Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said Florida had improved education outcomes for people with disabilities during his RNC speech. Has that gain led to more employment opportunities for these individuals?
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was one of the Republican National Convention speakers who brought people with disabilities into the conversation. In fact, his discussion of the improvement of Florida’s school system since 1999 arguably made it the most substantive speech of the entire week.
As we acknowledged yesterday, substance and policy are not exactly the goals of convention remarks, and very likely that’s what made the statistics enumerated by Bush, who is currently the Chairman of the Foundation of Excellence in Education, stand out all the more. Here is the section mentioning students with disabilities from Fox News’ rush transcript:
Among African-American students, Florida is ranked fourth in the nation for academic improvement. Among low income students, we are ranked third for gains. Among students with disabilities, we are ranked first. Among Latino students, the gains were so big, they require a new metric. Right now, Florida’s fourth grade Hispanic students read as well or better than the average of all students in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
Whitney Ray’s August 31 story for the Capitol News Service in Florida says the state achieved these gains by increasing the number of charter schools and instituting a voucher program that enabled students who earned scholarships to transfer out of the public school system. Critics of the program, like Florida teacher’s union spokesman Mark Pudlow, tell Ray that the resulting improvements are essentially byproducts of a system that creates an inequality between private and public education options, which then discounts the fact that students with disabilities or those who come from low-income families are more frequently served by the traditional schools that are left underfunded.
There are conservative voices equally critical of the Florida school system. Bob Sikes maintains the blog, Scathing Purple Musings — so named because he provides a mixture of political opinions that make him “red in Washington, dark sky blue in Israel and public school in Education.”
A month before the convention, Sikes posted “Jeb Bush’s Betrayal of Special Needs Kids AND Conservative Values in Florida’s NCLB Waiver,” which takes the state’s board of education to task for putting students enrolled in special education centers in a “political tug-of-war” by attempting to exempt their test scores from being evaluated equally. He writes:
… [T]he insane fixation on somehow assigning a letter grade to schools with an infinite number of variables…has put our most vulnerable kids at-risk… Bush’s call for federal power in the NCLB waiver usurps local oversight. Hardly a model of conservative doctrine.
The bottom line question is whether the educational approach Bush touts helps make life matter for people with disabilities with regards to employment opportunities and inclusion in their communities. Florida’s overall ranking in the United Cerebral Palsy Case for Inclusion 2012 is a tepid 20th. The state scores high in categories like “Promoting Independence,” where it is fourth in the nation (compared to Massachusetts #9 ranking), but ranks 32nd in “percentage of people who are in competitive employment” (Massachusetts is #14); 47th in “Vocational Rehab per 100k of population” (Massachusetts is #35); and dead last among the 50 states in “Supported or Competitive Employment – spending per participant” (Massachusetts is #11).
Thirteen years is a significant amount of time to assess whether Florida’s approach to education is having a positive impact on employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Share your thoughts on whether it has been effective in the Comments section.
Image by Florida Keys–Public Libraries.