The Bush|Brogan A+ Plan
Eliminating Social Promotion
What is Social Promotion?
Social promotion is the practice of advancing students to the next grade level without regard to their academic achievement. Obviously this is detrimental to the student's future. As we raised expectations for our students, we also eliminated social promotion. The argument has been made that ending social promotion will hurt little Johnny’s self esteem. Self esteem is very important in a child’s development. But learning a year’s worth of knowledge—learning to read, write and to calculate math—is a whole lot more important for Little Johnny. In the long run, little Johnny’s self image is going to be far stronger if he gains the power of knowledge. The idea of ending social promotion is not to have 15-year-old kids in the third grade; the idea is to enable third graders to acquire the remedial help that they need in order to gain a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s time.
Rewarding Well-Performing Schools
Another aspect of the A+ Plan is to reward schools for educational improvement. Every school in Florida receives $100 per student when individual grades go up, or when a school is A rated. This idea also met with controversy, though its purpose is clear. We reward success. If an F-rated school improves its grade to D, it will receive a grant of $100 per student. For a middle school with a thousand students, that is a lot of money. The principal, and the school advisory committees that primarily include parents, decide how that money is spent. If schools continue to show progress, they continue to receive additional funding.
Quality teachers and merit pay go hand in hand. Merit pay – a term describing performance-related pay – was of utmost importance to Bush and Brogan. After all, compensation is a key element in a policy that holds promise for reform. Even before 1999 leading authorities were realizing that single-salary teacher pay neglected the fact that some teachers have more competing opportunities outside of teaching and took no account of the proven knowledge that research shows teachers are responsive to monetary incentives. The A+ Plan expanded on this notion by requiring that teachers receive an addition 5% added to overall income if they met criteria. This idea, along with many others before and after it, has been faced with criticism and likewise is constantly readjusted each year.
