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Elia's Sweet Deal Is No Achievement

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2008

It has been widely thought that Hillsborough County School Superintendent MaryEllen Elia's contract gives her a hefty bonus for student achievement. She earned a $37,620 bonus this year alone, but look close and you will see it is only partly grounded in student gains.

Elia earned $13,600 for each school that achieved Annual Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. She got another $10,100 - at $100 a pop - for the 101 Hillsborough Schools that rated an "A" on the FCAT.

That's fair enough.

But she also was given nearly $8,000 for getting more students, particularly black students, to participate in advanced placement classes and to take AP exams - though the number of students who actually did well enough on the test to earn college credit did not improve.

Participation shouldn't be confused with achievement.

The Florida Department of Education also likes to pretend high schools are better than they are because more kids are signing up for advanced courses. One Texas study showed that students who merely participated in AP courses had a better chance of graduation from college than those who did not take AP classes. But the same study showed the best chance of college success was among students who actually passed AP tests.

In Hillsborough, just 45 percent of the more than 15,000 students who take AP courses score well enough on the exam to be given credit. And among minority students, the success rate was even lower.

On other significant measures, Elia received no bonus. There was no bonus for improvements in reading scores for black and Hispanic students in third, eighth and 10th grades. And although she did get a reward for higher math scores among minority students, at less than $1,800 it was just a smidgen of her overall bonus.

The two best measures of education success are nowhere to be found in Elia's contract: the high school graduation rate - not counting GEDs, which the state shamefully allows - and the number of Hillsborough high school graduates who need remediation when they attend a community college or university.

If the school board measured those things, it wouldn't be pretty.

More than 80 percent of those going into Hillsborough Community College need remediation in math, reading and writing because they are not prepared to do college-level work. At the state universities, 55 percent of new students needed remediation.

Elia can't be blamed for negotiating a good deal for herself. She is earning more than $290,518 this year.

It is the school board that is responsible for the largesse. The contract may say Elia is being judged on performance, but parents and the public should not be fooled.

If the Hillsborough School Board truly wanted to reward the superintendent for improving schools, members would change the measures to ones which show Hillsborough students are learning what they need to succeed in life.

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