Senate bill would tie teachers' pay to students' performance

Florida Senate Bill 6 is not popular among local teachers, to say the least.

The education reform bill would eliminate existing teacher contracts and replace them with contracts that base more than 50 percent of a teacher’s wages on student achievement.

“It seems to me like it’s a massive attack on teachers, and I don’t understand the logic behind it,” said Niceville High School teacher Richard Hernandez, who is a National Board Certified teacher with a master’s degree in education.

Teachers unions across the state, including the Okaloosa County Education Association, have similar misgivings. They argue the bill is too broad and tramples on the rights of teachers.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, is intended to develop statewide teaching standards that will enhance students’ education and reward great teachers, said Sen. Don Gaetz

“We need to pay effective teachers more money, and we need to find appropriate ways to get ineffective teachers out of the classroom, and we need to help teachers as much as we can become effective, and that’s why Sen. Thrasher’s bill carries with it some real value,” said Gaetz, one of the bill’s co-sponsors.

“The bill provides a landing zone for performance-based compensation four years from now,” added Gaetz, R-Niceville. “There certainly is an understanding in the Senate that the process will undergo changes and that there will be refinements over time.”

Gaetz said he supports the bill largely because when he was Okaloosa County’s superintendent schools, the pay system frustrated him because one of the only ways a teacher, even a very effective one, could get a raise was to get a year older.

Under the existing salary schedule for teachers, pay is based on several factors. They include classroom performance, years of experience and advanced degrees or training.

Basing pay on how students perform leaves many factors out of teachers’ control,” said Linda Evanchyk, an English teacher at Choctawhatchee High School.

“We have too many elements out of our control to base (our pay) on that (student performance),” Evanchyk said. “My thing is, do you base a doctor’s salary on how many people don’t die when he treats them?”

Hernandez echoed Evanchyk’s concern. He said he worries that if the bill passes the Legislature, it might not take into account the many factors that affect how well students do on exams.

“I don’t know too many other professions where my paycheck is based on how somebody else does,” he said.

Exactly how teachers will be graded has not been determined. That will be ironed out later if the Legislature approves the bill, Gaetz said.

The other big problem with the bill, teachers said, is it removes two of the biggest incentives teachers have had to further their education: the Florida Teacher Scholarship and Forgivable Loan Program and the National Board Certification Program.

Under the certification program — the most prestigious certification available to teachers — educators spend a year making videos and writing papers about what they do each day in the classroom, and take half a dozen tests to gain the certification, said Evanchyk, who oversees the program in Okaloosa County.

The certification is good for 10 years. It also initially meant that teachers would get a 10 percent pay increase, she said.

That percentage recently dropped almost 2 percent, and now teachers are being told the state is dropping the program entirely.

“They’ve slowly taken it all away,” Evanchyk said. “It was touted as this is the highest national accolade in our profession, and now it’s just being tossed aside and it’s insulting and disheartening.”

In February, the school district hosted a ceremony for 13 teachers who had just received the certification. The county now has 130 National Board Certified teachers, and Florida is second to only North Carolina in the number of board certified teachers, Evanchyk said.

In a letter to Florida senators and Gov. Charlie Crist, Edge Elementary teacher Vicki Burger challenged the decision to eliminate the program and said Board Certified teachers already have brought about the changes this bill is seeking.

“National Board Certified teachers are the sparks that will ignite change in Florida’s schools,” she wrote. “(National Board Certified teachers) are actively involved in mentoring other teachers and are committed to students and their families, thus affecting students’ progress.”

Gaetz said losing programs said such as the National Board Certification troubles him, but he added that budget cuts must be made.

“This is not just a year in which the budget is tight, this is a year in which we’ve already had a revenue shortfall in the last two years of $7 billion, and this year we have another $3 billion shortfall and next year there is another expected $5 billion shortfall,” he said. “The Florida Constitution, thankfully, does not allow deficit spending, so we have to reduce spending to match the revenues the state is collecting.”

The Senate Education Committee voted 6-2 to pass Senate Bill 6 bill with eight amendments. The six senators who voted for it co-signed it are Republicans. The two who were opposed were Democrats from South Florida.