I found incoming senate president Andy Gardiner’s reflexive
attack of teacher unions troubling. When the FEA filed suit against senate bill
850 (voucher expansion), he said the unions may have given up on these
children, but I haven’t.
First that’s very arguable, this legislature has routinely
slashed education budgets, attacked the teaching profession and made policy
decisions, common core, high stakes standardized testing, vouchers, charter
schools and merit pay that are not supported by evidence but which quite often
benefit their campaign donors. Those things not protesting a hastily thrown
together bill that violates the Constitutions single subject clauses have
caused exponentially more harm to children.
I also want to remind everyone that unions don’t establish
budgets, create curriculums, hire or fire teachers. All they do is try to make
the mutually agreed upon contract language, the rules, are enforced.
Furthermore because Florida is a right to work state, things like strikes the
one truly effective tool that unions have has been taken out of their toolbox.
I get really frustrated with the state legislature and its lack of vision when it comes to school "reforms." They are never able to articulate a clear vision of how schools are to improve with these measures. They want more charters. How are charters designed to help students? Choice. What if students are left with two bad options? More charters. If all schools became charter schools, would the state insist on accountability? If yes, then why not have it now? If no, then why have it for public schools? If firing all of the bad teachers is all it takes to get every kid a "world-class" education, what are we doing to train and retain the good teachers? Merit pay. Where's the money? Oh, you have to reduce the starting pay for all teachers to make that work? Who is going to sign up for that? We already have all of the people who signed up for the love of the job. There's no evidence that any of this works and there isn't even any specific description of why it's supposed to work. It's just ridiculous. How they even get away with just blaming the "unions" is beyond the pale.
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