By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida
Teacher pay would be based on how well students do on standardized tests under a bill set for a final fight in the Senate – where ruling Republicans look poised to strike a blow against Florida’s Democratic-allied teachers’ union.
The Senate Ways and Means committee approved the measure (SB 6) by a 15-8, party-line vote, with Democrats saying it was wrongheaded to base all teachers’ pay on student performance, while warning it could drive instructors from the classroom.
The legislation is sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, who doubles as chairman of the Florida Republican Party. It would place teachers on annual contracts and force the Department of Education to implement some method to gauge whether students made learning gains over the school year.
While county school boards would still set teacher salaries, annual raises would have to be based on these new state performance standards.
The committee met for more than three hours, with teachers and education groups mostly critical of the measure, while business organizations and former Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future endorsing the approach. Bush has wrangled with the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, for years over class-size and earlier versions of merit-pay plans.
Bush’s 2002 Democratic opponent for governor, Bill McBride, was heavily financed by the FEA and its allies. McBride’s wife, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, is the Democratic Party’s presumptive candidate for governor this year.
“This legislation, I believe, over the years will allow our students to receive the best education,” Thrasher said.
The measure is set for a floor vote next week. But the House has not yet advanced a version of the merit-pay plan.
Jennifer Barnhill, a teacher at Pace Secondary School in Tallahassee, told the Senate committee Friday that she feared the measure would jeopardize the salaries of teachers like her — whose classrooms include children with special needs. She said she has students who have Asperger syndrome, two who are rival gang members and three who are fathers. One student, she said, is now parenting his younger brother, because their father is in jail.
“He has no parent. He is the parent and I am his parent. No test can ever measure that,” she said.
Supporters said the legislation will put the state in line with proposals it has made in an application for the Race to the Top, the $4.35 billion competitive federal grant that could bring about $1 billion in education dollars to Florida. The state is among 16 finalists for the award, scheduled to be made next month.
Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith, a proponent of the so-called merit pay plan, said that “America is going in this direction” on merit pay for teachers.
“For the first time we’re actually talking about connecting issues of student achievement to evaluation,” he said.
Smith acknowledged that the department still really didn’t know how all teachers would be evaluated. He said staff has been consulting with leading researchers on the issue, but there is no template because Florida would be the first state to initiate this type of system.
One method could have students take an exam at the beginning of the year and one at the end of the year. But the lack of a clear path was a major sticking point for Democrats who voted against the bill.
“What I’m not going to support is a system that has no idea where we’re going to land,” said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “You have no valid pre-test and no valid end of course exam.”
