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Scott Team Wants School Vouchers, Teacher Merit Pay
December 22, 2010
Florida schools should enact a number of changes championed by former Gov. Jeb Bush, including expanding school choice, eliminating teacher job protection and basing educators’ pay on student performance, members of Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s transition team said Tuesday.
The governor-elect’s education transition team released briefing documents of recommendations that it was making to the incoming governor, who will take office in two weeks. The documents included ideas that have been tossed around by the Legislature for years, but have failed to gain traction or have been knocked down by the Florida Supreme Court.
One of the biggest priorities for elementary and high school education is letting children go to any school they want to, whether it be public, private, a charter or virtual school – and possibly even a school in another county’s school district. Scott, throughout the campaign, maintained his support for school choice efforts and also appeared recently with advocates for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, which sends low income students to private schools.
The biggest issue is how to pay for it. Scott has proposed eliminating the corporate income tax, which funds the scholarship program. Corporations who give donations to the scholarship are given a tax credit. Scott’s team’s solution is to find a “constitutionally-defensible” funding source to continue and expand the program. In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down Bush’s statewide voucher program creating an obstacle for school choice advocates.
One option being forwarded by Bush’s education foundation is an education savings account that allows parents to request and receive funds equal to 85 percent of what the state earmarks for students in the public system. Currently, the state’s per pupil funding rate is $6,843.
The money could be used for private school tuition and fees, online “virtual” school, tutoring, books and tuition for dual enrollment programs, textbooks or curriculum for a home schooling program or contributions to a child’s higher education savings plan.
Florida university system chancellor Frank Brogan, who is a former state education commissioner and school principal, told reporters last week that many people in the school system would see the school choice expansion as an “assault” on public education, but defended the transition team’s rudimentary plans, saying it was simply an “opportunity” for parents and children to go to better schools.
Brogan, who served as Bush’s lieutenant governor and is also on Scott’s transition team, said there was no way to know, however, it if a plan could be upheld in court.
“But I do believe the reality of the thing is it will be court tested if it is passed and signed into law,” he said.
Another major component of the Scott transition team’s proposal is a merit pay system for teachers that would base half of what teachers make on student performance. The issue was a major part of last spring’s legislative debate in which the Republican-led Legislature passed a merit pay bill only to have it vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist.
Key lawmakers have already said that the bill will be reintroduced this coming spring with some changes from last year’s proposal. A draft is already being circulated by Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education and foundation director Patricia Levesque briefed the Senate Prek-12 Education committee on details this past month.
Levesque is the chairwoman of Scott’s education transition team.
“The transition team was a very wide variety of individuals from a teacher all the way to an education advocate,” said Bush foundation spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof. “And the report, we find most encouraging because it continues talking about the bold reforms he talked about on the campaign trail.”
A state teachers’ union spokesman said the organization would withhold comment until union officials can review the plan in more detail.
The report also contained several other suggestions including a broad, but still vague idea for developing a new funding system for public schools.
The transition team also suggests investing in mentoring initiatives, recruiting teachers in science and math and developing an autonomous charter school authorization body.
In higher education, the team suggested full support of the university system’s effort to ramp up degree production and increased emphasis on science and math. It also suggested a look at changes to the Bright Futures Scholarship program, including upping the SAT score requirement.
By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service Florida
Comments
12 Responses to “Scott Team Wants School Vouchers, Teacher Merit Pay”
The main problem with education in Florida and throughout the U.S. is the fact that Americans, as a whole, don’t value education. Attendance is horrible, and Florida has no teeth in its attendance policies; parents want students to make A’s and play sports whether they have learned anything or not. Yes, there are teachers not doing a good job in every school, but parents could help take care of this problem. If your child says they aren’t doing anything in a class–any class–complain to the administration until something is done. We have online grades, and there should be evidence of what is going on in the classroom. Check it out and demand something good for your tax dollars!! I’ve been an educator for a long time and see the good and bad at the school, but the buck stops with parents. If you want well-educated children, demand the best from your child and his/her teachers.
Cheated,
That just might work
I think that the parents of children on public assistance should have their state aid based on their child’s school performance. That way, they would have an incentive to become “involved and responsible”.
In the end if my property taxes for education go down, then this is a huge win! I don’t really care where folks send their children to be educated (public or private), but I’m tired of funding the Escambia, Florida school system which allows non-resident (Alabama) students to fill its classrooms with no questions asked. If you don’t think that this isn’t happening, check out the parent pick-up lines at all the true “North-end” schools of Bratt, Ernest Ward, and Northview. Count the Alabama tags and then compare those numbers with the school district’s approved numbers for Alabama resident students. I bet they don’t add up and they’ll not even be close.
Don’t worry, teacher merit pay will take care of those raises. The only teachers getting raises will be the ones who teach students who are academically successful. (Statistically speaking, upper income children without disabilities.) The ones teaching poor, disabled students won’t be getting any raises. Yes sir, that’ll be karma.
one of the first things they should do is cut school board members pay in half and do away with the mandated automatic pay raises they get! now that would be karma!!!! then we could see them beg for raises like all employees do now!
Within a few years, segregation will return as parents in upper middle class neighborhoods begin to filter tax money into private education and public education becomes a lesser option for the rest of us. Teachers, the good ones, will leave education or follow the private-education dollars as their hands are tied when it comes to teaching only the students who will profit them most. Textbook publishing companies who design and sell tests will begin to skew the test results so that only the upper 40% of students taking this test are successful and the rest are written off as disabled, poor or non-English. Those people will be given another graduation option … one that keeps them tied to low-income, illiterate and menial lifestyles. Yeah, I’m a little cynical. Rick Scott, Alex Sink … none of them are looking at education as a public service.
As a republican (Scott), I see he fully plans to serve his master (big business) well, and too bad working class folks!
” basing educators’ pay on student performance” – interesting concept Jeb, think you can get that one inked?
“…textbooks or curriculum for a home schooling program…”
That would be a miracle. Our homeschooling family saves the state over $13,000, and get nothing for the taxes we pay.
The Union Folks wanted Alex Sink sooo bad-but that did not happen. Did not happen! Elections have consequences, and Rick Scott won it fair and square. I believe changes are coming to Education in Florida, and the Union “ain’t gonna like it”
But as long as we put students, taxpayers, and parents ahead of the entrenched special interests, which I believe Scott will do –and as long as we fairly evaluate teachers, and as long as any top-down mandates from Tallahassee are fully funded-I’ll be quite pleased to see some changes! Frankly they are quite necessary and overdue!
To Mark Pudlow, Andy Ford, and the FEA—as Bob Dylan would aptly put it — “The Times they are A-Changing”
Well I guess Education is screwed, now they can funnel money too their rich friends…Thanks to all who voted for this idiot