The Impact of Standards-Based Reform in Duval County, Florida: 1999-2002

The major challenge that school districts face is to improve the learning of all students, not just in individual schools, but across the entire system of schools. Duval County, Florida has embarked on a remarkable journey to implement standards-based reform in schools throughout the district with the intent to systematically improve teaching and learning across its 150 schools. In this study, the authors examine the impact of Duval's efforts by documenting the county's changes in state test performance in comparison to other, similar Florida counties. Through these analyses, they explore the hypothesis that Duval's strategies for increasing the quality of teaching and learning across its system of schools is paying off in terms of faster gains in student learning relative to other counties within the state. They examine elementary and middle school reading, writing, and mathematics results from the spring of 1999 to the spring of 2002 on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) in Duval relative to seven other counties in Florida. The comparison counties include Broward, Hillsborough, Lee, Orange, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Polk, which were the most reasonably comparable counties in Florida. Overall, results provide evidence that Duval's efforts to systematically change the practices of teachers and school leaders across its system are improving the achievement of its elementary schools at a faster rate than in other comparable districts. In middle schools, to date, growth in performance has been comparable to that of other counties. Includes two appendices. (Contains 13 tables, 6 figures, and 1 footnote.)