From the St. Augustine Record
By MARCIA LANE
Education reform is being driven by partisan political considerations rather than the cool analysis of research.
That's the consensus of a panel hosted by the Flagler College Political Guild late last week.
Among the panelists' concerns:
* A lack of research to show that merit pay will improve learning any more than the present system of paying teachers
* Charter schools will not be held to the same level of accountability that public school are held
* The continuing erosion of local control
* And the potential challenge of attracting and keeping good teachers, especially in poor areas.
St. Johns County Superintendent of Schools Joseph Joyner, asked how education has changed, replied the biggest difference is "the infusion of politics in a major way.
"Truly it (education) is a political football, depending on the flavor of the day," he said. "None (of the changes) has a really research base. We do things that are politically expedient, and then have a big discussion about desires and the resources.
"What is it we want?" Joyner asked. "We want a lot, but we hold back on the resources."
Education is front page news these days as the Florida Legislature whips through a bill ending teacher tenure and instituting merit pay even though there's no money for funding it.
In the Senate it's known as Senate Bill 736 or, to some, Son of Senate Bill 6. That's the massive education reform bill that last year passed through the Legislature only to die after Gov. Charlie Crist declined to sign it, saying he was listening to the people. A similar bill is going through the House and Gov. Rick Scott has said he'll sign it.
There was no one at the forum defending the Legislature's education reform initiatives.
State Rep. Bill Proctor, R-St. Augustine, and chairman of the House Education Committee, has said the education reform bill shifts the focus from teachers and their needs to improving the learning of students. He also said that merit pay would help Florida attract and retain the best teachers by paying them more, as well as make it easier to fire bad teachers.
On that last point, Joyner and Proctor agree.
"It takes two years to remove a poor-performing teacher from the classroom," Joyner said. "That's too long," he added, pointing out that it was the Legislature that came up with the rules that make it a long process to fire a bad teacher.
Merit pay: 'bad idea'
But Joyner and the other educators on the panel were concerned that merit pay will disrupt a system that now has Florida ranked fifth in the nation in education.
The bill includes evaluations for teachers with 50 percent of the score based on how their students do on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test or other end-of-the-year tests.
That means teachers are being judged on how students do one day of the year, said Dr. Meryl Goldman, president of the St. Johns County Education Foundation. She called merit pay "a great buzzword" but one that will be another unfunded mandate. She's bothered by the evaluations, noting "we don't have a viable means to measure and test" nor do the evaluations take into account other factors such as lack of parental supervision, poverty and other socio-economic factors.
Joyner said merit pay "is not a good idea. There's not any credible research" to show that it will improve student performance anymore than the present pay system for teachers.
St. Johns County teacher of the year Beth Upchurch doesn't see teachers afraid of evaluations but she does see it hurting the way teachers work together.
"We work together as a team," Upchurch said. Many teachers worry that will change with the new evaluation system, she said.
Upchurch knows what she'd like to do to -- ask legislators to come into the classroom for a couple of days.
"It would be so eye-opening. They would see we're not a bunch of whiners," said Upchurch. It would also give legislators a chance to see "the needs and ripples that their lawmaking is creating," she added.
Panel members expressed frustration with getting their message across.
Goldman, just back from Tallahassee, said while "we were give polite audience ... one local elected official told me everyone's mind is made up."
Going to Tallahassee, she said, "didn't make a particle of difference."
More partisan, less talk
County Commissioner Mark Miner called funding "the elephant in the room," the issue no one wants to talk about. Politics has become "more and more partisan. Dialogue is ceasing."
Too often, he said, the local governing bodies get little or no input but are expected to make the federal and state mandates work.
"The best government is the government closest to your front door," Miner said.
Charter schools and vouchers are two more issues that have brought politics into education, said panel members.
"Charters and vouchers are political movements, not research-based strategies to improve education," Joyner said. He does see charters as having a place, particularly in urban and rural settings where other methods have failed.
Goldman said one reason charter school performance may be better is because public schools "take everybody. Charters don't have quite the same accountability and responsibility."
Pointing to a successful charter school movement in what is known as the Harlem Zone in New York, Goldman said that was a program that went beyond just schools and focused in on other social issues and that's the reason it is working.
When moderator Skeeter Key, an instructor at Flagler College, asked what the panel's vision for how to get policy-making better, panel members returned to the idea of local control.
"It distresses me in our democracy there's even talk of doing away with school boards or making them by gubernatorial appointment," Joyner said.
He sees school boards as "a good system" but while they can still create policy they have no power. "State law trumps local. ... The boards have all the responsibility but no power," Joyner said.
Miner agreed, adding the state legislature is now "micro-managing."
*
ON THE PANEL
Joe Joyner, superintendent St. Johns County schools
Mark Miner, St. Johns County commissioner, District 3
Meryl Goldman, president of St. Johns County Education Foundation, adjunct professor St. Johns River State College, former principal.
Beth Upchurch, St. Johns County teacher of the year, co-literacy coach and lead teacher in fourth grade class at Ketterlinus Elementary School.
Skeeter Key, moderator, director of Flagler College's academic advising and retention.
http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2011-03-12/educators-decry-infusion-politics-schools
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