Abstract:

Over the last 40 years, the American state of Florida has aggressively pursued accountability as a dominating governance strategy. State level policies and local level delivery systems have been developed, altered and modified to accommodate and respond to accountability-centered reform. This paper will review the tensions that occur and re-occur in one state as a central strategy responds to pandemic-related developments in educational governance, the technology of learning and performance assessment.

Tensions between the roles of the state and those of local schools and school districts are perennial and baked into the U.S. educational governance structure (Grissom & Herrington, 2012; Fuhrman & Elmore, 1990). Most state constitutions establish broad parameters for the obligations of the state and, to a lesser degree, of local school boards to provide, fund and regulate educational delivery systems (McCarthy, Langdon,&Olson,1993).

Data will be drawn from state and local print media, Florida state department of education regulations and reports and local district board minutes and interviews with state-level policymakers and district leaders.

This paper reviews the response by to the COVID-19 pandemic by state leaders and local leaders in one state along a number of dimensions including state mandates on local school districts (preemption); changes to educational funding pressed by the pandemic; and school choice policies and practices.

Florida’s achievement-based accountability program pre-dated the U.S. No Child Left Behind ACT and the early choice programs incorporated aspects of the program including school grading, state-wide testing of all students in most grades and sanctions for low-performance as measured by state tests.

Florida school funding formula – Florida has a relatively equalized state-level funding formula, designed specifically to ensure that the level of funding is independent of local property values, thus reducing one mediating variable in attempts to account for inter-district impacts of state policy and programs.

Florida adopted school-based management and school-level accountability measures initially in the early 1970s. These programs have grown and been modified over the years. With the increase in choice, different measures have incorporated some degree of school-level autonomy as choice programs developed.

Over the last 20 years Florida has aggressively pursued choice as both an educational reform strategy and as an accountability strategy. Some of the choice programs were established as a sanction/consequence of inadequate performance of traditional schools and were closely tied to the state accountability program.

This paper will analyze the operational changes, stress points and accommodations that have appeared in one state with a focus on how federal/state/local relations have evolved as a consequence of the unprecedented demands on the educational system.

Keywords:

Governance, Accountability and School based management.