FAMU made a 72 score in 2018. That’s seven points higher than its 65 score last year.
But FAMU is part of the “Bottom 3” with New College of Florida and the University of North Florida. The BOG denies PBF money to the three universities that finish in the “Bottom 3” each year no matter how much they improve.
State Rep. Ramon Alexander, D-Tallahassee, co-led a bipartisan effort to overhaul the PBF metrics during the last legislative session with House Majority Leader Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero. Their plan called for an end to the “Bottom 3.”
“This ‘Bottom 3’ concept within the Board of Governors is a flawed system,” Alexander said in December 2017. “It is a tiered system. And it is not in the best interests of all of our state universities.”
“So institutions like Florida A&M University, University of North Florida, University of West Florida, Florida Gulf Coast…they’re making the internal changes and the system is designed for them to lose,” he said. “And then when they make the adjustments and they improve their standing, and they get out of the ‘Bottom 3’ the policy changes and they have to hit the reset button in order to compete again. It makes no sense.”
Rodrigues tried to get the Florida Senate to agree to getting rid of the “Bottom 3” and other PBF changes, but in final negotiations he agreed to just tell the BOG to get moving on working out a plan to make the performance-based funding (PBF) system fair. The amendment by Rodrigues that the Senate accepted said that “by October 1, 2019, the Board of Governors, in consultation with the state universities, shall submit to the Legislature recommendations for future consideration on the most efficient process to achieve a complete performance-based continuous improvement model focused on outcomes that provides for the equitable distribution of performance funds.”
The News Service of Florida reported that Rodrigues wants the changes to include providing PBF funding based on “‘continuous improvement’ by the schools regardless of how they are ranked against each other.”
“That is my vision,” Rodrigues told the News Service of Florida. “We will see what comes to us in the study.”