During a 1916 football game between Georgia Tech and Cumberland, Georgia Tech coach John Heisman famously urged his players on to victory- “You're doing all right, team, we're ahead. But you just can't tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men! Hit 'em clean, but hit 'em hard!” Cumberland committed 15 turnovers in the game and had one of their players getting tackled for a six-yard loss on an attempt at an offensive rush declared their “play of the game.” Georgia Tech won the game 222 to 0.
This story has repeatedly come to mind repeatedly over the last decade while reading stories about the competition between surging Florida and floundering New York.
The New York Post reports that New York City Schools will spend $42,000 per student this year. Spending $840,000 on a classroom of 20 fourth graders might seem a bit pricey, especially given that judging on their 2024 NAEP performance, nine of them will be reading at “below basic.” New Yorkers must pay sky-high taxes to support the world’s most expensive illiteracy generator/job programs, which is one of the reasons so many New Yorkers keep becoming Floridians. Now, however, it isn’t just people and companies migrating from New York to Florida; New York’s Success Academy schools are also heading south.
Through the wizardry of Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project graph generator, I’ve placed New York Success Academies (Marked 1-7) in the graph for the overall state of Florida for academic proficiency. Schools are dots; green dots are higher than average, blue below average, etc.
You don’t see many high-poverty schools (graph runs from low poverty on the right to high poverty on the left) with students scoring 3ish grade levels above average, but that is exactly what Success Academy has consistently delivered in New York.
Being a rational human, you might think that New York policymakers would be falling over themselves to get as many Success Academies operating as possible, but that is just you being silly again. New York lawmakers maintain a statewide cap on the number of charter schools. Apparently, New York lawmakers feel the need to keep safe from, well, learning.
Florida, on the other hand, does not have a cap on charter schools. Rather than treating highly successful schools specializing in educating disadvantaged students as a public menace, Florida is rolling out the red carpet for highly effective school models. Success Academy plans to open 40 schools in Florida over the next 10 years, something which New York law prohibits.
Is it too much? Too much winning? No, Florida, you have to win more! Or to paraphrase Coach Heisman “You're doing all right, Florida; you’re ahead. But you just can't tell what those New Yorkers have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men! Hit 'em clean, but hit 'em hard!” Capitalizing on the abject folly of New York policymakers is hitting both clean and hard.
When Florida lawmakers debated HB 1 earlier this year, the discussion largely focused on how the legislation would dramatically expand education choice through universal eligibility and flexible spending options for families.
Another part of the bill inspired far less discussion but got the attention of school district leaders across the state: a review of public school regulations.
By Nov. 1, the state Board of Education must develop and recommend “potential repeals and revisions” to the state’s education code “to reduce regulation of public schools.”
“This is a great step towards keeping our public schools competitive” in an era of expanded options, said Bill Montford, a former Democratic state Senator from North Florida who heads the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
“Traditional, neighborhood public schools have been, and will continue to be, the backbone of our K12 education system,” he
Bill Montford
said. “We want our schools to be the first choice for parents, not the default choice, and to do that we need to reduce some of the outdated, unnecessary, and quite frankly, burdensome regulations that public schools have to abide by,”
Before they propose any changes, state board members must consider feedback from a diverse group that includes teachers, superintendents, administrators, school boards, public and private post-secondary institutions and home educators.
To fulfill that requirement, board members set up a survey link that will accept suggestions through today. A group of superintendents submitted a recommendation list that covers topics that include construction costs, budgets, enrollment, school choice, instructional delivery and accountability. Their pitches included proposals to:
"We’d like for them to recognize all parental choice equally and give school districts the same flexibility and opportunity to innovate provided to other publicly funded options,” said Brian Moore, general counsel for the superintendents association that Montford leads. He added that the superintendents would like to see more cooperation between school districts and the Department of Education.
This effort isn’t the first the state has made to provide school districts with relief from what they see as burdensome regulations. But to some leaders the process seems more like a game of Whac-A-Mole, with new regulations soon replacing the ones that get repealed.
Ten years ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed SB 1096, which repealed some regulations based on the recommendations of a group of superintendents, including Montford. The bill repealed a requirement approved in 2010 that all public schools and universities gather and report statistics showing how much material each had recycled during the year. It also ended a 2002 requirement that schools submit plans for teaching foreign languages to kindergarteners.
Other efforts to ease the regulatory burden have targeted schools that meet certain conditions. Since 2017, schools with strong test scores and consistently high letter grades could be qualified as “Schools of Excellence,” which grants their leaders more flexibility.
Moore said he hopes things work out this time around, but said the key is allowing changes to apply across the board, not to certain schools or districts, and to carefully consider future regulations and their potential effects.
