K-12 education sucks in Florida because the state ranks somewhere between 48th and 50th in per capita expenditures for education. We have no state income tax, and sales tax does not cover food or drugs, so the state is always out of money. That means that we have a lot of teachers with "provisional" credentials to teach subjects they know little about (math and sciences in particular).
The state legislature is run by utter and total Republican morons who are uneducated themselves, and who do dumb crap like lower the number of semester hours required to get a BA or BS degree in the state universities, which, of course, drags down the private colleges to the same minimum.
Their recent failed attempt to make all teachers' salaries depend on unspecified tests, with raises going only to those who scored above some undefined mark, would have allowed these fools to reward, say, the best 10% or even 5% of the "best" teachers, and to leave everyone else with no raises at all. Only Charlie Crist prevented these stooges from passing this ghastly perversion. Imagine a state where everyone is as triumphantly ignorant as Kramer. Gaah!