Major Cuts to Florida Education

From the Daytona Beach News Journal

Major cuts to school budgets as federal stimulus funding dries up. Tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests. Expanding vouchers and virtual school programs.

The legislative session that starts March 8 is likely to be pivotal in shaping the future of education in Volusia and Flagler counties and the rest of Florida.

On the table again this spring will be the issue of how teachers are paid and evaluated. Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, has introduced a bill -- co-sponsored by Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach -- that would tie 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation to student growth on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The legislation would also get rid of tenure for new teachers and provide performance pay for those hired after July 2014 who are rated highly effective or teach in a school that is low-income or under-performing.

The legislation is similar to the controversial Senate Bill 6 that was vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist after outcry from teachers last year, including hundreds who attended a protest rally in DeLand. It also has some similarities to the evaluation plan outlined in the state's Race to the Top application, the $4.35 billion U.S. Department of Education competition that Florida and 10 other states, and the District of Columbia, won last year.

Wise and others supporting his legislation believe the state, with a new governor and Republican-controlled Legislature, is ready to take up the issue again. If passed, Florida would join a handful of other states that have enacted reforms tying teacher pay and evaluations to test scores and weakening the protections of tenure.

Volusia School Board Member Candace Lankford and Volusia Teachers Organization President Andrew Spar said the bill, if passed, would short circuit collaboration between school officials and teachers unions on how to improve the teacher evaluation system in a fair way. The Volusia Teachers Organization received a $125,000 American Federation of Teachers grant to work with school district officials on ways to incorporate student performance into the teacher evaluation system.

They've been researching the issue for months now and plan to pilot a new evaluation system at 14 Volusia schools next year.

"The single most important piece is to find an evaluation system everyone sees as fair," said Lankford, who's also president of the Florida School Boards Association. "It cannot be one test, one day."

Lankford said the best approach is taking the time to develop an evaluation system with "teacher buy-in" and then try it out on a pilot basis to identify any glitches that need to be fixed before applying it across the school district.

"No one is saying we want to maintain the status quo," Lankford said, but such a phase-in of changes is preferable to an overnight mandate from lawmakers.

"This is nothing more than wealthy, elite powerbrokers telling local communities what to do," Spar said of the Senate proposal. He predicted the bill would increase testing and pressure on students if passed and cause many talented teachers to leave the profession.

Flagler County school officials have also worked with its teachers' union to develop evaluation and compensation systems based on student achievement.

But Board Member Colleen Conklin said she's concerned about the bill for several reasons, including the expense of implementing the changes.

Flagler County teachers do not have tenure. Instead, they have professional service contracts that allow principals to remove teachers if they follow a due process.

Conklin said it's also unclear how teachers in non-core subjects like music or art will be evaluated.

Using testing to evaluate teachers becomes "a slippery slope," she said.

"Students come to us with all sorts of needs," Conklin said. "It becomes very difficult when you are judging someone's entire career on that one issue of a single test."

But she said she appreciates the desire to link student performance to their instructors' evaluations.

"I think if there's a way to come up with a fair tool to use to show student growth that any good teacher would embrace that," Conklin said. "The problem is that it's Pandora's box. How do you find a fair academic evaluation tool that will assess student growth?"

Teacher merit pay is being pushed by the Obama administration and a number of lawmakers around the country, but the verdict is still out on how it works most effectively -- and whether it has an effect on student achievement, at all.

A three-year study by Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives found that offering big bonuses to teachers failed to raise students' test scores. Teachers in the metropolitan Nashville school system who were offered bonuses of up to $15,000 a year had the same gains on standardized tests as those without the incentive.

But supporters of loosening tenure and tightening teacher accountability say the current laws are too lax.

Any changes will take place in the backdrop of cuts to education spending, as federal stimulus and jobs money dries up. Volusia schools stand to lose $35 million in federal stimulus money, while Flagler will lose $7 million.

Under Gov. Rick Scott's proposed budget, spending would decline by at least $300 per student and as much as $700. That will leave districts with the difficult task of trying to meet the state's class-size amendment with less money for teacher salaries. Lawmakers are again expected to take up legislation that would make the class-size rules more flexible.