Teachers in Florida could be paid based on their performance if a bill passed by the state Senate Thursday makes it through the House.
Senators voted 27-12 in favor of SB 736, sponsored by Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, which would also phase out teacher tenure by offering one-year contracts to all teachers hired after July 1. Wise insisted he was trying to help good teachers, not punish them, and highlighted his background as a teacher who went on general strike in 1968.
"This bill ought to be a teacher's dream, to be able to get paid for students' success, not how they did on the FCAT but on the progress the students made," Wise said.
The vote was largely partisan, with just one Democrat -- Sen. Gary Siplin of Orlando -- voting for the bill, and two Republicans -- Sens. Paula Dockery of Lakeland and Dennis Jones of Seminole -- voting against it.
Siplin invoked his own impoverished background and said he liked the bill's goal of raising the bar for learning for all students, and that it didn't coddle teachers in schools with poorer students.
"The teacher didn't get any easy evaluation just because of who I was or where we were," Siplin said.
Others, however, expressed concerns that the socioeconomic status of students was not taken into account when evaluating teachers. Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, offered an amendment to the bill that would have taken the percentage of students on free or reduced lunch into the evaluations, even though he ultimately voted for the bill.
"I do believe that schools in our poverty areas do need extra support. We know that the biggest challenge we have for education is not what happens in the classroom, it's what happens outside of the classroom," Altman said.
His amendment failed, but concerns remained about how tests will be adopted or drafted for classes that don't use the standard FCAT.
Under the bill, 50 percent of teacher evaluations would be based on test scores of students over a three-year period. But the exact tests to be used are not outlined in the bill. Wise said that school districts will be given funds to develop tests and tailor tests to hard-to-measure classes like art, music and physical education.
The tests are to be constructed on a value-added model, to measure a student's learning over the course of the year. The evaluations will also take into account the progress of students in special education classes.
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, noted that the bill has $41 million for the development of test by school districts, but that didn't placate the concerns of other legislators who cautioned that the bill imposes an unfunded mandate on local school districts.
"My major concern is that we have not paid for this program. We don't even know what it's going to cost. I like to make decisions based on what's the final price tag and can we afford it," Dockery said.
Democrats also noted that $700 million in federal funds given to the state as part of the Race to the Top grant will be used to implement the bill, but that $100 million of that is already being used on a pilot program in Hillsborough County, where a merit pay program is being tested. But Republicans countered that most of the bill's provisions don't take effect until 2014, and there will be time to tweak and perfect the program.
"Is this a finished work, is the Sistine Chapel ceiling done? Absolutely not. There's three years between now and lift-off," Gaetz said.
Despite the partisan vote, senators from both parties agreed that SB 736 was much less divisive than last year's clash over SB 6, which sparked teacher demonstrations throughout the state and was vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
The bill now heads to the House, where it is already getting a favorable viewing, passing through the House Education Committee Thursday.
Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
