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Florida Teacher Merit Pay Bill Advances
February 11, 2011
A Senate committee gave the first yes vote Thursday to a new merit pay bill setting out how teachers would be paid.
The vote came without the angry protests of last year’s effort.
One of the differences with this year’s move to make classroom teachers more accountable for quality education in the state has been that those teachers have been more involved, although there are still many with deep concerns – and questions – about how they’ll be evaluated if the measure becomes law.
One of the major sources of concern for teachers isn’t what’s in the bill (SB 736) that was unanimously approved in its first committee stop Thursday – it’s what’s not in the bill.
The measure calls for an evaluation process to be set up for teachers, but doesn’t spell out the details, leaving it up to the Commissioner of Education and local school districts – in consultation with a panel including representatives of school boards, superintendents and the state teacher union – to work out just how teachers would be evaluated.
The teacher union, the Florida Education Association, opposes the bill, though its leaders say they appreciate being asked to help work out the details. One of the main reasons the union is still against it is the uncertainty about just what it is that may get a teacher fired in the future.
“You’re asking all of us to put all our professional careers on the line for something that hasn’t even been developed yet,” Andy Ford, president of the FEA, told the Senate Education Pre-K-12 Committee on Thursday, saying that the bill is “very troubling to teachers.”
Still, it’s a calmer and more collaborative start than last year, when a measure eliminating teacher tenure and directly linking teacher pay to the standardized test performance of students emerged quietly during the legislative session and was passed despite heavy protests from educators, who said then they felt shut out of the process. It was vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who is no longer in office.
“It has been much different,” acknowledged Ford, speaking to this year’s bill sponsor, Republican Sen. Steve Wise, a congenial and results-oriented legislator who doesn’t appear to be bent on fighting the teacher’s union – typically a bastion of support for Democrats – for political reasons. That was an accusation leveled against last year’s backers of the bill. “You have given people an opportunity to at least express their concerns.”
Wise, who patiently listened to testimony from teachers for two days this week, also noted the difference as the committee prepared to vote hours before it was scheduled to because there wasn’t anyone left who wanted to complain about the proposal.
“It is not Senate Bill 6,” Wise said, referring to last year’s measure. “It’s Senate Bill 736.”
Wise also promised the union and teachers who spoke to his committee on Thursday that he’ll continue to listen to them and to work on improving the bill.
“We don’t have all the answers,” Wise admitted.
Wise made that remark after listening to some concerns from Jennifer Barnhill, a teacher who works with disabled and emotionally and behaviorally disturbed students, who said she worried that an evaluation mechanism, when it is eventually decided on, could hurt deeply caring teachers who need longer to see gains in learning than the politicians might want to give them. One of her students just this month was committed, because he stopped taking his medication for bipolar disorder. She needs more time to see learning gains in such students, she said.
“A good day for me is when I don’t get cursed out, and desks don’t go flying across the room,” said Barnhill who teaches at an alternative school in Tallahassee. “These are my realities every day.”
She’s not complaining – “I could not teach another population … I’ve found my calling,” Barnhill said. But, teachers of those types of students can’t be measured the same as teachers of more mainsteam students because learning may be slower in that environment, she said.
That prospect makes finding a way to evaluate teachers difficult, Wise acknowledges.
“I think this perplexes all of us,” he said. That’s part of the reason he wants a long look at how teachers will be evaluated, even if it means the bill may pass without spelling it out.
But the unknown is the stumbling block for many teachers.
The bill doesn’t end tenure for current teachers – as last year’s bill would have done.
Current teachers are grandfathered into the system they were hired under – they may be able to keep their current long-term contracts, though they’ll still have to be evaluated under the system that is eventually developed, and could lose their jobs if their students don’t perform well on standardized tests.
New teachers, those hired starting in July, would be on one-year contracts, subject to annual review starting in 2014.
In the meantime, teachers will also have to be evaluated under a new, parallel program that was set up as part of the Race to the Top grant program, under which the state won a large pot of money from federal officials.
The committee earlier this week heard from Michelle Rhee, something of a celebrity in conservative school reform circles. The former District of Columbia schools chief won plaudits for firing teachers deemed ineffective and taking a hard line toward under-performing schools.
The union’s Ford urged lawmakers not to fall in line with “reformers” who simply blame teachers for all education woes – particularly if the state doesn’t find ways to help them get better.
“Florida cannot fire its way to excellence,” Ford said. Looking to Rhee for guidance was particularly irksome.
“Washington, D.C. is at the bottom of the Quality Counts report,” he said, referring to an Education Week report that recently was touted by some state officials and legislators for giving Florida high marks.
“Florida is No. 5,” Ford noted. “I don’t know why we’re looking at Washington, D.C. as a model for anything.”
The Senate bill now goes to the education budget committee, where it’s on the agenda for next Tuesday. So far, there is no comparable bill in the House.
By David Royse
The News Service Florida
Comments
11 Responses to “Florida Teacher Merit Pay Bill Advances”
REGARDING:
“If this isn’t double-talk, I don’t know what is — keep tenure, but could still lose your job ????”
Even with tenure, current teachers can be fired for a number of unlikely reasons–assorted crimes and misdeeds. Tenure just means they can’t be fired without cause.
Therefore, not definitely double-talk.
David for avoiding cause for termination
Confused about the following comment: “Current teachers are grandfathered into the system they were hired under – they may be able to keep their current long-term contracts, though they’ll still have to be evaluated under the system that is eventually developed, and could lose their jobs if their students don’t perform well on standardized tests.”
If this isn’t double-talk, I don’t know what is — keep tenure, but could still lose your job ????
By the way, would only those teachers whose subject area is tested via FCAT, et al, be endangered by student performance failure — or would ALL teachers be subject to losing their jobs?
Someone has got to do a lot of work to make this program work.
I fear the result of paying politicians for their performance is that they would write more laws to prove they are performing.
David knowing politicians will be paid by someone
I think the policitans should be paid based on their performance just like they want to pay teachers based on their performance. Then we will see some results!!
REGARDING:
“And what does this plan cost the taxpayers? I thought Scott was trying to cut the budget.”
Scott isn’t the Senate, the Senate isn’t Scott.
Usually when you have a Republican Governor and a majority Republican Senate, they will work together, but Scott forced himself on the party by getting the people to vote for him even though they wanted somebody else.
Their differences should make for some interesting times in the next few years.
David who voted for
Farid Khavari (Independent) Businessman & Economist
&
Darcy Richardson (Independent) Historian, Author, Financial Consultant
KNOWING THEY WOULD LOSE
…”Otherwise, why don’t we just abolish the local school board “…
I hope the school boards are involved in more than pay.
On second thought, maybe they shouldn’t be.
This is a complex issue – we need an education system that delivers well educated yound adults into the labor force. Our country has created a Department of Education that has been a conduit for wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer’s wealth with nearly zero improvement, andin some cases a worsening of the problem.
Parents have abandoned a large part of the education process, and the children have not been held to a set standard for decades before the present laws went into place. Children, a product of our Society, seeing no compelling reason to participate in their education drop out at ridiculously high rates nation wide. And unionization has turned a “profession” into a “trade” and has served only to increase pay (without merit) and protect those that should be out of the teaching business.
It is sad to see students at the freshman level in college, unable to do anything productive academically, think, read, do assigned taks. They have floated like dross through a system where there has been no accountability for anyone. And sadly, parents and Society are largely to blame. The lack of a solid Moral Code is fundamental in all of this too. (Thanks to Liberal Moral Relativism, and “Mulitculturalism”)
It is well past time to change that, or our children, and their children will be in a land much different than the one we grew up in – a land of the Educated, and the Illiterati (thanks, MTV, modern media et al). A land of broken brains subject to the whims of whatever forces of change rule their lives in their future days and unable to cope for themselves.
@Cantonment Teacher
Well said and your point is well taken.
That being said, your union has failed as has the state board of education; and, I might add, so has the Federal education department (whatever it’s called).
Sounds like it’s time to start over by letting those useless state and federal people go and hand off the running of local schools to local people.
I still do not agree that unions are good; never will.
The union isn’t against firing people–it’s against firing people without a reason. Teachers don’t like “bad” teachers any more than anyone else–they make those of us who do our job look bad (just like in any industry).
What the unions (and the majority of teachers–union or not) want is a fair way to evaluate the teachers on what they do every day. One test, once a year cannot measure an effective teacher. I can teach my heart out all year long and be considered an “ineffective” teacher under the new plan if my students don’t score well on a test that I will have had no input into writing (and very likely won’t even know the true content of until the day of the test).
The only influence I have on my students is when they are in my classroom. I can’t go home with them to make sure they do their homework, sleep, get up on time, eat breakfast and make it to school. That is the parent’s job–and they don’t get evaluated on their children’s performance (or their own performance)–I do.
And what does this plan cost the taxpayers? I thought Scott was trying to cut the budget.
Everyone deserves more than the next person because they do something special or different; blah, blah, blah.
Shouldn’t the state stay out of this and leave the pay scale (and the merit of pay) to the local school boards? Otherwise, why don’t we just abolish the local school board and let the state run it. The same could be said to the Feds.
If they’d get rid of some high level management and dead weight, more money could probably be spent on teachers and classrooms. Of course, the almighty union won’t allow anyone to be terminated for any reason.
At some point, the money is going to run out, folks…what then?