TALLAHASSEE — Call it déjà vu.
Call it the Son of 6.
Either way, a controversial merit pay bill that would tie teacher evaluations to student test performance and effectively end tenure for new teachers is once again one signature away from becoming law in Florida.
Following more than three hours of civil, but at times heated, debate, the Florida House voted 80-39 Wednesday to pass the Republican-sponsored bill, SB 736, dubbed the “Student Success Act.” The bill passed on a party-line vote.
Supporters say the bill will help identify the best teachers and provide educators incentives to succeed in their classrooms.
“This bill will move Florida forward,” said Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, sponsor of the House bill. “It will re-create our public education system as we know it, and for the first time our administrators, our state, our parents, and more importantly our children will be closer to the point of having a highly effective teacher in front of every child.”
House Democrats, who could see the writing on the wall, described the bill as an attack on teachers, some of whom haven’t received raises in years and could be fired without fault.
“This was a bad bill last year and it’s still a bad bill,” said Rep. Luis Garcia, D-Miami Beach.
Less than a year ago, the Florida Legislature passed a similar measure, Senate Bill 6, which was subsequently vetoed by then- Gov. Charlie Crist. He called the bill, ardently opposed by teachers’ unions, “significantly flawed.”
This time around, Gov. Rick Scott, R-Naples, who championed merit pay on the campaign trail, isn’t expected to waiver.
“This is part of the process of making sure that education is 100 percent focused on the benefit of students,” Scott said during a celebratory press conference. “We will make sure that the best teachers stick around, we retain them, train them, and we’ll find the money to make sure they’re paid fairly.”
Florida will join a handful of other states and cities as a pioneer in the national pay for performance experiment. It will be one of the largest-scale experiments so far, said Bill Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“If we pay people by incentive, we will attract a different pool of people into the teaching process,” Evers said. “They’ll be achievement-oriented rather than just seat-time oriented.”
Last year’s debate over the merit pay bill didn’t end until around 3 a.m., and the Capitol was full of vocal protesters, said Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, who voted for the bill.
“Did you see those people today? I didn’t,” Hudson said. “And that’s largely because over the course of the last year … the people that were so adamantly and ardently opposed last year wanted a seat at the table. OK. Over the last year we gave people a seat at the table.”
Still, critics called the bill an unproven experiment, an unfunded mandate, and a golden ticket for testing companies.
“We now have this bill before us today that will supposedly pay good teachers more, but does not put one penny of funding in the bill to pay for those increases,” said Ron Saunders, the Democratic minority leader from Key West. “However, it does divert millions of dollars from the classroom to pay for additional tests that teachers tell us are not needed.”
Mark Pudlow, spokesman for Florida Education Association, said Tallahassee politicians will have more influence on local schools.
“I think this is going to be the biggest change for the teacher profession we’ve seen,” Pudlow said.
Under the bill’s provisions, by July 2014, at least 50 percent of a new Florida teacher’s evaluation would be based on student learning, as measured by the FCAT and other statewide assessment tests. The second 50 percent would vary from district to district.
School districts would be responsible for selecting assessments for subjects not tested statewide. Students would be measured against their own benchmarks at the beginning of the year.
What's at stake
Teachers would be rated as highly effective, effective, needs improvement or unsatisfactory. They would have to be rated as either highly effective or effective to be eligible for a pay increase, if money is available for pay increases.
Teachers who are rated unsatisfactory for two consecutive years, or two years out of a three-year period, wouldn’t have their contracts renewed.
Using the formula, teachers would be rated as highly effective, effective, needs improvement or unsatisfactory. They would have to be rated as either highly effective or effective to be eligible for a pay increase, if money is available for pay increases.
Teachers who are rated unsatisfactory for two consecutive years, or two years out of a three-year period, wouldn’t have their contracts renewed.
The bill would effectively end tenure for new teachers and the practice of “last hired, first fired” in Florida. Instead, teachers hired after July 1, would be placed on one-year contracts.
Critics say the bill effectively fires those teachers every year regardless of their performance.
The Florida Senate passed its version of the controversial bill last week. House members reconciled the two bills, and have been working off the Senate’s version.
Wednesday’s vote comes on the heels of two recent studies that found little evidence that providing financial incentives to teachers led to increased student performance.
The first study, released in September by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, followed teachers in Nashville, Tenn., public schools. The second, released this month by a Harvard economist with the National Bureau of Economic Research, studied a teacher incentive program in New York City schools.
Mark Castellano, president of the Teachers Association of Lee County, called the passage of the bill “a sham,” adding that passing a bill requiring merit pay for teachers doesn’t solve the problem of developing the plan.
Matt Caldwell on NewsMakers
Quotable
“I think it’s going to give us a better overall education system. I think it’s the direction education reform has been going,” said Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres.
“They say, ‘We’ll work it out later.’ But we still don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
Castellano said the bill’s passage is just the start of a movement to privatize public education.
With the bill’s passage in the House and an almost certain signature by Scott, Castellano said the union is turning its attention to other measures being taken up by the Legislature, including bills that would end union dues deductions, forbid the use of dues for political activity, and make it easier for public employees to decertify unions.
“We are looking toward bills that affect pensions and collective bargaining,” he said.
Merit pay has been popular with House and Senate Republicans, including the House Republicans from Southwest Florida.
“I think it’s going to give us a better overall education system. I think it’s the direction education reform has been going,” said Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, who voted for the bill. “I think the weight of the evidence of the debate was on our side.”
Rep. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said the only way to give incentives to employees is to reward them for good performance.
“In my district, people are calling me and saying what if we have a disruptive class, and we have kids that are starting at different levels, we have kids that don’t speak English, and we have all kinds of problem kids,” Passidomo said. “The bottom line is, students are measured against their own progress.”
2011 ELECTED LEADERS & LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION
Home: Naples
Party: Republican
Scott, a multimillionaire former hospital executive, came out of nowhere to win election as Florida's 45th governor in November. He ran as a political outsider, and has no prior experience in electoral politics. Scott has promised to run the state more like a business, phase out the state's corporate tax, cut the state workforce, and create 700,000 new jobs over seven years.
Home: Fleming Island, Fla.
Party: Republican
An immigrant from Trinidad, veteran of the U.S. Navy, and businesswoman, Carroll became the first black woman elected to the Florida Legislature during a special election in 2003. She served three terms in the state House of Representatives before Gov. Rick Scott chose her as his running mate in September.
Home: Tampa
Party: Republican
Bondi was a prosecutor in Hillsborough County for 19 years and Fox News legal analyst before she was elected Attorney General in November. She is the lead attorney general in the lawsuit to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Home: North Palm Beach
Party: Republican
A former banker, Atwater was elected to the Florida House in 2000, and the Florida Senate in 2002. He served as Senate president from 2008 through 2010, and was elected CFO in November.
Home: Bartow
Party: Republican
Putnam, who comes from a family of cattle ranchers and citrus farmers, was elected to the Florida House in 1996 at age 22. He was elected to Congress five years later. During his tenure in Congress, Putnam served as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee and as House Republican Conference Chairman. Putnam was elected agriculture commissioner in November.
Home: Winter Park
Party: Republican
An attorney and former University of Florida student body president, Cannon was elected to the Florida House in 2004.
Home: Merritt Island
Party: Republican
A college professor who is still a guest lecturer at the University of Florida, Haridopolos was elected to the Florida House in 2000. He won a special election to the Florida Senate in 2003, and has announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate in 2012. Haridopolos was formally admonished by the Senate Rules Committee in late February for failing to properly disclose his finances.
Home: Key West
Party: Democrat
An attorney and fifth-generation Key Wester, Saunders was first elected to the Florida House in 1986, where he served through 1994. He returned to the House after winning election in 2006, and has headed the Florida House Democratic Caucus since 2009.
Home: Weston
Party: Democrat
A member of the Broward County Women's Hall of Fame, Rich was elected to the Florida House in 2000 and to the Senate in 2004. She was elected minority leader in 2010. Rich has served as the national president of the National Council of Jewish Women, and as a board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Home: Wellington
Party: Republican
A former Wellington councilwoman and vice mayor, Benaquisto won a special election to the Florida Senate in November representing District 27, which stretches from southern Lee County to Palm Beach County. As a first-term senator, Benaquisto said the Legislature's first priority this session is aligning state spending to "the reality of today's world."
Home: Miami
Party: Democrat
Bullard's sprawling District 39 includes Monroe County, as well as portions of eastern-Collier, Hendry, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Bullard was elected to the Florida Senate in 2002 after previously serving in the Florida House.
Home: Naples
Party: Republican
President and founder of First National Bank of the Gulf Coast, Richter was elected to the Florida Senate in 2008 representing Collier and Lee counties in District 37. Fittingly, he is the chair of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. Richter served in the Florida House from 2006 to 2008.
Home: Lehigh Acres
Party: Republican
Caldwell, a real estate appraiser and Florida Gulf Coast University alum, won his first election in November representing most of Lee County in District 73. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Florida Senate in 2008.
Home: Golden Gate Estates
Party: Republican
Hudson, a Realtor and former Golden Gate fire commissioner, won a special election to the Florida House in 2007 representing District 101, which stretches across Collier and Broward counties. He is the chair of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee. Hudson has served on numerous Collier County advisory boards and also been active with the Rotary Club and as a youth umpire.
Home: Miami
Party: Republican
Nuñez was elected in November to represent District 112, which includes portions of eastern-Collier and Miami-Dade counties, and touches a portion of south Broward County. She is vice president of external affairs at Kendall Regional Medical Center and Aventura Medical Center.
Home: Naples
Party: Republican
Passidomo won her first election to the Florida House in 2010 without competition. A 30-year Naples resident, she served as the founding member of the Collier County Juvenile Justice Council and the Collier County Senior Resource Center, was a driving force behind the Collier County Foreclosure Task Force, and has been involved with dozens of other local and state organizations.
Home: Fort Myers
Party: Republican
Williams, an engineer by trade, is the CEO of the Fort Myers-based TKW Consulting Engineers, which she founded in 1989. She was appointed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush to the South Florida Water Management District in 1999, and has served in the Florida House since 2004. She chairs the Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee and the Select Committee on Water Policy. In February, Williams announced her candidacy for Florida Senate in 2012.
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