Florida has led the nation in education since 2019, instituting revolutionary educational reforms such as first-in-the-nation progress monitoring assessments, universal school choice, supporting parental rights in education, and refocusing Florida’s education model on the basics of math, science, reading, and history.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida also led the nation in bringing students back to in-person learning, which has since proven to be one of the best decisions for our students’ education.
Our success has been repeatedly recognized by national organizations and Florida students continue to achieve educational success. Florida just announced a record-high graduation rate of 89.7% and Florida Assessment of Student Thinking Progress Monitoring results for 2023-2024 demonstrate notable year-over-year improvement across the state, with 2024 results showing that the number of students scoring at or above grade level increased by 4 points over the year for both English Language Arts and Mathematics. I am proud of Florida’s record and confident in our continued success.
While education has rightfully been primarily in the purview of the states, the U.S. Department of Education administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress every two years, to measure student outcomes nationwide. In 2022, we celebrated Florida’s students’ progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, earning the state’s highest-ever rankings in each assessment area and closing historic achievement gaps for at-risk students. Florida’s approach to in-person learning during the pandemic set us ahead of other lockdown states that kept kids out of the classroom for extended periods and National Assessment of Educational Progress reflected that reality.
However, upon receipt of Florida’s 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, it is evident that the Biden Department of Education’s administration of what was the previously gold standard exam has major flaws in methodology and calls into question the validity of the results as they pertain to the educational landscape in 2024.This is why I sent incoming Secretary of Education Linda McMahon a letter outlining concerns and providing solutions so that together, we can make NAEP great again.
Florida has more than 1.4 million students utilizing a school choice option, including more than 524,000 students receiving Family Empowerment Scholarships for private schooling and homeschooling. I am proud of this exponential growth, as compared to 2022 when only 165,000 students were utilizing Family Empowerment Scholarships, as we have given families a real choice in their education and real control over their future. In fact, historically these scholarship-recipient students have outperformed their public-school peers as tracked by studies required by state law.
Unfortunately, when this sizeable portion of our students are outside the strictly public-school sample of National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test must expand its sample to include these high-performing students.
In addition to school choice, the National Assessment of Educational Progress must fix the disproportionality issues of the Trial Urban District Assessment districts. The districts are selected based on district size, percentages of African American or Hispanic students, and percentages of students eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program. The 2024 NAEP pulled 77% of our sample from Florida’s four Trial Urban District Assessment districts (Duval County, Hillsborough County, Miami-Dade County, and Orange County). Florida was one of two states with four Trial Urban District Assessment districts, while California, the largest state in the country, only had two. These four counties represent about one-third of Florida’s students, yet they represent three-quarters of the National Assessment of Educational Progress sample.
Even if the results from those four counties are weighted so their contribution to Florida’s sample was proportionate to their size, there is simply no way to accurately measure the remaining two-thirds of Florida students with less than a quarter of students sampled. Moving forward, the Trump administration must address these issues with the Trial Urban District Assessment districts and the proportionality of the sample relevant to the state and compared to other states.
NAEP allows states to compare their students to other students nationally, and it gives state departments of education important insights that guide future education policy. However, the ideological drive of the previous administration has made the 2024 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress very flawed, and it must be fixed.
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