Just a quick refresher, the best and brightest scholarships were
to be given to veteran teachers who were both highly effective and who whose
SAT scores were in the top twenty percent of their class and first year
teachers who likewise had high SAT scores. In case you are wondering there is no
correlation between SAT scores and teaching and even the people at the SAT think
this use of their scores is dumb.
In Duval County 110 teachers received the bonus. Of those
110, thirty-five were first year teachers, that’s right, they were only in their
third month of teaching when they had to get the application in.
I have asked how many of those 35 were Teach for America
teachers but the district has yet to get back to me.
A third of those that received the bonus had never taught before.
Teachers overwhelmingly rejected the program and the NEA
even filed a law suit against it. And not only did the legislature reauthorize the program but
now they are planning to spend 45 million dollars.
I am all for teachers getting paid more and had I been
eligible I would have applied as well, but this is a terrible and insulting program,
that I believe is here to enrich friends of powerful legislators and education
figures.
It's really despicable how poorly Florida treats its teachers.
It's really despicable how poorly Florida treats its teachers.
More on this to come.
After taxes & typical b.s. the original $10k is down to a little over $5k. They said there were so many teachers that qualified they had to reduce the $10k to $8k although 110 just for duval doesn't sound like alot to me. I'm guessing some other party is getting a kickback. It sucks that some teachers were counting on this $$ but such are the broken promises out of tally.
ReplyDeleteIt stinks that media specialists are not eligible to receive this $$ as they are not considered "classroom" teachers. At least my husband(a classroom teacher) will receive the $5,100 stipend. Had media specialists been included in the criteria we would have gotten the $10K that was originally promised between the two of us.
DeleteI also did not receive a school climate survey in the fall.
Apparently media specialists don't count because we don't assign grades. Not that Duval county cares what we think anyway. If the district was intentionally trying to marginalize media specialists they couldn't be doing a better job of it. It's no wonder students hate school so much.
http://www.palmbeachschools.org/compensation/CTA/PDFs.CTA/Best_and_Brightest_QandA_081215.pdf
The low number of Duval teachers eligible is related to Duval giving far fewer highly effective ratings to teachers than other counties.
ReplyDelete