nation yet ranks 50th nationally in average teacher salary. Without a competitive salary, experienced educators leave, and fewer young professionals enter the field, worsening the cycle. When our state limits teachers’ effectiveness by robbing them of the stability and security of earning a living wage, the same limits are placed on our students. As any teacher can tell you, a student’s success on the NAEP, the SAT, or any other test is not determined on test day itself but by the work and preparation that led up to it. When our state underpays teachers, underfunds schools, and overloads classrooms, our students pay the price.

We must work together to ensure that our children have fully funded public schools and that our educators have the support they require.

That means fully investing in and funding public schools in a state where a universal voucher system drains $4 billion from desperately needed public education funds. The majority of voucher recipients never attended public schools in the first place, meaning public tax dollars are being used as private tuition assistance for families who could already afford it. This isn’t about expanding opportunity; it’s about defunding public schools at the expense of the majority of Florida students who still rely on them.

The reality is that 80% of parents still choose to enroll their kids in our neighborhood public schools, and they still believe in investing in our public education system. Last year, voters across the state and across party lines overwhelmingly passed local school funding referenda, choosing to invest in their neighborhood public schools even when the state wouldn’t.

This legislative session, the Florida Education Association, led by dedicated teachers and education staff professionals across the state, is calling on and working with lawmakers to fully fund public education, ensure fair wages for educators, address multi-year contracts, and so much more. The state of Florida has spent more than two decades experimenting with various policies to improve education, but these experiments have been done without much research and without the experts — the educators. And what do we have to show for it? Maybe it’s time to listen to the experts in our schools. We can change the course of public education in Florida for the better by recommitting to building the world-class public education system our students deserve.

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Andrew Spar is president of the Florida Education Association.