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nothing good has ever come out of florida.
Senate Bill 6 has already passed the Florida Senate. Tomorrow the Florida House will vote on a bill that is equally punitive toward teachers. It is expected to easily pass, and Governor Crist has agreed to sign it....
Seriously, what good teacher would stay in an underprivileged school if your job security depends on irresponsible parents, non-linguistic students, and students with severe emotional and behavioral issues? ... Florida is ed up..
Miami HeraldIf the proposed legislation passes, teachers' licenses, certification and jobs will no longer be based on continuing education, years of experience or professional achievement, but instead will be subject to how well students do on state tests.
Teachers who teach challenged students, non-English speaking students, the emotionally or mentally disabled, autistic students, homeless and transient children or even an average class can count on seeing their salaries frozen or cut.
Senate Bill 6 subjects teachers to firing without cause at the end of each school year. Principals will be able to fire teachers at will. If a teacher disagrees with a principal on anything -- anything at all -- that teacher can be terminated, even if her students are successful based on test scores.
Graduate degrees will have no value. Senate Bill 6 forbids teachers from earning salary based on advanced degrees or credentials. The very professionals who are to encourage, mentor and develop students to be college-ready are now told that their education credentials are worth nothing. Is that the message we want to send to our children whom we want to see go on to college?
LinkFacing salary cuts, contract termination and even the loss of their teaching certification if student gains are deemed insufficient, the best teachers are unlikely to be willing to work in low-performing, high-risk schools with the students most in need of their expertise.
Here are some of the more controversial elements:
•School districts are required to base 50% of teacher's pay each year on student gains on standardized tests. But there is no special provision made for teachers with disadvantaged students, which means there is no consideration given to the large number of factors affecting student performance over which a teacher has no control (home environment, for example, which effects everything from reading ability to whether they went to bed on time and had a decent breakfast before test day). The bill also doesn't address the fact that the lowest-performing students also tend to be the most transient -- the makeup of a teacher's classroom can change as much as 80% in the course of a year. How do you decide which kids' scores affect which teacher's paycheck with that kind of turnover?
•School districts will no longer be allowed to consider teaching experience or advanced degrees in determining salary. In fact, they will face financial penalties imposed by the state if they choose to do so. If the goal is to increase teacher quality, why remove incentives for teachers to seek graduate education? And why remove incentives for experienced teachers to remain in the public schools? Critics suggest that these measures punish all teachers, especially the best, rather than just ineffective ones.
This bill is designed to make it easier for private schools to hire teachers. Right now, the privates and charters have to compete with the public school system. By making public school jobs onerous, the law is actually a back hand way of promoting a two tiered education system in which rich, white Christians will be given complete priority.
Last edited by Nbadan; 04-09-2010 at 03:50 AM.
nothing good has ever come out of florida.
Nbadan starts a thread with "Nuts" in the le.
Sweet irony.
Jeb Bush's singular, overriding mission has been to utterly decimate the public school system in Florida and to mow down the teachers' union, for the primary reason that they do not usually vote for Republicans.
Despite several unfavorable public voting outcomes and state Supreme Court rulings of uncons utionality of his school voucher program, Jeb continues pushing his radical educational *reforms* onto the people. He will never stop. It is an industry with Jeb Bush, as he engineers his operatives into key positions in state government to force through his radicalized educational agenda to privatize education and to use state funds to support religious schools.
Jeb Bush will not stop until he transforms Florida into a radical Christian theocracy.
Let's strip your brother Neil's profiteering from his Ignite *educational* software, propped up by your other brother's No Child Left Behind ripoff.
2. Let's examine your role in Lehman Brothers' bad paper that was shoved into Florida's investment funds while you sat on their board.
3. Let's set the record straight about your carefully shrouded business dealings, some of which ripped off the people of Florida. Start with your Broward Savings and Loan ripoff; Nigerian water pumps deal; Medicare scam; Broward Hospital District deals. There are others.
4. Let's hear why you are so determined to gut public school education; force religious school vouchers down the nation's throat; force students in Florida's public schools to take the FCAT, while letting charter schools off the hook; destroy the smaller class-size amendment; plant your stooges in obscure state government panels to push your educational agenda, long after you left office in January, 2007.
And yet, you still bang your drum about your educational legacy, when Florida's graduation rate was dead last during your tenure. Let's talk about that, shall we?
If our current school system produces 911 nutters like Nbadan, then it does need some kind of reform.
Thank ing Christ.
Hopefully, his Union busting works and Michigan adopts a similar strategy. Then we can fold the public school system wholesale and go back to what it was prior.
In case you havent notice, Dan, the public school system in this country ing sucks. A lot of that has to do with local education boards and administrative excess, but it is wrapped around a public education system that tries to standardize curriculum across all intelligence levels, powerful Teacher's Unions in every state who want no further responsibilities and certainly no paid-for-performance model.
They, like any self-interested group, want their cake and eat it, too. Their chokehold on the education system only exists because their employer is the State Government (who is, in turn, funded by the Fed), not a private business.
In a private school, underperforming teachers get canned. In a public school, they get annual raises and protection.
Much to the chagrin of all politically correct morons in this world (and there are far too many), not all people are created equal. They are in the eyes of government and law, but not in intelligence, app ude and potential.
Education is such a system-wide, broken piece of , there is no amount of activism or legislation that could possibly change it for the "better". Because "better", in this instance, is just another word for "less powerful blackhole of suck", and quite frankly, I like to think we hold ourselves to a higher standard than that.
Sometimes, the forrest needs to be burned in order to flourish again. I hope Gov. Bush breaks theie educational system in a million pieces and privatizes it for the profit of his corporate buddies.
Burn the witch.
What's that?? segregated?Hopefully, his Union busting works and Michigan adopts a similar strategy. Then we can fold the public school system wholesale and go back to what it was prior.
Seriously?
..it's not the teachers union who thought up standardized testing and No Child Left behind, that was the politicians......In case you havent notice, Dan, the public school system in this country ing sucks. A lot of that has to do with local education boards and administrative excess, but it is wrapped around a public education system that tries to standardize curriculum across all intelligence levels, powerful Teacher's Unions in every state who want no further responsibilities and certainly no paid-for-performance model.
Seriously, the problem isn't the schools, it's society..
It's easy to make fine wine with the finest berries, but public schools have to take the bad berries too...In a private school, underperforming teachers get canned. In a public school, they get annual raises and protection.
The schools are merely a reflection of the society around it, those societies that pride education and success have fine schools, while those that don't, don't...Education is such a system-wide, broken piece of , there is no amount of activism or legislation that could possibly change it for the "better". Because "better", in this instance, is just another word for "less powerful blackhole of suck", and quite frankly, I like to think we hold ourselves to a higher standard than that.
The primary problem in the schools are the teacher's unions. Local communities cannot get the teaching they want.
What the are you talking about? The teacher's union have nothing to do with setting up curriculum, that's the local and state school boards, those are the ers screwing up the system.....
....local communities? You know there are local school boards right?
Ever see how hard it is to fire a teacher who is ineffective?
What is really gonna happen is that good experienced teachers, which are needed most in poverty districts will move to districts, usually white, where they can easily make their numbers...and the poor minority districts will get a constant turnaround of new inexperienced teachers....
No, it's not that hard...teaching is the only profession where you have to reapply for your job every year...
A technicality that still doesn't have merit.
Why is everyone so afraid or merit based pay for teachers?
Except for the whole concept, indeed the model itself, was developed by educators, then ok.
You might want to read up on the history of standardized testing in the US before you spout nonsense like that.
The NCLB was the result of the outcome based approach that politicians tend to gravitate towards. It was an utter piece of . Unions fought the testing largely based upon the merit pay component...and the points they made were valid somewhat. Being held responsible for factors out of their control was a common argument. The effects of said factors were far from quantifiable, other than corelative. The seminal "A Nation At Risk" was a huge factor in establishing tests as measurement devices of relative performance having discovered the maxim, "We don't know what we don't know". The committee members? Overwhelmingly, educators.
That's odd. I never had to. My contract was always renewed. Much like my job in the private sector currently.
...because it's easy to make your numbers in rich districts, but not so easy in poor districts, and it could have nothing to do with the quality of the education this kid is receiving, but that Mom and Dad are in jail and they live with grandma who is old and senile, brother or sister is hooked on drugs and experimenting around them, mom or dad drink all day and have low expectations, just a bunch of problems that come with poverty...
"merit based pay"
test score success is a questionable measure of teacher merit.
Much of Repug/conservative interest in teachers is a smokescreen for attacking and weakening teachers' unions
What is your idea of an acceptable metric of teacher merit?
Really? It's easy to make "numbers" in rich districts?
You make alot of statements with zero attempts at causation.
I think you will find the truth lies closer to the middle than these two extremes you seem to want to gravitate towards.
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