Today, Wednesday, March 16, the Florida House of Representatives will give House Bill 7019--the House companion bill to Senate Bill 736, called the "Student Success Act" (and alternately the "Race to the Top bill" and the "teacher quality bill")--its third and final hearing, and take a final vote on its passage.
The bill is not expected to encounter any significant difficulty passing the House, as Republicans outnumber Democrats in the House by 81 to 39. Florida's new governor, tea party darling Rick Scott, has already signaled that he is ready to sign the bill.
One major sticking point, aside from all the philosophical and pedagogical arguments over what this legislation will do to public education and to the teaching profession, is money.
The legislature is not allocating a dime to pay for the thousands of new standardized tests it would require, let alone for "performance bonuses."
The bill's sponsor in the House, Rep. Erik Fresen (R-Miami), admitted that there is no money provided for the bonuses, saying that it would be districts' responsibility to fund them.
"When a district has determined there is money available for salary increases," he said, the bill says the money "must be prioritized to teachers that have been ranked highly effective first."
He said the said the current system has no "carrot" for top teachers, meaning there is no system to find and recognize effective teachers.
"The only carrot right now is, stick around for 20 years," and pay will go up, he said. Under the bill, "When funds are available for salary increases, you are going to be immediately recognized."
As Republicans look for more and more creative ways to cut education funding and funnel money from public schools to private schools and privately-managed charter schools, this remark is disingenuous at best, completely dishonest at worst. Teachers' unions have fought tooth and nail for step increases each year that, in some states and districts, are automatic. The new governor's budget would cut education funding by 10%, while using much of the savings to pay for tax breaks for corporations. Nobody, including Rep. Fresen, seriously expects to see the money for bonuses become available.
In his opening remarks to the Floor Q&A of HB 7019, Fresen reiterates repeatedly that the new legislation would not affect existing Professional Service Contracts or their salary schedules, although he does add, almost as an afterthought, that under the new legislation, two years of evaluations as "ineffective"--as determined by standardized test scores, of course--would be just cause for termination. This means, in essence, that even a teacher on a Professional Service Contract could henceforth be fired for student test scores.
What the legislation will mean to new teachers
The legislation would apply in its entirety (with no exceptions) to any teacher hired after July 1, 2011. (This includes any teacher transferring to another district, leaving and coming back, laid off and rehired, or most likely all teachers whose unions are decertified if and when HB 1023 passes.)
Rep. Fresen says that the "carrot" in the bill is that the new teacher knows that, when funds are available for raises or bonuses, they will be given based on evaluation rather than years of service.
The stick? Every teacher is subject to non-renewal at the end of each year, with or without cause. Democrats tried to add an amendment that would force districts to send a letter of explanation to teachers rated "effective" or "highly effective" at non-renewal, but Republicans shot down this amendment, as well as one that would allow for three-year contracts rather than annual contracts.
In short, the bill would affect "new" teachers (though that simply means any teacher not already covered by a contract) as follows:
- There will be no more contract or expectation of continued employment after the 3- to 4-year probationary period. Teachers will be on annual contracts indefinitely, and can be renewed or non-renewed with or without cause at the end of each school year.
- 50% of every teacher's evaluation will be based on student test scores, to be determined based on a "value-added formula" that has not yet been defined.
- Any teacher with two years in a row, or two out of three years, with a negative evaluation would automatically be subject to non-renewal, even if the principal wished to keep that teacher because of mitigating circumstances surrounding the evaluation (such as working with an exceptionally difficult group of students, dealing with a flawed test, being a beginning teacher needing experience and improvement, etc.)
- All new hires would be at a base salary to be set by the district. They would not be eligible for raises based on years of experience, but only "performance bonuses" by evaluations.
- No money has been allocated for these "performance bonuses," meaning that if there is no money, no one gets a bonus. Thus, assuming the legislature continues to cut the education budget as they have done repeatedly throughout past years, no teacher could expect to receive a bonus, EVER, no matter how stellar his/her evaluation.
- With little hope of ever actually seeing any performance bonus money, the most new hires can hope for is not to lose their job at the end of each year. And since they can be non-renewed without cause, they don't have to worry just about doing their job and preparing their students for a test, but also about being "liked" by the principal and staying under the radar. (That can mean not speaking up about unsafe conditions, unfair requirements or policies that are contrary to a sound education for students.)
Essentially, a new hire will be told that he/she can expect to earn somewhere around $35,000 for the entire length of his/her career, which, depending on what school he/she works at and which students he/she works with and who his/her principal is, could be no more than a year.
Perhaps it's just my take on it, but there does not seem to be any incentive to become a teacher in the state of Florida, let alone to work in difficult schools or with difficult student populations. Many college students currently studying education are already considering changing their major or leaving the state, as evidenced by one of several Facebook pages and protests at state education schools. At the Education Roundtable with President Obama that I attended March 4, Donna Shalala, president of University of Miami, told Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that her education students were "incredibly demoralized" by the attacks on teachers, and that it was a struggle to convince them that they should continue studying education.
What the legislation will mean to current teachers
Though Rep. Fresen claims that SB 736/HB 7019 would not affect teachers currently covered by a Professional Service Contract (PSC), this is aimed at keeping teachers quiet and complacent. In fact, all teachers, current and future, will be significantly (and negatively) impacted by the legislation.
- Regardless of whether a teacher is on an annual contract or a PSC, his/her evaluation will be based 50% on student test scores.
- Poor student performance, as determined by a formula that has not yet been defined, two years in a row or two out of three years would be considered "just cause" for termination. This, even though statistically test score data is so unreliable that the same teacher could be rated "highly effective" one year and "ineffective" the next, depending on the group of students, the test itself and the conditions within the school.
- Continued budget cuts and the unfunded mandate of thousands of new standardized tests ensure that there will be no money for raises or bonuses.
- If some money ever came along for raises or bonuses, they would by law have to be given first to teachers with a "highly effective" rating in an annual contract before they could be given to anyone on the "grandfathered" salary schedule.
- The "performance bonuses" would be mandated by law to be greater than the largest single jump in the current salary schedule, which in Miami-Dade County is $10,000. That means that unless and until the district can afford to pay out a $10,000 bonus to every teacher on an annual contract with a "highly effective" rating, nobody in the district could receive a step.
- The new standardized tests for every subject area, which would be required for students to receive credit for the course and required for teachers' evaluations, would result in increased narrowing of the curriculum to test-prep and drilling, with less focus on actual teaching, creative projects or meaningful discussion. This has already happened in the subjects tested by FCAT (reading, math and science).
- In cases where unions are decertified (assuming HB 1023 passes), teachers could lose their PSC and still be subject to the annual contract just like new hires.
No carrot, but a big, big stick
All claims by supporters that this legislation is intended to "reward good teachers" is belied by the fact that there is no funding behind it. If legislators truly intended to pay "good teachers" (as measured by standardized tests) more, they would increase funding for education so that the districts could pay out the "performance bonuses."
If they wanted to attract highly qualified teachers to the state, they would ensure that base pay was adequate--at least on the national average. Instead, Florida's teacher pay is now #47 in the nation.
With the massive forecast education budget cuts, there does not seem to be hope for any new teacher that he/she could hope to earn more than the base pay--as yet undetermined--regardless of how well his/her students to do on the standardized tests that have not yet been written (or paid for).
Whatever "carrot" is there must be a very elusive hallucination.
However, the "stick" is very, very big...and very real. As if it were not enough pressure (and disincentive to work in difficult schools) to know that evaluations and continued employment depend on students' scores on standardized tests, now teachers will also have to walk on eggshells around administrators to avoid "rubbing anyone the wrong way." Why? Their principal will no longer need a reason to fire him/her. He will no longer have to justify himself.
Teachers are mandated by law to do some things that can irritate an administrator. For example, I have personally spoken to a teacher who reported unsafe conditions in her school. The principal was so angry at the embarrassment of the charge--which was found to be true--that she penalized that teacher by placing her the next year in a grade level she had never taught before, with a particularly difficult group of students.
Now, she could not only do that, but could fire her, and would not be required to provide any justification for it.
Race to the bottom
The real name of this game is busting teachers' unions. When you eliminate due process through putting teachers on annual contracts, and effectively eliminate collective bargaining through mandating pay scales based on student test scores, you have done a pretty good job at eliminating the reasons for a teachers' union to exist. When you further cripple them by eliminating payroll dues deduction (though not payroll deduction for insurance companies or other private corporations with lobbyists) and by prohibiting them from contributing to political activity (SB 830), you have pretty well wiped them off the map.
But just in case that alone is not enough, they made sure they had HB 1023 in there--to decertify unions with less than 50% membership, just in case there were a few still hanging around.
The lawmakers pushing to drive unions, and most especially teachers' unions, out of existence have managed to rally support among many middle-class and working-class people by creating the illusion that public workers hold "cushy" jobs with "lavish" benefits.
Fox News's Tracy Byrnes claimed that families earning $250,000 with kids in college were "practically poverty level" when justifying the extension of the Bush tax cuts, yet expressed self-righteous outrage that teachers in Wisconsin could earn $50,000 plus benefits.
The truth is, wages among the middle class and working class have stagnated for years, both in the public and private sector, even as the rich have gotten richer and richer. Republican legislators and governors around the country are falling over themselves to shower corporations, including those who outsource jobs to third-world countries, with more and more tax breaks, while completely dismantling social services including health care, public transportation and of course education.
Biased reports continue to be aired on television claiming that public sector workers earn more than those in the private sector, but those reports are only true when education level and age are not taken into account. When public and private sector workers are compared based on level of education and age, all studies find that private sector workers earn on average 5% more than public sector workers, even including benefits.
At both the state and the federal level, Republican lawmakers have dismissed the economic impact of laying off hundreds of thousands of public sector workers. (John Boehner famously said that, if federal jobs are cut, "so be it.") The sheer ludicrousness of such disregard for what public workers contribute to society, both through the essential services they provide and through the taxes they pay and the goods and services they buy, seems lost on the adherents of Fox News, who seem to cling faithfully to the mantra of eliminating the public sector.
And in Florida, Rick Scott, who rode into office on the white horse of "jobs," aims to lay off over 10,000 public sector employees, saying dismissively that taxpayers cannot "afford them" anymore. He brazenly ignores that adding 10,000 people to the rosters of the unemployed will hurt the local and state economy--in addition to putting children in overcrowded, undermaintained classrooms with narrow curriculums (teachers), leaving the streets less safe (police), and leaving more people with inadequate access to health care (nurses and doctors).
His claim that eliminating corporate income taxes and regulations on corporations will bring thousands of new jobs to the state blatantly ignores that those jobs, even if they really were created (which is doubtful, since Florida already has among the most corporate-friendly environments in the nation), would not be enough to absorb the public sector workers laid off, let alone the over one million currently unemployed workers.
People forget easily. Many working-class people forget (or ignore) that, once upon a time, private sector unions were very strong and protected workers from arbitrary termination and allowed them to collectively bargain for a living wage...union-protected factory workers used to be able to support an entire family, with dignity, on one income. Now in working-class families, both parents have to work--and often more than one job each--and many times even teenagers are sent to work after school and on weekends, just to keep the lights on.
That is because corporations busted unions, with help from the government, by outsourcing jobs to developing and third-world countries, where they can violate workers' rights and often human rights without consequences. For the few manufacturing jobs that remain in the US, just the threat of moving jobs overseas is often all it takes to keep workers from demanding living wages and benefits.
The overwhelming majority of public sector workers--including teachers, firefighters, police and nurses--are far from overpaid. They are middle-class at best, and working-class at worst. I have yet to meet a teacher who lived in a luxurious home, unless his/her spouse had a better-paid job, or unless he/she was independently wealthy. I do, on the other hand, know plenty of teachers who live paycheck to paycheck, have lost homes, had to declare bankruptcy, had cars repossessed, etc. These are not things that happen to "lavishly" paid employees...but they do happen to people who are just surviving, both in the private and public sector.
By destroying public sector unions--the last stronghold of organized labor and collective bargaining in the country--we are doing nothing more than speeding up our race to the bottom. Far too many of those unhappy with their own wages and benefits, instead of organizing and fighting to regain their dignity and be paid their worth, have taken the bait and instead are trying to bring every other working person down to having no job security and poor pay and benefits.
They don't even stop to wonder why we can't afford public schools, police, firefighters or public health care workers, with their barely-middle-class salaries, yet we can afford to dish out millions and often even billions more in corporate tax breaks and tax cuts for the very rich.
Public sector work benefits everyone, whether they work in the public or private sector. It ensures that we have schools open to all children, where all children are guaranteed a shot at an education and a future. It ensures that we have police keeping our streets safe, and firefighters there to protect our property. It ensures that when people are dying, they get taken care of. Besides that, public sector workers pay sales tax, income tax, property tax. They spend their salaries in the local economy, helping keep private sector workers employed and small businesses open.
The vicious attack on the public sector and on the unions that give them living wages is really an attack on the middle class and the working class, orchestrated by the ultra-rich and the corporate titans and then faithfully carried out by people who live next door to us, and live paycheck to paycheck like we do.
A race to the bottom will get us nowhere but the bottom...and rest assured that, while we all sacrifice, those on top have sacrificed nothing and will stay on top, getting richer and more powerful by the day.
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