Hoping to avoid a repeat of last years uproar over Senate Bill 6, legislators sought input from teachers Friday during a workshop meeting of the Senate Education PreK-12 Committee.
The education reform legislation that would have tied teacher pay to performance was vigorously opposed by teachers' unions, leading former Gov. Charlie Crist to veto the bill. Legislators still want to pass a law requiring greater accountability of teachers, but would like a more inclusive process to address teachers concerns. Only two of the five senators on the committee, however, attended the workshop.
Of particular concern to teachers is the potential of a merit pay system based solely or heavily on student test scores at the end of the year. Some have suggested testing children at the beginning of the year as well, in order to determine how much they have learned over the course of the school year, because many students enter a new year with skills far below their grade level.
Im not going to teach to the test, Im going to teach to my kids. Try to make it fair to the teachers when youre going to do something thats going to base our salary or pay on the success or failure of something, said Candace Gautney, a fifth-grade science and reading teacher at Ruediger Elementary School in Tallahassee.
Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the committee, said he thought 50 percent of teacher evaluations should be based on student test scores, because that is the standard of the federal Race to the Top program that 65 out of the 67 school districts in Florida have signed on to.
Other teachers thought 50 percent was too high, and preferred to have more emphasis placed on peer reviews in the overall evaluations of teachers, instead of administrative reviews conducted by principals who spend little time in the classroom.
(Administrators) are not in the room every day, theres so much they have to do. I like the idea of peer review because I think you can get a lot out of someone whos in the classroom, said Melissa Olsen, who also teaches at Ruediger Elementary.
The idea of using positive incentives to increase teacher performance was not rejected by the teachers, but some cautioned that any merit pay system should be structured in such a way that teachers are not competing with each other over available resources, to the detriment of student learning. Megan Allen, the 2010 Florida Teacher of the Year and one of three finalists for the National Teacher of the Year award, said schools where that happens become Darwinian.
That type of environment strangles student achievement, Allen said.
Another sticking point of education reform is the issue of tenure. Some have suggested reworking tenure or eliminating it altogether to weed out ineffective teachers who are virtually fireproof. Teachers and administrators contend that the three-year review -- with the school having the option for a fourth year -- before tenure can be achieved should be sufficient time to evaluate a teachers performance.
Wise said that a comprehensive education reform bill will not come up before the legislative session begins in March.
Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
