For years, GOP lawmakers in Florida have been on a crusade to undermine public education in this state.
They’ve run off so many teachers that vacancies are rampant. Even when Gov. Ron DeSantis offered military veterans a fast-track path to fill teaching posts, most vets took a hard pass, saying they weren’t any more interested in being underpaid and disrespected than existing teachers.
Florida teacher shortage: Veterans take pass on filling the gap | Commentary
But lawmakers didn’t stop there. They also turned public schools into political battlefields, censoring books, whitewashing history lessons and passing laws about pronoun usage — instead of focusing on the basics of learning.
Not surprisingly, test scores have plummeted. Florida’s SAT ranking has dropped to 47th in America. And the state’s eighth-graders just posted the lowest math and reading scores in 20 years on the nation’s benchmark tests.
Florida SAT scores rank 47th — and still dropping | Commentary
Well, apparently the assault on public education isn’t over.
In their latest attempt to make public schools as unattractive as possible, Republicans in Tallahassee are pushing to slash funding for the Advanced Placement (AP) classes.
Yes, they are targeting one of the state’s most popular programs — one that serves the state’s brightest students and helps some of the poorer ones get a much-needed head start on college.
And it’s not just AP classes. As the Orlando Sentinel recently reported, GOP lawmakers also want to cut funding for other university-prep programs like the AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education), International Baccalaureate and dual enrollment.
It would basically cut in half the amount of state funding local districts receive for each student who successfully passes one of those courses. That last part is one of the most galling aspects of this proposal. It slashes funding to a program that only pays out when students succeed.
While lawmakers are operating in a political bubble in Tallahassee, the Orlando Sentinel’s education reporter, Steven Walker, decided to seek out the kind of students who could be affected. Not surprisingly, he found the impacts could be devastating.
He found students like Anthony Searcy, a senior at Colonial High School whose mother died and whose father is a machinist. Searcy works up to 30 hours a week at McDonald’s to help make ends meet and is counting on the credits he earns through the AICE program, coupled with the state’s Bright Futures scholarship, to help him attend Valencia College tuition-free.
Those are the kinds of kids that lawmakers are targeting.
‘Pulling the rug’: Cuts to AP, other classes will hurt low-income students, educators say
I’ve covered a lot of Tallahassee’s wars on education through the years, and I’m not sure I can recall one that has been more widely panned by parents, students and citizens on both sides of the aisle.
Normally, there are some hyper-partisans who will defend any attempt to undermine public education. But I haven’t heard from anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to specifically target AP classes. Because it’s not.
This is simply a way to make public schools less attractive — while offering universal vouchers for families to instead choose private schools, which you can bet won’t be cutting these popular college-prep offerings. Why? Because parents and students want them.
Republican lawmakers argue that, while they would be cutting funding for successful AP scores, they would boost education funding overall. But that’s just another shell game — much like the state’s so-called “Education Lottery,” which was supposed to boost education funding, but really just gave Tallahassee politicians more money to shuffle elsewhere.
The state’s own legislative analysts say the AP cuts could amount to more than $200 million. And the Florida Education Association concluded that other increases in school spending won’t compensate for the cuts combined with inflation, saying “it’s a cut by another name.”
The bills that would revise education funding with less money earmarked for AP classes (SB 7030 and SB 2510) received bipartisan support in the Senate. Locally, Carlos Guillermo-Smith, D-Orlando, was the only senator to vote no. In the House, however, Democrats have been fighting back.
If you care about this issue, let your lawmakers know. Legislators’ contact info can be found at www.leg.state.fl.us. You can also email the governor at [email protected]
Tell them to keep full funding for AP and other college-prep courses and not to play any more shell games with education money.
And if you don’t care about this issue or truly want lawmakers to cut AP funding and generally further degrade public schools in Florida, you probably don’t need to do a thing. Because that seems to be where this Legislature is already headed … once again.
Originally Published: April 22, 2025 at 12:42 PM EDT
