Ohio policymakers hear Sunshine State education reform lessons

April 27, 2012

Not until Florida passed a law that required schools to hold back third graders who read poorly did districts get serious about helping those students catch up, the director of an education reform group told Ohio lawmakers and state school board members Thursday.

Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, said that with the 2002-03 school year Florida began retaining students who were scoring “functionally illiterate” on the state’s achievement test. That year, 13.2 percent of third graders were not promoted. By 2009-10 that number had dropped to by more than half to 5.9 percent.

“Nobody followed it (the law requiring help for poor readers) -- until we had to look that parent in the eye” and say your child is going to be held back, Levesque said.

The Ohio Senate Education Committee has been hearing testimony on Gov. John Kasich’s call to adopt a “third grade reading guarantee” and a new rating system that assigns districts and schools an A to F grade, among other changes.

Levesque and Marcus A. Winters, an assistant professor from the University of Colorado and senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, spoke to the committee and at a special meeting of the state school board at the invitation of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Fordham’s Vice President for Ohio Programs and Policy Terry Ryan said that Florida has been receiving so much attention for

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Ohio policymakers hear Sunshine State education reform lessons