After watching an investigative report on the math achievement level of Florida’s high school graduates assembled by Tampa Fox 13 News politics reporter Craig Patrick and his producer/cameraman Craig Davisson (and in which I played a role), a colleague pronounced the report – and Florida’s K-12 math and science situation – “bleak”.
The report focused on the decline in Florida’s SAT scores, particularly in math, and featured remarks (in addition to mine) from Jeb Bush, FEA President Andrew Spar and several tutors at a private SAT prep business. In addition to his usual comments about the importance of reading, Bush conceded that being able to “calculate math” has merit as well. In fact, he went so far as to say that reading and math skills are necessary to “live a life of purpose and meaning”.
[That last statement goes too far. Having strong language and math skills certainly makes it easier for an individual to attain a middle-class lifestyle, which may indeed make it easier to “live a life of purpose and meaning”. But it is demonstrably not impossible for an impoverished individual to live a purposeful life.]
The SAT tutors attributed the decline in SAT scores to Florida’s students not learning enough about statistics, the fact that many students take the SAT a year or more after their most recent experiences with algebra and geometry, and what one tutor said was the general tendency of Florida middle and high school math classes to run a year behind other states (I’d have to fact-check that one).
But one of the tutors interviewed hit on what is the most important point about Florida math and science education. He intends to become a middle or high school teacher, but he is planning to leave Florida for his first teaching job because “the State of Florida doesn’t really value its teachers in terms of pay”. In the report, the Fox 13 News team shared an analysis of teacher salaries by USAFacts that shows Florida having the lowest teacher salaries in the nation when adjusted for cost of living.
Spar argued that the result of the low pay and other obstacles for teachers in Florida is that there are thousands of teacher position vacancies in the state’s public schools so that “hundreds of thousands” of students don’t have highly qualified teachers leading their classrooms. The report on “High Demand Teacher Needs Areas” approved by the State Board of Education last month via their consent agenda (meaning the board members likely have no idea what is in the report) documents the situation that Spar discussed.
It would be convenient if the shortage of teachers, which is particularly severe in math and science (see figure below), could be “solved” through the use of technology, including artificial intelligence, instead of requiring the hard work of recruiting, preparing and retaining strong teachers. The reason the technology shortcut will not work is that students learn best through relationships with other students and with their teachers – that is, when they have strong connections to actual human beings in the learning process. That’s not just true in the early grades. It’s just as true in a college physics classroom like mine, where we connect students with each other and with instructors in a studio-style learning environment. And it’s certainly true in middle and high school math classrooms. Technology will continue to provide useful tools that teachers can use to enhance their students’ learning experiences. But any classroom in which teachers have been completely replaced with technology will only provide students with tasks that lack meaning and do not build understanding.
Building up the teacher corps that Florida’s public school students need will require the state’s educational leaders to abandon their preconceived notions about how schools and their staffs should be managed and paid. Teacher pay is certainly a big part of the problem. For all the talk about state-level investments in teacher salary increases, the bottom line is that the state is trying to solve a $5 billion per year problem with an investment of about $1 billion per year. The result is that while Florida’s statutory $47,500 minimum starting salary is fine and appropriate, experienced teachers are not making much more than that. This isn’t the way to build a strong profession.
While there are limits to what the SAT tells us about student learning, it does have its uses. One is to tell us that the achievement of Florida high school graduates in math is seriously deficient. This situation is limiting the career and economic horizons of the state’s young people. The only way to improve this situation is to make a major investment in attracting individuals who are strong in math to the teaching profession and to give them the tools they need to help every student fulfill her or his potential. Florida’s educational leaders should acknowledge that this is the only way forward, roll up their sleeves and get started.
Bridge to Tomorrow 