Education Challenges in Spotlight as Students Return to PreK, K-12 and Universities

Florida Policy News, August 14, 2006

Voluntary Prekindergarten Program

The entrance to the new United Way Center of Excellence in Early Education will have two doors when it's finished: one the standard height for grown-ups and one a lower height for children.  (Preschool learning registers innovative progress, Miami Herald)

That's the first clue to parents, preschoolers, business owners and educators that something is different at the center, 3250 SW Third Ave. in Miami.

Scheduled to open in January, it will be a place for adults and kids, a community resource, a child-care center, an observation lab and teaching center.

''It's a totally different way of looking at what we need,'' said Gladys Rocafort Montes, director of the center. ``No one else is doing this.''

The United Way center is one of dozens of innovative Miami-Dade projects that have brought the private and public sectors together to work on almost every aspect of early childhood development.

''I think we have made significant progress, but we are a long way from the promised land for all children,'' said David Lawrence Jr., the president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and chairman of The Children's Trust. He and then-Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas led the statewide campaign to get a universal preschool constitutional amendment passed in 2002.

The movement traces back to 1996, when the late Gov. Lawton Chiles established a commission to look into the future of education for Florida's children. Since then, Miami-Dade child advocacy groups have collaborated on dozens of projects spanning health care, child care and parenting.

Among the major accomplishments: More than 14,000 Miami-Dade children have signed up for the second year of the state-subsidized Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) program; The Children's Trust, fueled by $70 million in Miami-Dade property taxes, was established; and the number of accredited child-care centers in Miami-Dade has gone from 17 to 346.

Now, the movement's leaders are looking to the difficultly slow labor of changing society's agenda, all the while continuing to build more alliances and projects. The mission is to make high-quality services available to every child -- and to make every parent aware of them.

Building a movement is a challenging process, involving independent groups with similar but not identical goals. Coordination can be difficult, and politics and disagreements over specific policies have at times hampered progress. It's also costly. Providing good child care and education requires small classes with well-trained, well-paid teachers.

''When you're building a movement, you're not a one-year wonder,'' Lawrence said. ``One of the challenges is sustaining energy and gathering resources to pay.''

But the work, child advocates say, is worth it. Studies have shown that proper care and learning in children's formative years -- birth to 5 years old -- can reduce some of society's most persistent problems, including illiteracy, high school drop-out rates and criminality.

One study that tracked children from preschool to middle age found that those who attended preschool had more education, higher earnings and committed fewer crimes than those who didn't.  Moreover, the study found that every dollar spent on educating children in the early years saved society at least $7 later.

''We lose those opportunities, and as a result we pay big time to have them corrected,'' said Modesto Abety, president and CEO of The Children's Trust, the tax-based funding source for children that will come before Miami-Dade voters for a re-authorization in 2008.

Making early education a standard also takes a shift in expectations. Lawrence compared it to the way kindergarten was once regarded. German teacher Friedrich Froebel created the first class in 1837. But it didn't catch on there until about a decade later, and in 1856 the first American kindergarten opened in Wisconsin.

Now, although Florida parents are not legally required to enroll their children in kindergarten, almost all do.

The nation almost created a universal preschool program in 1971, when Congress passed a bill that would guarantee every parent the right to send their child to preschool and subsidize that care for low-income families. But President Nixon vetoed it, saying it stank of ''communal approaches to child rearing'' instead of the ''family-centered'' strategy.

Florida's VPK program for 4-year-olds has been one of the most important pieces. The early years are the learning years, experts say, and the most important growth and development in a child's brain happens by the age of 5. The free pre-k program helps prepare children for school, child advocates say.

VPK was launched statewide last fall. In Miami-Dade, the first year had its share of kinks, including complaints by some parents that the sign-up process was complicated and confusing.

This year, the number of children signed up has already reached last year's total of more than 14,400, and organizers expect even more this week before most public schools start on Monday.

Officials at the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe said a year's worth of experience should make the process easier for parents, although nothing in the sign-up process has changed.  ''If you really get it right from ages 0 to 5, it makes a huge difference,'' said Jonah Pruitt III, interim CEO of the Early Learning Coalition. ``If Miami-Dade can pull it off, it will work wherever.''

Other accomplishments include:

¥ New parent packet: The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups are producing a free children's book -- in English, Spanish and Creole -- for parents of all Miami-Dade newborns. The books are distributed at hospitals around the county.

¥ Teach More/Love More: A public awareness campaign that seeks to teach caregivers about the early years of childhood. It offers a 24-hour hot line that parents can call with questions.

¥ PK3/Ready Schools: A program to align curriculum for children in pre-k to third grade at 206 Miami-Dade elementary schools.

¥ SPARK: A five-year project funded by the Kellogg Foundation that tracks the development of 1,500 Miami-Dade youngsters ages 3 to 8 and helps them improve performance in school.

¥ Quality child care: The Children's Trust's development of a voluntary rating system to improve the quality of child-care centers.

¥ HealthConnect: A program that puts a nurse, social worker and health support technician to all public schools over the next four years.

►  Kindergarten teachers this year will inaugurate a more elaborate system to screen their pupils on how well prepared they are for school.  (Kindergarten screening will gauge preparation, Miami Herald)

During the first 30 days of school, the teachers will observe and rate their children's performance in activities involving language, social skills and creative arts. In another screening, children will be shown the alphabet and asked to identify as many letters and sounds as they can.

One purpose for the test is to gather data on the effectiveness of Florida's universal preschool program, which was established by a constitutional amendment in 2002 and implemented last year. The results will go toward measuring how well each preschool center prepared children for kindergarten.

''The idea is to make sure that we're providing not only a preschool experience, but a quality experience,'' said Erin Charlton, community affairs director for the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

Results will also be used to help teachers design curricula and to inform parents on their children's progress.

Determining the quality of the program through testing is a bit of a challenge because the children grow and change so rapidly in their earliest years, said Phyllis Ditlow, senior director of programs for the Early Learning Coalition.  ''We would like to see data that show the program is as valuable as we think,'' Ditlow said. ``It's the process of getting the information that could be a problem.''

The methodology has been criticized for many reasons, but mostly because it has no baseline. Children are tested on the success of their preschool learning without information on how much they knew when they went into the program.

Diana Ragbeer of The Children's Trust, the Miami-Dade group that receives tax dollars to work with children, compared the testing approach to a diet program that excludes a person's starting weight.  ''It's telling half of the picture, half of the story,'' said Ragbeer, director of public policy and communications.

But Ditlow said the results will provide legislators with a snapshot of the program's effectiveness, so that they can consider adjusting the length of the school day, class size or teacher qualifications in response.  ''It's still valuable information because it will say to the Legislature how they're performing,'' Ditlow said.

The children's results will reflect back on the preschool centers they attended, following a three-strike policy:

If a center scores poorly a first time, it will get a warning. On the second time, a state-mandated curriculum. On the third time, the center can be removed from the list of approved providers for the state program.

K-12 Schools

Outside the brick walls of Forest Hills Elementary School in Tampa, August's sweltering heat had climbed above 90 degrees by 11 a.m.  (Mandatory Testing Still Raising Questions, Tampa Tribune)  Inside, it was FCAT season.

Everyone gets sick, but sometimes it isn't so bad!  John Perry read the test prompt aloud to the rows of students in his fourth-grade class. On days like these - school administrators call them "Wonderful Wednesdays" - Forest Hills teachers conduct mandatory writing drills designed to improve test performance.

Think of good things about being sick. Then explain to your reader why being sick can be good.

It's the second week of school. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is six months away. But Forest Hills has failed for four years to meet the federal benchmark for progress, and it risks a state takeover if it continues falling short.

The drilling, and the grading that follows, is due diligence on Perry's part, but not by choice. "I really don't care about test scores," said Perry, in his 11th year as a teacher. "Any idiot can look and see that all these standardized tests rank and sort kids by their socioeconomic status."

It is a longstanding argument, rejected by those convinced that high-stakes testing is the best way to hold public schools accountable. Experts, however, raise other questions about the validity of the tests, having found that some schools have taken extreme measures to "game" the system. Meanwhile, state and federal assessments of the same schools often don't match up and may even contradict each other.

With the majority schools in Florida failing to reach national benchmarks for progress even as the majority earn strong grades from the state, Gov. Jeb Bush is calling for changes to the federal standard his presidential brother signed into law in 2002. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates for governor pledge to overhaul the state system of assessing schools if they are elected.

Change one system or both, questions are likely to remain: What are we measuring, and whose measurement do we trust?

More than 70 percent of students at Forest Hills are low-income, qualifying the school for extra Title I money the federal government gives to schools with high percentages of poor students. To keep the full amount of funding, however, the school must make the "adequate yearly progress" required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.

Forest Hills received B's in 2003 and 2004 from the state for its students' FCAT scores, a C in 2005 and a B in 2006. Since the school started Wonderful Wednesdays, scores on the writing portion have jumped from 63 percent to 77 percent meeting the passing mark.

Those grades might sound good, but the school fails to reach the federal benchmark, causing some of its federal funding to be redirected into tutoring and other required services.

This year, the federal standard will get even tougher. For a Florida school to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, in 2007, 51 percent of its students will have to score at what the state determines to be grade level in reading, up from 44 percent in 2006. Required math proficiency is 56 percent, up from 50 percent.

In addition to the general student population, subgroups, including minority and disadvantaged students, must separately meet that bar for grade-level proficiency. If one or two groups fall short, the entire school does not make AYP - a requirement that has held back Forest Hills and other schools.

In July, Gov. Bush and Education Commissioner John Winn announced that 75 percent of Florida schools earned A's or B's this year. Seventy-two percent, however, failed to make the federal AYP standard.

At the time of the announcement, a reporter asked Bush whether parents should take the state's word over the federal government's about their child's school.  "Absolutely," Bush said. "With no disrespect to anyone in Washington, D.C., you got that right."

The discrepancy owes to the mix of federal and state control in No Child Left Behind.  Underlying the federal law's AYP requirement is one stated goal: that 100 percent of students will read and perform math at grade level by 2014.  Devising a plan to reach that goal, and defining what "grade-level proficiency" means, falls to the states.

The learning standards for each grade vary widely across the states, and Florida's are thought to be among the toughest. That may account, at least in part, for Florida schools' difficulty in meeting the federal requirement of increasing percentages of students that meet those standards.

By contrast, more than 87 percent of Alabama schools made AYP, raising questions about the rigor of learning standards in such states. One state's ability over another to achieve a higher rate of adequate yearly progress in its schools doesn't directly cost the lower-rated state anything. Experts say states such as Florida may suffer indirectly as a result.

"Accountability is, all too often, in the eye of the beholder," Eugene Hickock, former U.S. deputy secretary of education and an architect of No Child Left Behind, said Aug. 4 during a Web-cast meeting of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Aspen Institute's Leave No Child Behind Commission.

The federal law will come up for reauthorization in Congress next year, which has teacher groups and state officials clamoring for changes. Gov. Bush wants Congress to align the federal rules for measuring progress more closely with Florida's. The state, unlike the federal system in most cases, measures not only yearly FCAT performance but also the annual learning gains by students with the lowest FCAT scores.

"The other option is an option that this governor, at least, will never recommend, which is to game the system, lower our standards, make us feel better," he said. "That's what some states have done."

Florida has more than just pride at stake in what other states are doing. Congress has not pitted the states against one another for education funding. Some experts, though, say it might happen.

"Even though states aren't duking it out to get this money, I would argue you could add the word 'yet,'" said David Figlio, an economist at the University of Florida who has studied the consequences of standardized testing for years. "As No Child Left Behind gets more established, it may be used as a tool for distributing federal aid among schools, school districts and states."

Figlio and others cite a range of effects that states can suffer if they fail the national standard while other states pass. Real estate prices could drop. Businesses might choose where to locate partly on that basis. Perhaps worst of all, it could undermine public confidence in a state's schools and its testing system.

Figlio has studied the dangerous incentives that such high stakes create for schools to inflate their scores. In 2002, he reported that Florida schools were classifying low-performing students as disabled in an apparent effort to prune them from the testing pool.

That was before No Child Left Behind, which counts the test scores of learning-disabled students toward a school's adequate yearly progress. It also was before Florida lawmakers decided in 2002 to count students' learning gains. The state counts test scores of mentally and emotionally disabled students toward learning gains.

But those scores do not affect school grades the state gives, which may mean the temptation to overclassify students as disabled persists to some degree.

The temptation surely exists in other states, Figlio said, because few calculate learning gains at all. Other states also face the temptation to suspend underperforming students during the testing period - as Figlio found that many Florida schools did before 2002.

The Wonderful Wednesday writing program at Forest Hills was the brainchild of a writing expert, not a testing expert, said Betty Baldwin, the assistant principal who brought the concept with her when she transferred from Seminole Elementary. The program does borrow heavily from old FCAT writing tests, she said.  "It is test-taking strategy; however, we do it as part of the learning," she said.

Perry said he could vary his writing instruction more when he taught fifth grade, giving the children a chance to use their imaginations. He sees small room for variation in fourth grade, where students must take the FCAT writing test.

He belongs to the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform, a group that rejects the FCAT as a valid measuring tool. On its blog, the group subtly promotes Democratic gubernatorial candidates Jim Davis and Rod Smith, who want to remove the funding awards and sanctions from the state's testing system and use the FCAT as a purely "diagnostic" tool to help parents and teachers identify problem areas.

Federal law would not prohibit removing the rewards and sanctions from the state system, but if states still want federal Title I funding, they still will have to assess whether schools are meeting the AYP standards.

Gerald W. Bracey, a fellow at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University, questioned the practicality, saying standardized tests provide limited "diagnoses" of students' abilities and weaknesses.

Bracey is more concerned about the growing tally of scoring errors across the country. The federal government has few rules for the private contractors that administer and score tests, and states do not wield control over contractors to the same degree as they control government agencies.

Among the worst examples of error was a Minnesota lawyer's discovery in 2000 that his daughter's test contained numerous scoring errors. It was found that the NCS Corporation had given out lower scores than deserved to 47,000 students and denied 525 seniors their legitimate right to graduate that year.

In 1999, The Associated Press reported that nearly 9,000 children in New York were sent to summer school or held back a grade because of testing errors by CTB/McGraw-Hill, the company that grades the FCAT.

Bracey agreed with Winn, Florida's education commissioner, that having two scorers for each test and building other redundancies into the scoring system, as Florida requires of its contractor, drastically reduces the likelihood of such errors.  The possibility is always there, though, Bracey said.

►  Fourth-grade teacher Sylvia Culbreath smiled as she talked about the progress her students made last school year, especially in writing, at Sunrise Elementary School.  (Crowded out, Ocala Star-Banner)

The entire class was deemed proficient in writing after last year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, and the veteran teacher credits smaller class sizes. 
"We're able to reach more children, and we can meet their needs much better," Culbreath said. The class-size reduction amendment passed by Florida voters in 2002 is beginning to make a difference, she said.

Sunrise Principal Juan Cordova agrees.  "Smaller class sizes is having a positive impact on education," Cordova said.  Smaller classes mean more one-on-one instruction, he said. "It allows us to implement more effective teaching strategies."

Marion County Public Schools is in its second of three phases in reducing class sizes to meet the mandate that was voted down in Marion County but approved statewide.

Before 2002, class sizes hovered near 30.

The class-size amendment, which must be fully implemented by 2010, requires a maximum of 18 students per teacher in all pre-kindergarten through third-grade classrooms. That number is 22 for fourth through eighth grades and 25 at the high school level.

Since 2002, the School District gradually has been reducing class sizes, hiring dozens of new teachers each year as it moves toward the required goal.

Though some say education is improving, Marion County School Board members say it will be a financial burden that will drain money from important school programs into budgets for teacher salaries and construction projects to increase the number of classrooms.  There also has been a noticeable impact on the school system's budget for salaries, which includes benefits paid, for the ever-increasing faculty. The cost has risen by 83 percent to $312 million since 1997.

That doesn't take into account the need for new schools, which now cost double what they did five years ago. Based on projected population growth, $450 million will be needed for 11 new schools in the next decade.

"It's like a Category 5 hurricane hitting our school system," said School Board Vice-Chairman Kurt Kelly. He said the mandates hurt the school system because more money is being used to expand instead of enhancing education.

Up until this year, keeping the numbers near the requirements was much easier because administrators just had to make the formula work for the entire district. 
That meant the district could take the number of students and divide it by the number of teachers for those grades in the entire school system. For example, if a third-grade exceptional education teacher had only two children and two mainstream third-grade teachers had 26 students each, the average would still be 18.

This school year, the formula applies to each school.  That means each school must meet the overall average, forcing principals to add new teachers to take on the ever-increasing student population.

They can be creative in making the overall formula work. For example, the school could have an average third-grade classroom size of 20 and an average first-grade classroom size of 16. Together, the average is 18. 

By 2010, each class must meet the number.  The end result is that it will take an estimated 330 more teachers to educate 41,000 students of all grade levels than officials needed prior to 2002. That also means 330 more classrooms, the equivalent of about 10 new elementary schools, to meet the requirement.

To put the issue in better prospective, an elementary school with a projected population of 1,100 would need 37 classrooms of 30 children each before 2002. In 2010, it would need 48 classrooms in order to teach the same number of children.

Superintendent of Schools Jim Yancey said the 2010 mandate will force the district to consider many options, especially at the high school level, such as double sessions, night classes and/or virtual learning.  He said none of those options has been formally adopted. They are just examples of many considerations that would allow the school system to better afford the mandate.

Yancey said the district also will look at building two-story wings on elementary schools instead of new school construction, because land is getting more difficult to find.  "We are looking at all the different building ideas," he said. Lake County has used modular units that are pieced together - and sealed - in a way that it looks like a mainstream wing.  "And those can be moved when the need shifts," Yancey said.

Wally Wagoner, deputy superintendent of facilities, said that, though growth and the class-size reduction mandate have created a space shortage, he believes high schools can do a better job of scheduling classes.  "Some schools need to better utilize their space," he said, adding the school system likely will begin updating its five-year growth plan annually.  "We have to stay on top of growth," he said.

Wagoner said the school system has moved to leasing portables, which means that, as new schools are built and the need for portables declines, the school system can lease only what it needs.  And the portables that have been purchased can be moved to locations where they are needed.  "When growth dictates we need five classrooms, then portables is the way to go," he said. "You can't justify building only five classrooms."

Rick Lankford, second-year principal at Forest High School, said he believes he has figured out a way to find enough available classroom space to keep from adding portables this year.  He said the school's projected enrollment, which is expected to peak at 2,250 by the first of October, easily could be surpassed. Wednesday, student enrollment at the high school was 2,162. 

Last year, the Oct. 1 projection was 1,996.  "And we stayed above 2,000 the entire year," Lankford said. "If this area continues to grow, I'm sure we'll be flooded with portables, just like the entire district will be, in the next few years. That's something the school system will have to deal with."

Lankford said he feels fortunate that district administrators have been proactive in hiring teachers.  "The district has done a good job in making sure we have enough teachers," he said. In 2010, when all classes must be at or below 25, Lankford said he will have to begin using deans and other personnel in the classroom.

School Board member Steve Hering supports smaller classes. However, he believes each school district should decide what is best for its children, both financially and educationally.  Before the class-size amendment was passed, Hering said, the school system was beginning to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through second grade, under a plan created by former Superintendent of Schools Jim Warford.

"We were already doing that when this amendment was passed," Hering said. "I think because we were already doing that is one big reason it did not pass here in Marion County."

Hering said the districtwide formula is the most effective way to manage class sizes. He said, for example, that teachers can teach many more advanced children than the mandated number.  "A teacher with advanced children can teach more students effectively," he said, adding that a class size of 28 advanced fourth-grade students could be balanced with a class of 16 students who need extra help in a subject.

School Board member Ron Crawford said it appears the school system can meet this year's requirements when it comes to class sizes by school.  "The state is giving us more money to meet these goals," he said.

According to Steve Barrett, executive director of business services and finance, the district received $10 million more this year from the state toward meeting the requirements of the class-size amendment.

Crawford called the class-size amendment the 800-pound gorilla.  "Obviously, this has to be funded first," he said. "And then the funds we have left can be used for education."

Those stringent guidelines mean fewer resources in the classroom, School Board member Judi Zanetti said. "We are just now beginning to feel the impact. And it will get worse before it gets better. It is an issue that will continue to impact our school system."

School Board Chairwoman Sue Mosley said the class-size amendment is hurting education throughout the state.  Money that could be used on educating children is being funneled out of the budget and into facilities, she said. "The whole amendment needs to be repealed."

On the other hand, Sunrise's Cordova says that not only have smaller class sizes meant better performance, there have been fewer behavior problems.  However, he understands that it could cause a financial crisis for the school system to implement the mandate by 2010.  "The concept is fine. It's the application that's horrible," Hering said. "It will definitely impact us dramatically."

School officials said they will take it one step at a time.  Diana Greene, the assistant superintendent in charge of making sure class-size requirements are met, said she will re-evaluate this year's classroom space at the end of next week.  That's when she decides whether teacher positions need to be shifted to other schools or whether more teachers need to be hired.

Greene said the schools have been creative. However, by 2010 she predicts a severe shortage of teachers in light of the mandates.  "It will be very difficult, not only financially but when it comes to finding teachers," she said.  The school system currently has 30 teacher openings, she said. "It's hard enough finding the teachers."

Greene said principals can use full-time substitutes, but only if they are qualified and reliable. Otherwise, principals will keep the children in classrooms that may be overcrowded.  "We have to find qualified teachers," she said.

As the amendment reads now, the school system will have to hire another teacher when a class reaches one child over the limit, Greene said. If every grade at every school went one child over the limit, then the school system would need 235 additional teachers when the mandate takes effect in 2010.

Yancey and Greene said that if the amendment allowed for the districts to create a new class once the enrollment hit one half of a new class, then they could better manage the new mandate.  "We could make it work if that was the case," Yancey said.

►  When the federal Education Department recently reported that children in private schools generally did no better than comparable students at public schools on national tests of math and reading, the findings were embraced by teachers' unions and liberals, and dismissed by supporters of school voucher programs.  (It Takes More Than Schools to Close Achievement Gap, New York Times)

But for many educators and policy makers, the findings raised a haunting question: What if the impediments to learning run so deep that they cannot be addressed by any particular kind of school or any set of in-school reforms? What if schools are not the answer?

The question has come up before. In 1966, Prof. James S. Coleman published a Congressionally mandated study on why schoolchildren in minority neighborhoods performed at far lower levels than children in white areas.

To the surprise of many, his landmark study concluded that although the quality of schools in minority neighborhoods mattered, the main cause of the achievement gap was in the backgrounds and resources of families.

For years, education researchers have argued over his findings. Conservatives used them to say that the quality of schools did not matter, so why bother offering more than the bare necessities? Others, including some educators, used them essentially to write off children who were harder to educate.

The No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002, took a stand on this issue. The law, one instance in which President Bush and Congressional Democrats worked together, rests on the premise that schools make the crucial difference. It holds a school alone responsible if the students — whatever social, economic, physical or intellectual handicaps they bring to their classrooms — fail to make sufficient progress every year.

Yet a growing body of research suggests that while schools can make a difference for individual students, the fabric of children's lives outside of school can either nurture, or choke, what progress poor children do make academically.

At Johns Hopkins University, two sociologists, Doris Entwisle and Karl Alexander, collected a trove of data on Baltimore schoolchildren who began first grade in 1982. They found that contrary to expectations, children in poverty did largely make a year of progress for each year in school.

But poor children started out behind their peers, and the problems compounded when school ended for the summer. Then, middle-class children would read books, attend camp and return to school in September more advanced than when they left. But poorer children tended to stagnate. "The long summer break is especially hard for disadvantaged children," Professor Alexander said. "Some school is good, and more is better."

"Family really is important, and it's very hard for schools to offset or compensate fully for family disadvantage," he said.

In Chicago, a court order to empty public housing projects, which dispersed families and children into the suburbs, led to a rise in children's academic achievement.

"The evidence is pretty clear that the better their housing, the better kids do on tests," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan group.

In his 2004 book, "Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap," Richard Rothstein, a former writer of this column, argues that reforms aimed at education alone are doomed to come up short, unless they are tied to changes in economic and social policies to lessen the gaps children face outside the classroom.

A lack of affordable housing makes poorer children more transient, and so more prone to switch schools midyear, losing progress. Higher rates of lead poisoning, asthma and inadequate pediatric care also fuel low achievement, along with something as basic as the lack of eyeglasses. Even the way middle- and lower-class parents read to their children is different, he writes, making learning more fun and creative for wealthier children.

"I would never say public schools can't do better," Mr. Rothstein said. "I'd say they can't do much better," unless lawmakers address the social ills caused by poverty.

For many children in America, public schools are not lacking. A 2001 international reading test put Americans ninth out of students in 35 nations. But only students in Sweden, the Netherlands and England had scores more than marginally higher than the United States average.

More important, the average score of the 58 percent of American students attending schools that were not predominantly poor surpassed that of Sweden, the top-scoring nation.

But for the 42 percent of American students attending the poor schools that are the principal target of No Child Left Behind, the inequities remain. Blacks and Latinos lag more than two years behind white students in math on national assessment tests. In reading, which is more influenced by family background, blacks and Latinos fall three years behind whites.

Yet these gaps have shrunk considerably since 1992, when blacks were 3.5 years behind whites in math. Since 1973, when the federal government began collecting these scores, black 9-year-olds have gained roughly 3.5 grade levels in math, narrowing the achievement gap, even though white scores were also rising at the same time. The cause of these improvements is unclear, although some are most likely related to state efforts, especially in the last 15 years.

A $100 million school voucher bill sponsored by Republicans gives vouchers a prominent place in next year's debate over renewing No Child Left Behind. But other voices are likely to call for a sense of responsibility for improving children's academic success that does not begin and end at the schoolhouse door.

"It can't just be a burden on the schools to do away with social inequality," said Mr. Jennings, of the education policy center. "It has to be a burden on all of us."

►  The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 sent an enormously important message to politicians and educators across America: Stop making excuses for low student achievement and start holding your schools accountable for results.  (Jeb Bush and Michael Bloomberg, How to Help Our Students, op-ed article, Washington Post)

Florida and New York City are leaders when it comes to accountability in education. We have set high expectations for all students, and in key grades we have eliminated social promotion, the harmful practice of pushing unprepared students ahead. We grade schools based on student performance and growth so that parents and the public, as well as school administrators, know which schools are working well and which are not. Our emphasis on accountability is a big reason our schools are improving, our students are performing at higher levels and we're closing the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers.

The No Child Left Behind Act brought the same emphasis to thousands of schools across the country -- some for the first time in their history. Yet since the law's passage, we have learned some things about how to put the principles of accountability into practice in a way that most effectively promotes student achievement. As Congress begins to consider reauthorization of the act, we believe it should be guided by four main lessons:

á Make standards meaningful. Ensure that every state sets a high standard for proficiency. The existing law left room for states to define proficiency levels, and some have dumbed them down to create the illusion of progress. We need a uniform measuring stick.

The well-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered in every state, should become an official benchmark for evaluating states' standards. States that accept federal money without maintaining NAEP standards should be required to bring their standards into line. We believe in the role of sovereign states in our federalist system, but we also believe it is in our national interest to raise standards and expectations.

á Encourage student gains. When the law was written five years ago, Congress didn't think it was possible to follow an individual student's performance from year to year. As a result, the law defines success largely by the total number of students meeting a proficiency standard -- not by whether individual students are improving.

Florida and New York City, along with many other jurisdictions, have developed data systems to track and encourage every student's growth from one year to the next. By focusing on individual progress, as well as overall proficiency levels, we encourage schools to help all students improve -- from the lowest achievers to the most gifted -- not only those performing just below the proficiency threshold.

Congress should revise the law to take into account the gains that schools achieve with all of their students, not just the number of students who are proficient. With students, states and school districts at different levels in terms of academic performance, we need a system that encourages every student to improve continuously.

á Recognize degrees of progress. Congress should consider that there are more than just two options for rating schools -- passing and failing. Rather than the current all-or-nothing system, the law should reward levels of performance at each school. Many schools are making great progress with the majority of their students. The schools should be acknowledged for that and encouraged to strive toward full proficiency. Florida and now New York City are giving schools grades of A, B, C, D and F -- enabling us to recognize and support progress at all levels and to hold schools accountable for success.

Make no mistake, federal law should remain demanding. We believe that with these changes schools would face greater pressure to make sure all children, even those who would otherwise excel easily or drop out entirely, continue to learn.

á Reward and retain high-quality teachers. Tests can measure progress, but ultimately teachers must drive it. The law should go further than ensuring that teachers are qualified. It should also ensure that they are performing well and being paid accordingly. Congress should support measures that link pay with performance, raise pay for teachers in fields with shortages and high-needs communities, toughen standards for achieving tenure, and create meaningful paths for dismissing poor educators.

The opponents of accountability have seized on the problems with the No Child Left Behind Act in an effort to do away with the law altogether. That is wrong. A little common sense could go a long way toward making sure that the nation's accountability system is realistic, tough and fair. Incorporating these four basic lessons will allow us to realize the law's full promise and help children realize their dreams.

►  Florida public schools have barely stepped from their past of federally ordered desegregation, and already another challenge is here.  (Hispanics now main minority in Florida's public schools, Palm Beach Post)

This year, the number of Hispanic students in public schools statewide overtook the number of black children, making Hispanics the largest minority group.

The difference is slim — 3,621 students out of nearly 3 million students — but the change is likely to be permanent because of a steady stream of immigrants and a healthy birth rate.

Hispanic student enrollment rose by about 11 percent the past three years, or about 50,000 students, compared with a 1 percent rise in black students, or 6,000.

The shift comes just three years after enrollment tipped from a white majority to a combination of other groups making up more than half of public schoolchildren.

What this newest nuance means is unclear.

At Palm Beach Central High in Wellington, recent graduate Jacqueline Romero said her Puerto Rican heritage had an influence on her reign as student body president.

"I was able to connect with more people," she said. "I fit in a lot easier than my friends who were shy being around people of other races," even though when she speaks Spanish, she said, "I definitely sound very gringa."

Education officials say the goals of teaching all children to read and write and calculate are still the same. But schools have had more than 50 years to get it right when it comes to teaching black students well, and some districts are still under federal government watch because they haven't gotten it right. Statewide, the achievement gap remains a chasm.

While Hispanic students also lag behind their white peers, they outperform black students in most categories: As a whole they're more likely to pass the FCAT and graduate from high school.

Perhaps tackling language and cultural differences is different than overcoming poverty and deep-rooted racism. Schools can take specific, concrete steps, and districts are required to accommodate foreign students and kids whose first language isn't English.

Also, many Hispanic students don't need any help learning English, said Steve Byrne, assistant director of the Palm Beach County School District's multicultural education department. While about 40,000 Palm Beach County students are Hispanic, only about 10,000 are classified as needing help with their English.

Hispanic students in the county range from political refugees who have been in the United States for just a few days to those of second- or third-generation families to students adopted from foreign countries who are Hispanic only on paper.

Byrne's department was created soon after a 1990 federal order to ensure students learning English get proper access to public education. Now, letters to parents go home in Spanish, English and other languages. At schools where many kids speak Spanish, or any language besides English, they get a special teacher who speaks the same thing. Many teachers, including all language arts teachers, have to take extra college classes to help them work better with non-English speakers.

The law isn't foolproof, though. It wasn't until last year that the court decree prompted the school district to stop using scores from the FCAT — a test given only in English — as a criterion for admission to some magnet programs.

While changes like that have come slowly, others have come faster, such as hiring more bilingual employees. When Byrne started working for the district years ago, Palm Beach County had a single bilingual guidance counselor. Now there are 60.

Byrne said he isn't daunted by the growing number of Hispanic children.  "It's business as usual," he said. "We just continue doing what we're doing."

That's not to say that what school districts are doing doesn't take tremendous effort. While Hispanic students now outnumber black children, their numbers aren't reflected in the state's teaching pool. Only 10 percent of teachers statewide are Hispanic. About 15 percent of the teaching force is black.

Every Hispanic teacher is a victory of sorts, said Raul Iribarren, a native of Cuba and principal of Palmetto Park Elementary in West Palm Beach. His school has the largest proportion of Hispanic students in the county.  "If you are a fairly decent teacher who speaks Spanish, you have a tremendous market," Iribarren said.

Teacher Gayle Zavala said she knows her presence makes a difference. Zavala, whose parents are from Mexico, teaches mentally disabled children at Gove Elementary in Belle Glade. She's also an on-the-fly translator for whomever stops her in the hall or office. She was inspired to teach after growing up near a hard-of-hearing uncle. They communicated through a jumble of English, Spanish and gestures, she said.

"I have children come up to me and say, 'Are you Spanish? Are you Mexican?' They won't say Hispanic or Latin, but they connect that I am a minority like them," she said. "I think it's important that they see me and hopefully are inspired to continue to stay in school."

At Gove, 61 percent of students are Hispanic. For parents of kids with disabilities, navigating the public school system is especially difficult. For parents who don't speak English, it can be impossible. Zavala recalled one parent, a widowed mother of a severely disabled girl who was from the Dominican Republic and worried about her daughter going on field trips.

"I finally convinced her it was OK for her daughter to go on field trips with us, even though she was severely handicapped. She would be able to enjoy it," said Zavala, who used her Spanish to put the woman at ease. Eventually, the mother relented and even joined the trips a few times.

"People ask, do your kids come back?" she said. "Do you feel proud of making somebody a great lawyer or a great doctor or this or that? That's not what life is necessarily about. It's what you can do with people in their everyday lives."

At Palmetto, about 72 percent of Iribarren's students are Hispanic.

"It's like a little United Nations here," he said. While students from Cuba dominate the group, there are also kids from Mexico, the Caribbean, Colombia and Argentina, to name a few. Of those, about three-fifths are still learning English.

Many of his teachers are bilingual, and being able to greet families and students in their own tongue helps make them comfortable, Iribarren said. Bilingual teachers are familiar with the lessons the students might have learned in their home countries and that some of them are different than an American curriculum.

The goal, however, is to steep them in English and persuade parents that their children must master their adopted country's language, but not at the expense of their own.

Universities

The Board of Governors recommended a $500 million budget increase for Florida's 11 state universities next year at a meeting Thursday, but the panel delayed a decision on a proposed 7 percent tuition increase for the 2007-08 school year.  ($500 million budget hike requested for Florida's 11  universities, Associated Press/South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

The budget recommendation to the governor and Legislature would increase university spending by more than 15 percent to $3.7 billion in the fiscal year starting July 1, 2007. It includes $150 million for enrollment growth, Chancellor Mark Rosenberg said after the meeting at the University of Central Florida.

A business plan estimates the system will grow by 56,000 students during the next five years, or more than 11,000 annually.

Additional dollars also are earmarked to help pay for new medical schools at Central Florida and Miami's Florida International University and to increase enrollment at existing medical schools, pay raises to make faculty salaries more competitive, and provide for health care, agricultural research and domestic security.

The board wanted more time, however, to decide how much, if any, of the budget increase should fall on students and their parents through tuition payments. The issue will be revisited during the board's Sept. 21 meeting at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

"There's room to grow tuition as a revenue source," said Rosenberg, who made the 7 percent recommendation. He contends it is a modest increase and Florida students would still get a bargain. They paid about $1,600 less than the national average -- $3,288 compared to $4,862 -- last year.

►  While anticipating 56,000 additional students on university campuses by 2012, the Florida Board of Governors is reluctant to begin committing to large tuition increases to meet the explosive diploma demand.  (Board delays vote on tuition increase, Tallahassee Democrat)

The board delayed on Thursday making a recommendation to the Legislature for a 7-percent tuition hike next year for in-state undergraduates. Meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the board postponed until September its vote on the tuition hike, included in an overall budget request submitted by Chancellor Mark Rosenberg as a means to improve quality and access at universities.

"For too long, the mantra of student lobbyists has been no tuition increase, no tuition increase," said Frank Harrison, the board's student member and University of South Florida student body president. "But decisions (on tuition) need to be made with student leaders." He said the delay was needed to analyze more closely how students' access to college might be impacted by a 7-percent tuition increase.

A 7 percent tuition increase would be about $77 extra per semester for a full-time student.

The board did approve a legislative budget request for next year that would provide a 12 percent or $403 million increase for the system as a whole, with each university receiving an 8 percent budget increase to spend at its discretion. That would bring the total universities' budget for 2007-08 to $3.8 billion. It has a $27.5 million hole, though, because of missing money that would have been raised by higher tuition.

"We either believe in the needs or we don't," said board vice chairwoman Sheila McDevitt, objecting to adopting a budget request without a specific tuition increase.

Also put on the table for long-term discussion by Rosenberg is the idea of up to 14 percent annual tuition increases to pull in-state undergraduate tuition up to the national average by 2012.

Current in-state tuition in Florida is a bargain compared with other states, and sweetened by free or reduced tuition under the state's Bright Futures scholarships based on students' high-school GPA's and college test scores.

The Legislature will make the final call. Despite the board's constitutional powers to oversee 11 state universities, lawmakers have retained the powers to designate how much in-state undergraduate tuition will rise.

In the upcoming academic year, in-state undergraduates are paying 3 percent more in tuition than last year. Since the late 1970s, tuition increases have ranged from zero to 16.5 percent, with 5.8 percent as the average.

Included in the legislative budget request for 2007-08 are issues such as a 1 percent faculty merit raises above statewide salary increases, $16 million to recruit and retain world-class professors and graduate students and $10 million to launch medical schools at Florida International University and UCF.

►  After years of double-digit tuition increases for resident undergraduate students at state universities, it was predictable that Florida would follow this fall's 3 percent increase - the lowest since 1994 - with a bigger hike the next year. The state Board of Governors gets started on that today when it considers a recommendation of 7 percent.  (Bright Futures at risk if budget future is bleak, Palm Beach Post editorial)

Yet even that increase would leave Florida below the national average for in-state tuition, which is $4,862 compared with the state's $3,288. To further illustrate the resident-education bargain, the $3,094 in tuition and fees for the University of Florida compares even more favorably with the national average of $6,172 for a flagship university.

Without more of a commitment from the Legislature, the 11 public universities have little option beyond tuition and fees for meeting their growing staffing, technology and enrollment needs. The Legislature financed only $55 million of the Board of Governors' $88 million request to cover enrollment growth this year, for example, when student numbers will surpass 300,000.

Each tuition increase, however, means more pressure on Bright Futures, which pays tuition for students who attend state universities. The Legislature created the awards, which use lottery money, in 1997. About 130,600 students received the scholarships during the 2004-05 school year at a cost of about $276 million. Last year's cost was $347 million. Since many parents see Bright Futures as an entitlement, there is political pressure to leave the program unchanged. But if the universities' main source of money is tuition increases, it will be hard not to change Bright Futures.

For example, legislators have left alone the relatively weak standards for qualifying at the lower end. Florida Academic Scholars get 100 percent of tuition and fees for a 3.5 high-school grade point average, 1270 SAT score and 75 hours of community service. The Florida Medallion Scholars Award pays 75 percent of tuition and fees at a university or 100 percent at a community college for a 3.0 GPA and 970 SAT score and no community service. The Florida Gold Seal Vocational Scholars Award pays 75 percent for students with a 3.0 GPA in core classes, a 3.5 GPA in a minimum of three vocational credits and at least 440 scores in both SAT math and reading.

In addition to the problem that the awards are based on percentage rather than lump sum is that they skew the state away from need-based aid, where Florida lags badly. Unless there's a change, such as basing the program in part on family income, the effect will be that the state will pay more and more into an entitlement program for those who don't need it, while shortchanging students who do. That makes it all the more important that the board recommends fixing a system that is out of whack due to the state's failure to support the universities.

►  Fifteen years ago, the University of Central Florida didn't have a single Latino sorority or fraternity. Today, with Hispanic student enrollment more than quadruple what it was in 1990, there are four.   (Colleges gaining Hispanic flavor, St. Petersburg Times)

"You can definitely tell that the school is trying to welcome Hispanic students," said 20-year-old Sasha Perez-Loor, vice president of recruitment and expansion for UCF's Diversified Greek Council and a member of UCF's first Latina sorority.

UCF now has 5,500 Hispanic students - second in the state only to Florida International University. The University of Florida and the University of South Florida aren't far behind.

And the surge is more than just a reflection of the state's rising Hispanic population.  Hispanic enrollment in Florida's 11 universities is nearly triple what it was in 1990, going from less than 17,000 to 46,520 this past fall, according to the latest figures. That's a 174 percent increase. During the same period, Florida's population of Hispanic residents increased by 90 percent.

The boom in Latino students also dramatically outpaced the state university system's enrollment growth, which was 60 percent between 1990 and 2005.  The result: Hispanic students now represent 16.2 percent of overall enrollment in Florida universities - nearly mirroring the state's resident Hispanic population of 19 percent. Latino Greek organizations and Hispanic student groups that didn't exist a few years ago continue to grow. Multicultural events on campuses draw big crowds.

Administrators say the changes prove the effectiveness of their aggressive recruiting efforts, from bilingual financial aid packets to summer campus tours for Hispanic middle school students.  "The growth has been very intentional," said Zina Evans, UF's admissions director and assistant provost. "It definitely is a conscious effort."

Those efforts are intensifying.  This spring, legislators set aside $120-million for college financial aid and $6.5-million in scholarships for first-generation college students - money that university system Chancellor Mark Rosenberg said will strengthen minority recruiting.

Today in Orlando, the board that oversees Florida universities will consider a request for millions more in taxpayer dollars to improve retention and graduation rates at USF, UCF and Florida International University.

Statistics show that graduation and retention rates are lower among minority students than among white students. In many cases it is because these students are the first in their family to attend college, and they face financial limitations that require juggling classes with jobs, Rosenberg said.

"There's no doubt that retention is more difficult for some of these students," he said. "We have to focus not just on getting them in but on keeping them in and getting them through."

Before becoming chancellor, Rosenberg was a longtime administrator at FIU, which traditionally housed the majority of Hispanic students.  FIU, in Miami, still has the highest number in the state - more than 20,000 - but no longer has the majority. More than half of the state's Hispanic students attend institutions like USF, FSU and FAU.

FAU, just north of Broward County in Boca Raton, had the most dramatic increase. There were just 830 Hispanic students in 1990. Today there are more than 4,000.

USF's Hispanic enrollment of roughly 4,500 represents an almost 150 percent increase from 1990, and administrators expect this fall's numbers to be even higher.  "We are a very big community on campus," said USF student Jeanette Garcia of Fort Lauderdale, incoming president of the Latin American Student Association. The group's membership more than doubled since she joined in spring 2005, to more than 100 students.  "I can see it in the faces when I walk around campus," said Garcia, 20.

USF admissions director Bob Spattig said the institution's growth is a result of both long-running programs and new initiatives.

The state's Bright Futures scholarship program, which pays full or partial tuition for tens of thousands of students who meet SAT and GPA requirements, helps Hispanic students who could not otherwise afford college.

ENLACE is a 5-year-old partnership involving USF and Hillsborough Community College that helps usher the county's Hispanic middle and high school students into college.

USF now publishes financial aid guides in both Spanish and English.  And for the past year, officials have recruited heavily from high schools with large populations of minority students who are the first in their families to go to college.

Janice Finney, associate FSU admissions director, said FSU recruits heavily in South Florida, which she calls fertile ground.  Hispanic students at the Tallahassee school number almost 4,000 - compared to about 1,200 in 1990.  "As you get more and more Hispanic students, they go home and talk about FSU with their friends and family," Finney said.

FSU has a recruiter of Hispanic descent who speaks fluent Spanish, which helps establish relationships with parents.

"So many of these students are first-generation students and they need a helping hand," Finney said. "We know they can be successful, and we help them get there."

UF hosts a Hispanic student recruitment conference every February and March for 7th-graders through high school juniors and their parents, Evans said. Every summer, high school counselors send their top Hispanic students to a two-day campus program where they learn about scholarships and financial aid.

"The more these students are aware of the opportunities that exist, the more students will apply," Evans said. "We need to be in there now, and we need to be in there early."

State Rankings Show Florida Low on Education Spending

A new ranking of the 50 states shows where Florida places its priorities.  (STATE RANKINGS:  Higher education goes begging, Florida Times-Union editorial)

The state ranks near the top in spending on police protection, but dead last in higher education spending. Florida also ranks 40th in spending per pupil for kindergarten through 12th grade.

There are similarities in the rankings of Florida and Georgia.

Health: Florida ranks third in percentage of population that is uninsured; Georgia is No. 8.

Police protection: Florida spends much more on police protection per capita (No. 5) than Georgia (No. 32). There is a similar ranking for fire protection.

Federal aid received: Both states rank near the bottom. Florida is No. 47; Georgia is No. 48.

Total revenue: Georgia ranks near the bottom (No. 49), while Florida is No. 31.

Environment: Florida ranks fourth in environmental spending per capita, while Georgia ranks 24th.

At the same time, Florida ranks No. 6 in superfund sites, while Georgia is 22nd.

Education: Georgia ranks 22nd in spending per pupil for K-12, while Florida is No. 40. In higher education, Florida is No. 50, while Georgia is No. 41.

Economy: Florida ranks No. 5 in employment growth and No. 6 in economic growth. Georgia ranks No. 12 in employment growth and No. 14 in economic growth.

Source: Governing magazine.

Florida KidCare Tries to Recoup from Enrollment Losses

KidCare, the state's subsidized health insurance program for children, is making a comeback after years of confusing policy shifts left hundreds of thousands without medical coverage.  (Smoother KidCare Aims for Rebound, Tampa Tribune)

There is no longer a waiting list, which, two years ago topped 70,000 children. Enrollment is open year-round, instead of a 30-day period as in the past. Applications, of only two pages, are among the simplest in the nation and can be completed online.

KidCare includes Healthy Kids, MediKids and Children's Medical Services and insures children ages 1 to 18.

At its high point in April 2004, there were 336,689 children enrolled in KidCare. As of Aug. 1, there were 224,717 children enrolled, including 11,610 in Hillsborough County, 7,120 in Pinellas County; 5,148 in Pasco County and 5,669 in Polk County.

"It's the single most powerful program that can help us fulfill the enormous potential of our children," said U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, who attended a news conference Thursday with other advocates at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Tampa.  Davis, D-Tampa, recalled a recent meeting with the mayor of Miami Gardens, who told him there were children in elementary school wearing dentures.  "This haunts me," Davis said. "And the tragedy is this is unnecessary."

An estimated 374,000 uninsured children qualify for low-cost or free health insurance who are not enrolled in any subsidized programs.

Some parents are embarrassed to admit they need help, advocates said. Others don't know what's available.

"Every child in the state of Florida - in this whole country - should have access to health care," said state Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor. "That's a no-brainer."

Davis, Bilirakis and other local officeholders took part in a campaign sponsored by Florida Covering Kids and Families, a project of The Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at the University of South Florida, St. Joseph's and Amerigroup Corp.

Past program troubles, such as the closing of enrollment for 18 months, cost KidCare hundreds of thousands of children, whose parents dropped out of the program or gave up attempting to apply.

"We need to build it back," said Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor, whose mother, former Education Commissioner Betty Castor, helped start KidCare in 1997 with then-Gov. Lawton Chiles.  Chiles took the model to President Clinton, who turned it into a national program.

Organizers want to educate parents and the community at large about how easy it is to sign up for KidCare, though approval of documentation including income can take more than two months.

► In Florida today, more than 500,000 children have no health insurance.  (374,000 children in Florida qualify for health programs, St. Petersburg Times)

Yet most of them - about 374,000 - qualify for state health programs such as Medicaid, health officials said Thursday at a news conference to urge parents to sign up their children.

"These programs are designed for working families, who often believe they make too much money to qualify," said Melanie Hall, chairwoman of the Covering Kids and Families Coalition and manager of the St. Joseph's Children's Advocacy Center.

In fact, a family of four could make as much as $40,000 and be eligible for Florida KidCare programs, which include Medicaid for children, MediKids, Healthy Kids and Children's Medical Services Network.

Medicaid is free. Other programs charge small premiums, generally about $15 to $20 per month.

Part of the problem is that many parents believe that they can't enroll their children, advocates said. Enrollment levels in Healthy Kids and similar programs have plummeted since three years ago, when the state froze enrollment in the program during a budget crunch.

In spring 2004, more than 336,000 kids were enrolled. That number now stands at around 197,000. Another 1.2-million children are in Medicaid.

One mother enrolled in KidCare urged others Thursday to sign up. Brandon resident Mia Dorton said she didn't think her family could get state help since her husband's new job offered insurance for her family. But it would cost $700 a month to put her and their three children on his policy - something the family simply couldn't afford.

"You live in constant fear of your child having to go to the hospital," she said.  The family enrolled in KidCare and pays about $20 per month, she said.  "It has revolutionized our life," she said.

►  Health insurance, or the lack of it, may be a huge and growing problem across Florida and the U.S., but the news is not all bad: Since 1997, the percentage of children lacking health insurance has dropped, according to a study released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  (In Florida, more kids' health is insured, Orlando Sentinel)

"Usually when we do these reports, there's an increase in the uninsured. It's fun to do one where there's a decrease, especially since it's dealing with kids," said Lynn Blewett, director of the State Health Access Data Assistance Center in Minneapolis, which conducted the foundation's study.

The percentage of uninsured children dropped 20.5 percent nationally and 13.3 percent in Florida, according to the study. The nation still has about 8 million uninsured children, however, including more than 600,000 in Florida.

Blewett credited two government programs -- Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, authorized by Congress in 1997 -- for the improvement.

During the same period in which Florida children covered by private insurance plans dropped 9 percent, the percentage of the state's children covered by public insurance increased 42 percent.

"We're seeing a drop in employer-sponsored [health] insurance," Blewett said. "At least for kids, we have a safety net."

The study's release was timed to the opening of the school year, with the foundation promoting a nationwide effort to enroll eligible children in public health-coverage programs.

SCHIP was modeled on a federally backed pilot program first tried in Volusia County in 1992, said Rose Naff, executive director of the Florida Healthy Kids Corp. Her agency administers Florida KidCare, which is Florida's version of SCHIP.

More than 220,000 Florida children are enrolled in KidCare, said Naff, who expects to receive another 80,000 applications during the next two months. KidCare applications are going out to all public-school children, she said, and as many as 38,000 children will be added to the program.

Paul Duncan, who heads the University of Florida's Department of Health Services Research, Management and Policy, called the improved health-coverage rates among children "a glimmer of good news" compared with the overall trend.

The total number of uninsured Floridians has gone up since 1999, from 2.1 million to 2.9 million, he said. "When you do well with kids and that badly overall, then you have to be doing really badly among adults."

In one sense, Florida kids aren't doing so well: While the percentage of children without health insurance in the state dropped from 17.6 percent in 1997 to 15.3 percent in 2004, because of population growth the number of uninsured children increased by more than 50,000 during the same period.

"Things didn't go downhill quite as steeply for kids in recent years," Duncan said, "because public rather than private programs picked up the slack."

"Sunshine Won't Pay the Bills"

David Flintom keeps looking for ways to cut his expenses. The St. Petersburg resident hangs his wet laundry on a clothesline, no longer has cable TV and drives a motorcycle instead of a pickup. But it never seems like enough, so he may leave Florida.  (Sunshine won't pay the bills, St. Petersburg Times)

Awilda Ortiz, a 23-year-old disabled nurse, thinks "every single day" about leaving the state because of increasing costs and the struggle to pay her bills.

And then there's Harold and Barbara Polsky. The Port Richey couple that launched an organized protest to the rising cost of homeowners insurance have made a decision. It's time to go.  "We've put our house up for sale," said Barbara Polsky, who is moving to Roanoke, Va. "There is no way median income people can meet those kinds of costs."

The rising cost of living in Florida, long a paradise for people seeking rest from their labors and the high prices in the North, is driving some residents to states such as Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee.

It is no mass exodus, and people are still coming to Florida, but higher insurance, utilities and property taxes in particular are leading some to seek pastures where green means more money in their pockets.

"We've seen a change in the relative attractiveness of Florida," said Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wachovia Bank. "We've seen some evidence that people moving out of Florida has increased."  Moving companies are offering the first look, he said.

United Van Lines Inc., one of the nation's largest moving firms, has seen a steady increase in shipments heading out of Florida in the past five years.  In 2001, 58 percent of United's Florida jobs were coming to the state while 42 percent were leaving. By the end of 2005, outbound shipments rose to about 46 percent. The trend continued for the first six months of this year.

Tennessee real estate agent Sheila Tallant says she is hearing from Floridians nearly every day.  Tallant, who focuses on the Crossville and Pikeville areas about an hour to 1¹/₂ hours north of Chattanooga, says 80 to 90 percent of their inquiries come from Florida. And 50 percent of her office's sales come from Florida.

"They're just saying insurance and taxes are just getting overwhelming in Florida," she said, noting you can buy a single-family home on 5 acres in the Crossville and Pikeville areas for $120,000.

Bill Moore, director of sales at Heartwood Communities in Tifton, Ga., where homes can be found for $130,000 to $140,000, said he too is focused on Florida.  "I'm now doing nothing but soliciting in the Florida market," Moore said. He has had 600 inquiries from Floridians about his housing development. Ten percent of those yielded visits to Heartwood, about 60 miles from the Florida line, off Interstate 75.

Vitner from Wachovia notes that at $239,000, the median price of a home in the Tampa Bay area is about $8,000 above the national median.

Other economists echo concerns about Florida losing residents.  "The middle class is under a lot of strain," said Scott Brown, an economist with Raymond James Financial Inc., in St. Petersburg. "I heard there are people leaving Florida because of home prices. ... It's not just the price of a home but the insurance costs, the property taxes."

Despite those who leave, Florida's steady growth is expected to continue, making the state the third largest in the country soon, passing New York.

Statistics from the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida show nearly 1,000 more people move to Florida every day than leave.  "If you look at the population estimates for the state of Florida, they're increasing," said Christopher McCarty, director of the University of Florida Survey Research Center. "There may be people leaving, but there are people moving in to take their place - and more than that."

Still, those who have remained - up and down the socioeconomic ladder - continue to feel the pressure. 

"Everybody is having to make tough decisions," said Cliff Smith, the interim director of the Pinellas County Department of Human Services.  Smith's agency had a 40 percent increase in requests for assistance with rent and utility bills in July over the same period last year. His office's counterpart in Hillsborough saw 25 percent more people during that time.

Awilda Ortiz of St. Petersburg is among those who sought help. She relies on $800-per-month disability payments from an accident to cover her mortgage, insurance, utilities and other bills.  "It's not easy," said Ortiz, standing outside the Pinellas County Department of Human Services office in St. Petersburg.

David Flintom moved to St. Petersburg from Seattle four years ago and bought a two-story house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Since then the 36-year-old warehouse manager of a household products and building supply store has seen his insurance rise from $1,000 a year to $2,300. His utilities have doubled to about $200 a month. And it costs $70 a week to fill up his pickup.

Flintom has tried to save money by riding a used motorcycle that takes $7 a week to fill. He doesn't have a home telephone, and he doesn't go out with his friends much anymore.  "I love the house," he said. "I really don't want to let it go. But every month I just keep getting beat down."  So Flintom is thinking of leaving.

From their home in Pasco County, Harold and Barbara Polsky helped lead an effort to push the state to fix the state's insurance troubles through Homeowners Against Citizens. Citizens is the state-run insurer of last resort. The couple left the organization about two weeks ago amid disputes with other board members on policy issues.

Because of their location, the Polskys were required to carry homeowners, wind and flood insurance, which rose from about $1,700 a few years ago to about $3,000, they said. And new premiums could reach $8,000 or more, they said.  "I like Florida, but not that well," 64-year-old Barbara Polsky said.

She and her husband decided to leave the state rather than continue struggling.  They are moving to Roanoke, Virginia's largest city west of Washington, D.C., and where 49-year-old Harold Polsky's company, the Home Shopping Network, has an office.

The median home price in Roanoke is $150,000, according to Wachovia economists. And the Virginia Bureau of Insurance says homeowners insurance starts at $315 a year in Roanoke and can go as high as $1,200 for pricier policies.

Added benefits of Roanoke: towering mountains around the city, which sits in a valley, and no hurricanes.  "I heard it's beautiful," Barbara Polsky said. "I hope it is."

►  He was known as Gator on KISS Country, 99.9 FM.  (Area sees middle class exodus, Miami Herald)

But these days, Kevin Kilpatrick is living in the land of catfish and grits rather than gators and bagels. Last November, he moved to Tennessee from Plantation.  ''I just wanted to get away from the congestion, the idiots driving,'' he said. ``And we won't have to worry about hurricanes anymore.''

Kilpatrick, 37, had a good life in South Florida, but a new career as an independent voice artist meant he was free to relocate.  The home price differences made the decision a no-brainer. In Broward, where he was renting a house from his in-laws, the median home price is more than $377,000.  In southern Tennessee, about an hour from Nashville, he has 10 acres and a 4,000-square-foot home built two years ago. The price: $280,000.

''We just felt we could have a better quality of life'' by moving, he said.

There are always people moving in and out of South Florida, which overall continues to grow. But in the last year -- too recent to appear on radars like federal Census data -- experts are seeing powerful anecdotal evidence of an outbound migration trend.

Indeed, 25 years after Time magazine's infamous ''Paradise Lost?'' cover story, South Florida is once again losing its allure for the middle class.  This time, it isn't high crime and cocaine cowboys driving people off. Rather, the trouble in paradise is the quality of life -- everything from grinding traffic to costly homes and gale-force increases in windstorm-insurance premiums. It's prodding growing numbers of people in their prime earning years to conclude -- correctly -- that the smartest economic decision they can make is to leave South Florida.

Lisa Kirkham is an example. She recently left Cutler Ridge for Maryland. A new marriage was one reason, but other factors had her looking to leave before she met her husband.  ''There are days when it has taken me two hours to go 20 miles'' to work at a cargo airline. Meanwhile, her mortgage payment kept rising because of windstorm insurance. ``I don't know how people can afford it.''

A recent study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, found that many apparently can't.  Middle-income neighborhoods, as a proportion of all metropolitan neighborhoods, have been declining nationally -- to 41 percent, from 58 percent in 1970.

The study found that Miami-Dade County had the nation's fifth-lowest proportion of middle-income households, barely ahead of perennial losers like New York City and Los Angeles. Broward fared nearly as badly, ranking 82nd. Palm Beach County placed 80th.

Although the study was based on 2000 Census data, in all likelihood the problem has worsened in the interim, said Alan Berube, Brookings' director of metro studies.  ''The run-up in housing prices in South Florida is comparable to a lot of coastal areas,'' Berube said. ``As a family moves up, there's nowhere to go but out.''

As one indication of middle-class discontent, public-school enrollment has been declining -- in Miami-Dade since 2002 and in Broward last year for the first time in more than 20 years.

Certainly, South Florida remains an immensely appealing location. And some professionals think the problem may be overestimated.  ''I personally don't know anyone who has left,'' said John Beauchamp, a vice president in Fort Lauderdale's Intercoastal Realty. Beauchamp does think high real estate taxes are a growing issue, but of home prices, he said: ``I'm a positive person, and my answer is, there's a price to paradise.''

But economists and urban planners worry that the high price could render South Florida a stratified community, where the rich live well, the poor get by, and the middle class get out.

''From a policy perspective, we need to revisit the norm,'' said Jim Tarlton, head of the Broward Alliance economic development agency. ``Things have changed, the dynamics have changed, from when our norms were established.''

For instance, the South Florida norm has always been to ''pay in sunshine.'' Translation: The area depended on low-wage service jobs, on the theory that there would always be arrivals who would work cheap for the weather. With today's economy, that's not possible.

Also, the Save Our Homes initiative of a few years ago tied property taxes to a home's purchase price, and caps the increases forever after.  That has unintentionally resulted in a situation where someone who wants to move would pay such a high tax bill on a new home that it might make more sense to leave South Florida altogether. On a $500,000 house, for instance, property taxes can easily surpass $12,000 a year -- or $230 a week.

''The fact that people can't move from one house to another because of the way property taxes are structured will impact us,'' Tarlton said. ``It impacts the workforce directly, and without that workforce, it makes it very hard for companies to keep their cost structures down.''

Companies that can't keep their cost structures down are likely to move to locations that afford them that ability.

Lauren and Julio Ascensios are an example of the middle-class families caught in the South Florida squeeze. She is a project manager for a commercial real estate company; he owns an Internet photography business.  Four years ago, they sold their South Beach condo and bought a 1935 two-story Mediterranean just a block and a half from Biscayne Bay in northeast Miami.

But now, with a baby, they are concerned about schools. Although they have equity in their home, it won't help them move locally because prices have risen across the region. Staying where they are could mean expensive private schools.  ''You're squeezed from every side, and you're trying to decide which way to go,'' Lauren said.

Now their house is on the market and they are planning to move to North Carolina, where Lauren says she can cut expenses 50 percent. ''If we didn't have kids or intend to have more, we could do Miami,'' she said. ``We can work and battle it out. But we want that quality of life for our children.''

Worth noting, of course, is that quality of life isn't just about affordable housing.

''I find it to be an angry place,'' said Adele Paul, a Coconut Grove optometrist, who operates a practice with her optician husband, David Fitzgerald. ``We went to Amelia Island last year, and everyone was so nice.''  So the couple are selling their home and building a house in Fernandina Beach.

Paul's situation illustrates why powerful economic forces are prying loose South Florida's middle class.  First, there are thousands of households with formidable amounts of home equity. Paul and her husband could have roughly $500,000 in profit from their home, even after accounting for renovations.

Second, there is the property-tax jump if you move.

Third, even those fortunate to have an affordable mortgage at a fixed rate are being pummeled by a rapidly rising cost of living. Windstorm insurance is one example. In the case of Paul, the tiny building where she practices optometry has seen its assessment rise to more than $1 million, from $345,000.

''We were $8,000 short on our escrow account, and if you're running a small business, that's a lot of money,'' she said. ``I can't just charge higher fees because insurance and government reimbursements are fixed.''

Moving to Nassau County in northern Florida has also provided a couple of unintended economic dividends. ''Malpractice insurance is two-thirds what it is here,'' she said. ``And car insurance goes way down.''

A few key statistics show how quickly, and powerfully, the economic winds have shifted in South Florida.

In 2001, the Florida Association of Realtors estimated that the median South Florida home cost $158,000. That was about 7 percent more than the national median. With 10 percent down, that would have meant a monthly payment of $898.80 for principal and interest at prevailing mortgage rates then.

Today's median home price of $378,000 locally is 73 percent above the U.S. average. It also means that principal and interest total $2,150 monthly.

And that's after a 10 percent down payment -- $37,800.  ''The hardest thing for them is coming up with a down payment,'' said Kimberly August, a mortgage planner with RegionsBank.

August noted that mortgage payments are already on the rise for households with adjustable-rate mortgages. But even families with fixed-rate home loans are finding their housing costs soaring, she said, because of skyrocketing insurance premiums, which have nearly doubled in the last several years and will nearly double again if proposed rate increases are approved.  ''Insurance is taking the place of your rates going up,'' August said.

Could housing prices deflate?

In theory, inflation in housing can't outpace income growth forever.  The reality, however, suggests it can, absent a disaster. In a recent survey of the U.S. housing market, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University said the imbalances in affordability don't self-correct very quickly -- and the solutions are often worse than the problem.

''In most cases, it takes significant job losses -- or a combination of overbuilding, modest job losses and population outflow -- to drive house prices down substantially,'' the Harvard study concluded.

Although there is growing evidence of overbuilding in condos, it isn't clear whether that is the answer to the housing affordability problem. In fact, even as the new buildings soar, sales of existing condos were down more than 30 percent in June in both Miami-Dade and Broward.

The other factors that Harvard said will cool off housing prices are not factors. The labor market is drum-tight, for instance, and the population continues to grow with influxes from Latin America and the handful of cities, such as Boston and New York, that still make South Florida look like a relative bargain.

Those who stay find that the home-equity windfall doesn't actually produce a higher living standard.

''The problem with real estate is, yours goes up but what you want to buy also goes up,'' said Oscar Aleman, 43. He and his wife are selling their one-bedroom North Miami condo and teaming up with his parents. They hope to find a triplex, which would allow them to rent the third unit for rental income.

Even working two jobs -- in security and as a medical technician -- he is having a hard time finding something affordable. ''Basically, [it's] the only way people without a lot of money can afford a mortgage,'' he said.

John Bryan Page, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Miami, said the kinds of compromises being made by Aleman's family are common in cities with stratospheric housing costs.

''To look at what kinds of adaptations take place, you need to look at places like San Francisco and New York City where people have been living [in over-priced markets] for a long time,'' he said.

They have roommates or put another generation under the roof. Commutes grow longer, traffic gets worse. ''People are opting for living down in Homestead and places they can afford,'' Page said. ``If I had that kind of commute, I would slash my wrists.''

Scott Leidel took another approach.  He drove off.  A native of Miami, he found himself priced out of his hometown. ''It was either move to another place and pay off all our debts, or stay in Miami and get further in debt,'' said the 28-year-old computer technician.

He sold his Sweetwater condo for $190,000 -- earning $80,000 on it in just two years -- and decamped to a Chicago suburb. His new abode is twice as big as his old condo and cost $20,000 less.

''It's kind of that Coral Gables-South Miami feel wherever you go,'' he said of his new community. ``We have a friend who just bought a home for $500,000 up here and that's a lot of money, but his home is the size of one of those Star Island homes.''

The Insurance Mess

As Floridians face skyrocketing premiums, thousands of policy cancellations and a threatened state economy, Gov. Jeb Bush's insurance-crisis committee held its first meeting Tuesday.  (Insurance-crisis team meets, Tallahassee Democrat)

One of the first things it will do is take aim at the Democratic plan for relief.

Any emergency measures, such as proposed state commercial insurance pools, won't bring lower premiums for consumers. ''That will help,'' Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings said, ''but that doesn't solve it.''

Bush charged the panel to come up with solutions to the state's insurance woes and make recommendations as early as November. Consumers are unlikely to see changes in rates and availability until next year.

Jennings, who chairs the committee, promised Tuesday that ''everything is on the table,'' including the Democratic proposal.

Bush's office asked insurance regulators to scrutinize the chief proposal offered by campaigning Democrats. A draft of that analysis concludes the plan would have resulted in huge deficits in the past two hurricane-heavy years.  ''They should be able to defend their ideas,'' Bush said. ''If it's wrong, admit it. What we shouldn't do is allow a one-dimensional discussion to take place.''

House Minority Leader Dan Gelber accused the agency of ''election-year chicanery'' on an issue that polls show four out of five Floridians identify as the state's most pressing issue.

Candidates and parties both are pressed to come up with solutions.  ''It has everything to do with the elections,'' agreed House Insurance Chairman Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, a member of Bush's panel.

The House Democratic plan, embraced by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rod Smith, would have the state cover the first $100,000 in hurricane claims.

That would relieve private insurers of the bulk of catastrophic losses - an estimated 85 percent of the burden, according to a draft analysis by the Office of Insurance Regulation.  Smith promises it would lower rates.

But the draft analysis of the plan by the Office of Insurance Regulation estimates the plan would have saddled Florida taxpayers with as much as a $28 billion deficit if it had been in place during the 2004 and 2005 storms.

''They're creating an artificial scenario that is trying to kill the idea,'' said Gelber. ''You don't look at two years, you look at five, 15- and 75-year models.''

The OIR review does not account for reserves that would build up in non-storm years, or the savings in premiums by not having to generate a profit.

''This is an absolutely defective analysis that looks like it was written by the insurance industry,'' Gelber said. ''They are definitely afraid of this issue and will do everything they can to convince voters the only way to go forward is just to submit to the will of the insurance industry.''

Both Bush and Jennings said partisan politics was not involved in singling the Democratic proposal for scrutiny. Jennings said she asked for the analysis because the Democratic plan is the only one out there with enough details to study.  ''Everything else is pretty nebulous,'' she said.

Voters, for their part, are impatient.  ''I haven't heard anybody come up with a viable solution to this,'' groused Paul Marpil, who can't find affordable coverage for his feed store in Malabar.

''You want to get elected governor of this state, at least come out and say I've got some pretty good ideas on how to correct this. ... I'll cross party lines for whoever I think will do the best job.''

Consumers express their own frustration that after three insurance-dominated legislative sessions, the situation grows worse, not better.  ''My No. 1 question is how did our elected officials allow us to get to this point? Because it's extremely scary,'' said Sarah Vandergriff, who owns a $5 million shopping center in Titusville.  Her windstorm premium - which went from $20,000 to $120,000 - threatens to put her out of business, Vandergriff said.

►  Florida's teetering property insurance industry got what it wanted this year from the state: new power to raise consumer prices.  (Insurance companies shower Fla. politicians with donations to get rate hikes, South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

The Legislature crafted the industry incentives as insurers poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into election campaigns of lawmakers, state political parties and candidates for statewide offices.

Insurers now can automatically raise prices for homeowner coverage 10 percent without any state review. And to make Florida even more enticing to property insurers, legislators tossed in $250 million in loans for insurers willing to expand in this state.

The changes have been hailed across the country by the insurance industry as a big help to do business in a hurricane-battered state.&n