The Florida Senate is likely to approve a bill this week that offers sweeping changes to how Florida pays and evaluates its public school teachers.
The measure (SB 736), brought to the Senate floor on Wednesday and put in position for a vote as early as Thursday, sets up an evaluation system for teachers that depends on student test scores and eliminates the use of multi-year teacher contracts.
“Our current teacher evaluation system is broken,” said Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, the sponsor of the bill.”We need to measure effectiveness of a classroom teacher based on what a student learns.”
It is expected to easily win approval in the Senate and with approval also expected in the House, it could be one of the earliest measures to go this year to the desk of Gov. Rick Scott, who has indicated his willingness to sign it.
The Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers’ union, opposes the bill because it eliminates teacher tenure, requires one-year contracts, mandates more tests and gauges teacher performance on those tests “using some value-added model that is untrustworthy,” said FEA spokesman Mark Pudlow.
The bill reverses a long tradition in public schools of basing salary on seniority.
Senators spent hours on Wednesday discussing the measure on the floor, though formally, debate is scheduled for Thursday.
Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, pressed Wise on whether Florida could afford a plan that requires the development of more tests and promises better salaries for test score improvement.
Wise said the cost of developing new tests would be paid for with money from the federal Race to the Top program. Florida was awarded $700 million in Race to the Top funds.
Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, tried to amend the bill so that teachers who are rated highly within a certain time frame are allowed to receive three-year-contracts.
His amendment was voted down. “To me, this was a good compromise that allowed those teachers who have been highly effective to be given a sense of job security over a three-year period,” Montford said. “We need to recognize that the vast majority of teachers do a great job.”
This teacher merit pay bill is similar to a controversial measure passed by the Florida Legislature last year that tied teacher pay to test scores. That bill was vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist after his office was inundated with calls, e-mails and letters from thousands of angry educators and Crist expressed doubts about the fairness of linking pay to the test scores of students whose difficulties may be beyond the control of the classroom teacher.
This year, there has been a more muted response from teachers and the FEA.
That’s due in part to the participation of the FEA and local school districts in submitting Florida’s Race to the Top application. Part of that application included attaching more significance to a teacher’s performance through test scores. There is some overlap between what Race to the Top and the teacher merit pay bill are trying to achieve.
The bill would grandfather in current teacher pay plans, but set up a new merit-based plan for teachers hired after July 1, 2014. More immediately, teachers hired after July 1, 2011 will not be able to receive multi-year contracts and instead will have one-year contracts.
The bill also establishes an evaluation process in which 50 percent of a teacher’s performance evaluation is based on test scores and whether students had “learning gains” from previous school years. Teachers are ranked anywhere from “highly effective” down to “unsatisfactory.”
A breakdown of each school’s teacher ratings will be posted annually on the Department of Education website and parents will learn the rating of their children’s teachers. The bill would also strengthen a principal’s ability to refuse to hire or not renew a teacher’s contract based upon unsatisfactory ratings.
Local school boards, are given some leeway in determining how teachers are evaluated. Unlike last year’s bill, other factors such as student attendance and disciplinary factors can be considered.
The bill is not only backed by many Republicans in the Legislature, but also powerful groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education advocacy group, the Foundation for Florida’s Future.
By Lilly Rockwell
The News Service of Florida
