The moment of "the veto" is over. Teacher performance pay is a null issue. But what did it accomplish, really, this controversial veto?
The one who held the veto pen and the Republican Party are more estranged than a couple trapped in a marriage from hell.
The unions representing the teachers can chalk up a big win, of course, as can the teachers themselves and everyone else who opposed the bill. The status quo has been preserved. Three cheers!
It might even seem that the familiar old virtues and ideals of education were upheld -- virtues and ideals mostly embodied by the image of a brick-and-mortar classroom presided over by a teacher standing at a chalkboard earnestly aiming to educate little Johnnie and Jane in 45-minute intervals (whether they're ready to learn or not).
But is the ideal of education being served?
In reality, the brick-and-mortar-protected teacher is quickly becoming an anachronism. If the intent of the governor's veto was to keep things as they are, I am here to tell him now: the student has left the building.
The veto will prove to be as effective as the teacher who orders students to "turn it off" the moment they step on to school grounds.
Turn off iPods? Turn off cell phones? Stop texting? Turn off social networking applications like Twitter and Facebook? I don't think so.
My youngest child, a 14-year-old, journeys deep into virtual territory each day. She socializes, studies, and plays there. Most importantly she has found a way to use it to explore the world. She's abandoned the classroom (at least for the present year; she is thinking of returning for high school) and has happily taken leave of schools and teachers.
She sleeps late. She bops around the house listening to music and dancing like a maniac when she wants. Then, when she's ready, she'll sit down at her computer and, with sustained concentration, whip through two weeks worth of math classes or finish a batch of other assignments. And she is doing better than she did in the classroom.
Our daughter's learning style fits the virtual school environment. She did not do well being prodded along like a cow from one 45-minute period of force-feeding to the next 45-minute period.
And she's not alone. There are 100,000 children like her in Florida -- thanks to a law the Legislature approved a few years back that requires all school districts to make virtual learning available to any student who wants it.
In 2003, the Legislature also voted on a measure that "proved to be more far-sighted than anyone realized at the time," notes Michael Horn in a report prepared for The James Madison Institute titled "Virtual Schooling: Disrupting the Status Quo."
Horn is a co-founder of the Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank. He says that when the Legislature voted to include the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) in the state funding formula for K-12 education, "it gave the school a self-sustaining funding model by which FLVS could grow organically and according to student demand, as the dollars would follow the students."
The law included (pay attention now) "a performance-based provision by which the school would receive per-pupil funds only for those students who successfully completed and passed their courses."
This performance-based funding system has greatly spurred the growth of online learning in Florida, and the state has emerged among the nation's leaders in the rapidly growing online-learning movement. FLVS is more accountable for its output measures than bricks-and-mortar schools, says Horn, and it also enables schools to "escape" traditional "seat-time restrictions." (Remember those untold hours spent staring into space, dreaming as a teacher droned on and on?)
The rapid growth of online learning is only going to continue. And it virtually guarantees a shift away from a system focused on the teacher to one focused on the student. Our children are now telling us how they learn.
Thus the clash between teachers and the Legislature over teacher performance-pay is largely symbolic. The whole world of education has already begun a transformation that will not stop, and sooner or later, unions created to protect workers' jobs in the age of factories are going to have to catch up and begin to help aid this transformation or step aside.
Our present-day school system was created in the early 1900s "to serve a different time with different needs," Horn reminds us. "A mini-crisis with a fast-rising industrial Germany prompted a change. Americans asked public education to prepare everyone for a vocation in the industrial age of factories ..." It was also a time when unions emerged as a social and political force.
Schools, walls, a punch-clock mentality, and yes, even teachers at a blackboard, are already beginning to fade into history. The day may not be too distant when we will have to visit the Smithsonian Institution to see such things.
While teachers have been fighting to hang on to the old ways, the school system of Florida has shifted. It's not about them any longer. Isn't this what some in the Legislature have been saying?
It's about the students. Perhaps the teachers haven't gotten the message. But we are already building a student-centric educational system in Florida through FLVS.
Today, it is possible for our children to learn anywhere they happen to be -- in their bedrooms, on a family vacation to France, while building a library for villagers in Africa.
I know from experience.
Last year, my daughter said she wanted to go to Africa, a place she's been curious about as long as she can remember. A character in a book she had recently been reading went to Africa and returned "changed" by the experience. So she wanted to go. "Right now," she said. "Not later."
I struck the posture of any sane parent. One did not just get up and trot off to Africa. It required planning, saving money, development of a suitable itinerary, and so forth.
"Don't say it's not possible," she said. "Just agree that it's possible."
No harm in that, I thought. So I agreed. "Anything is possible," I said.
My daughter then got on the Internet and started sending e-mails to volunteer groups asking if they had any programs suitable for 13-year-old girls. A few days later, I answered a phone call from a group called Global Volunteers. Three weeks later I was landing at the airport in Accra, the capital city of Ghana.
Thanks to my daughter's research and confident use of the Internet, we found ourselves on the Volta River in Africa building a library for the people of Senchi Ferry, learning to speak a few words in Twi.
Keeping up with our children today and the ease with which they navigate the virtual and real worlds is a rewarding education in itself.
Say what you will about the Legislature and performance-based education policies; I for one am thankful for what this means in my daughter's life. Access to the Internet, as well as the freedom to learn at her own pace and in her own style, is just the public-education system needed by a girl bold enough to plan her own trip to Africa.
Reach Sunshine State News Publisher John Wark at (850) 727-0859 or jwark@sunshinestatenews.com.
