No child left behind: the flop

As in that is what it has become

Teachers because of no child left behind are no longer given any autonomy in their classroom, must meet many more requirements then in the past, but are totally responsible for their students’ assessment score results and their job security depends on it. And yet, students’ scores are not improving in Florida!

To solve this problem, this past spring, Sen. John Thrasher tried to pass Senate Bill 6 that would reward teachers with merit pay for improved test scores. The flip side was that tenure would be eliminated and pay would be reduced for all teachers. Seniority and additional education on the teachers’ parts would no longer be included in pay schedules. Teachers in our state rallied together and worked to stop this legislation this year. But it is now returning to Florida as part of the Race to the Top (RttT) program implemented by President Obama. RttT will also continue to have extremely punitive components for schools that fail to make the mandated progress. So the battle to save public education continues.

Teachers are being attacked nationally by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, films like “Waiting for Superman” and programs like the recent weeklong one presented by NBC “Education Nation”. Tenure is now a bad word and teachers are why schools are “failing”. Education is not a business and cannot be run like one, very few charter schools are more successful then public schools, tenure has never kept an effective administrator from removing an ineffective teacher from the classroom, and research shows that merit pay is not effective for educators. But politicians and billionaires are now dictating how public schools are run. Publishing companies are making a fortune developing tests and selling curriculum to be used to prepare the students for the tests. There is a frightening money trail that accompanies this trend that could result in public schools being eliminated and replaced by charter schools and private schools that accept vouchers from states unless it is stopped soon!