Senate Bill 6 / House Bill 7189: An Open Letter to Our Legislature

In my distress over Florida Senate Bill 6 (which has already passed the Senate, in fact, did so before my very eyes, as I was sitting in the Senate in Tallahassee as they passed it) and its companion House Bill 7189, I have been filled with a sense of helplessness and frustration.  My trepidation of this bill is shared by all of my colleagues: teachers, guidance counselors, administration, even my superintendent and the School Board.  In fact, it feels like the first time we have ever been so united; it is unfortunate that the unity must come in face of this atrocity of a bill.

I could write at length about the various implications and consequences of this bill, but I composed a letter (which I have already e-mailed to House and Senate Republicans who voted for the bill) yesterday which I think explains most of what I want to say in this regard.  So please feel free to read this open letter to our state legislature, and pass it along to anyone who wonders why SB6 is such a bad bill, or who doubts that it will wreck public education...or who simply does not know or care what SB6 is, who believes that it will not affect them in any way.

**If you oppose Senate Bill 6, as almost all educators do, and as anyone with children, grandchildren or a conscience should, please go to www.utd.org to find locations of protest rallies and to find e-mail addresses and phone numbers of your representatives and senators.  Make your voice heard.  The time is now.**

Dear State Legislators:

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Smith, and I am a French teacher at Hialeah High School in Miami-Dade County. I was in Tallahassee from the 23rd to the 25th speaking with you and/or some of your colleagues on behalf of teachers in my county and state. I would like to not only voice my opposition to Senate Bill 6 and its House companion bill, but give you some very precise reasons for my opposition and warn you of some of the consequences of its passage.

First of all, let me say that I love my job. Obviously I did not choose my profession for its salary; I chose it because I enjoy working with the youth, broadening their horizons, sparking their curiosity and sharing with them my own personal passion for learning and for other languages and cultures. I have a B.A. in French from Florida State University and an M.A. in French Literature from Indiana University. I taught French at the college level at Indiana University and taught English as a foreign language in France (where I lived for two years) and in Italy (where I lived for 15 months; I am also fluent in Italian). I have also taught French literature in French to American high school students studying abroad in France. I currently teach eight sections of French, including French I, French II and Advanced Placement French, in a Title I school that is 98% Hispanic. I sponsor the French Club, despite the fact that budget cuts mean that I am no longer compensated for this extra work. I do it because the students are enthusiastic about it and wish to have the club. I am the Silver Knight coordinator for my school, identifying excellent students for nomination, assisting them with their applications, helping them prepare for their interviews and accompanying them to the awards ceremony. Even though by contract my work day ends at 2:40 every day, one can usually find me in my classroom at 4:00 or even 4:30 most days, grading papers and planning lessons.

I have no problem with assessment and evaluation. I invite anyone to come into my classroom and watch me teach, watch me engage my students, inspire them to think not only about the language itself but about culture and geographical differences and answer their questions. In my class, we do work from the district-adopted textbooks, quite faithfully. We cover all of the vocabulary and grammar in the textbooks; my students have homework from the workbooks (though budget cuts mean they can no longer write in them), quizzes at least once a week, and chapter tests. All of this is very important, and helps me assess which students have mastered the material and which are still struggling. It also holds the students accountable for learning, studying and retention of the material. However, working out of the textbook alone is not what makes a course engaging, and it is not what will pique a student’s curiosity and inspire them to want to learn more. So while we do a great deal of work from the textbooks, we also do myriad other assignments and activities beyond the textbook. My students have projects, which, depending on their level of French, vary from planning a trip to France or a French-speaking country, to finding background on and preparing a dish from France or a French-speaking country, to writing and filming a television commercial in French, to corresponding by e-mail and letters with teenagers in France. We also watch two or three French-language movies throughout the year, discussing the language, the cultural and cinematographic differences apparent through the films, as well as the subject of the film (which often involves history or popular culture icons). In my French II and AP French classes, I supplement the short readings in the textbook with poems, short stories, articles, plays and novels—of which I have quite a bit of knowledge, thanks to my Master degree in French literature (3.9 GPA), and which SB6 will ensure that I am not compensated for. I am the only French teacher at my school currently, and thus have the absolute pleasure of watching my students grow, both physically and intellectually. My students come in their first year not knowing a word of French, and in my AP class they are having full conversations and debates in French, reading and discussing novels in French and writing two-page essays in French. It is difficult for me to express how proud it makes me to see their development, and how happy it makes me to get to know them so well both as students and as individuals, coming from very different circumstances, with very different interests, goals and personalities. I enjoy an excellent rapport with my students. Although I have over 200 students this year, I know each and every one by first and last name, and can even identify their papers by their handwriting when they forget to write their names.

In short, I care about my students. This is why I became an educator, this is why I am an educator, this is why I would like to stay an educator.

Senate Bill 6 threatens all of this.

It threatens my career by telling me that if my students do not “make the mark,” as yet undetermined, on some test that does not yet exist, which I have no way of knowing where it will come from, who will make it or exactly what it will cover, I could lose my job, lose my certificate, or at the very least, earn significantly less than I currently earn or than I could earn doing the same work in other states.

It threatens my job security by assuring that if an administrator does not like me, for whatever reason, they have the right to terminate me at the end of each year, for any reason or for no reason. With my current administration, I foresee no problems. I adore my principal and my assistant principals and enjoy an excellent relationship with each of them. However, there is certainly no guarantee that my administration will still be here next year, or the next, or the next. Currently, my school has a letter grade of D (despite earning the points necessary for a C, we were knocked down to a D because of “insufficient learning gains among the lowest 25%”), meaning we are a Correct II school, meaning that if FCAT scores do not bring us back up to at least a C this year, we will likely lose most (if not all) of our administration. I have fantastic administration and would be devastated to lose them. Even more, I am scared of who could come in. This bill operates on the assumption (which I also heard on the Senate floor and in the House Pre K-12 Committee) that no administrator would want to get rid of a highly effective teacher. Unfortunately, this assumption is simply faulty. While I have never had a problem with my administration in the four years that I have been teaching at this school, I have many friends working in difficult schools that have had their administration changed frequently, who have had many problems with administrators who contradict one another, belittle them in front of their students, etc. And these are excellent teachers. While I am passionate about my job and love what I teach, and believe that I am highly effective in my teaching, and I think this is quite evident to my current administration, I am also very politically involved and very active in my teachers’ union, and this is threatening to some administrators. This bill would allow a principal who felt irritated or menaced by these activities or interests to essentially fire me. (I am sure that you will point out that, as I was hired before July 2010, I already have a professional service contract and will be “grandfathered in” and that therefore my own contract is not threatened by this. Awaiting further investigation of these claims, I speak therefore on behalf of any new teacher entering the field.)

Despite my contract status, if the test devised is not based on the material covered by my district-adopted textbooks, and/or if it is not clearly and explicitly detailed in state standards that I will be given access to, my students will fail it, and I could lose my certification because of this, which amounts to a termination of my career. This bill means that teachers can fail to be recertified based on test scores, and the only way to regain certification is to prove learning gains in the classroom; without a certificate, we have no access to the classroom and thus have no opportunity to prove ourselves. An unfair test or unclear standards could easily mean an end to the career that I love—and not because I have been lazy or have not been teaching effectively, but simply because I did not know what was going to be on the test that my students would have to take. Make no mistake. I teach a foreign language, not reading or math. It does not only involve universal skills or concepts. If I do not teach my students something that is on the test, they will miss those questions on the test. If I do not know those questions will be there, I will not be sure to teach that particular material. Different textbooks cover different concepts, vocabulary and grammar. Textbooks vary from district to district. Will my students be taking the same end-of-course exams as students in Tampa or Tallahassee? Even if we do not use the same textbooks? Or will Miami-Dade County have its own test? If the latter is the case, that implies that there will be 67 different French I and French II tests around the state. If this is so, how can I be fairly assessed, since other French teachers in other districts will be assessed based on a different test?

The bill threatens my love of teaching by proposing to choke every aspect of my job that is personal, fun, engaging and creative. The best-case scenario that I can imagine involves an end-of-course exam based on the district-adopted textbooks that I teach from. The French I textbook we use, while excellent in the material it covers and the way it is written, with many useful resources that help me in teaching and assessing the material, is very, very long and covers a huge number of concepts. I have tried many times to develop a curriculum map that would allow me to cover all fourteen chapters in one year. So far, I have been unable to do so. The scope and sequence that comes with the textbook assumes a bullet-train pace through the chapters (which would leave almost no time for discussion of concepts, review, or extra activities, even ones that go along with the textbook such as the DVD or the review game; it does not even allow time for chapter tests), with no interruptions (such as testing days where we cannot have regular classes) and certainly no time built in for extra activities like projects, French movies or French literature outside the textbook. Even going at that bullet-train pace and shunning all activities beyond the textbook, I think it would be extremely difficult to finish the textbook in one year without losing a majority of students along the way. It would make my class extremely difficult for all but the most gifted students, very frustrating and very boring.

I implore you to think back on your own days in school. Which teachers do you remember? You probably remember the very best ones and perhaps the very worst. Of the very best ones, what do you remember about them, or about their class? Do you remember doing exercises from the textbook every single day? Do you remember doing practice tests for standardized tests? Or do you remember the way they explained things, new concepts you became curious about, or concepts you were familiar with explained in a new way that suddenly made them interesting? Do you remember the creative projects they had you do that made you realize things you had not before, or made you curious to learn more? Do you remember the discussions and debates you had in class, and how they spilled out beyond the classroom and made you want to find out more so that you could validate your point or perhaps change your point of view altogether?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question. Great teachers are not automatons who teach students how to pass multiple-choice standardized tests. They are those teachers who broaden our horizons, teach us to look at new things or to look at old things in new ways, who inspire us to learn more. My students who do not continue French beyond high school may well forget how to conjugate the verbs they have learned once they are out of
French class. What I hope they will have gained in the long term is a curiosity about and appreciation for other cultures; I hope they will be inspired to travel, to get to know people from different countries and cultural backgrounds, to explore literature and films and art and music and cuisine that are different from what they see every day. If I am bound by an end-of-year exam to only cover the massive amounts of vocabulary and grammar that will appear on that exam, I will lose the ability to convey these richer aspects of the language and culture to my students. In turn, my students will lose (or never find) the interest in the language and culture. They will have gotten nothing from my class other than a lot of verb conjugations they will most likely forget the minute the test is over. The reasons for learning the language—being able to communicate with people in other countries and cultures, being able to fully appreciate art forms from other cultures through the language, having greater opportunities in travel—will disappear with each a, b, or c they bubble in.

Finally, speaking beyond my own personal concerns, I see disastrous consequences ahead for public education in the state of Florida. Jeb Bush and his cronies say that this is a “teacher bill” that will provide the performance pay incentive for the best teachers to come to the state of Florida. Yet in the Pre K-12 Committee in the House, Republican representatives denied the amendment that would guarantee that teachers would be paid the national average. I can tell you right now that every single teacher I know is strongly against this bill, and that I have not met a single teacher in favor of it. And I know a lot of teachers. We are not all bad teachers; in fact, most of us are excellent teachers who love what we do. Yet as we discuss this bill, what comes up time and time again is what we will do once it goes into effect. Some of us (myself included) plan on leaving the state for a state that will compensate us in an appropriate way, that will compensate us for the advanced degrees that we took the time, effort and money to work for, that will compensate us for our years of experience, that will understand that the job we do cannot be measured by a score on a standardized test. I heard Rep. Weatherford compare the job we do to an insurance agency; he claims that advanced degrees do not necessarily make better teachers, because an insurance agent is paid based on how much insurance he sells, not based on his degree. I would remind Rep. Weatherford that education is not insurance. It is not a sales job. Nor is it a manufacturing job. We are not given raw material to turn out into identical, matching finished products. Our students come from many different backgrounds, have many different home environments, different needs, different interests, different learning styles, different educational experiences. The idea that one teacher alone is responsible for a child’s performance on a standardized test at the end of the year is preposterous. If and when this bill is implemented, I wish you all good luck finding any teacher willing (i.e., crazy enough) to teach special education, English as a second language, or in low-income schools. (I will point out that in the “Hillsborough experiment” so widely quoted in discussions of this bill, only 3% of merit pay bonuses have gone to teachers in low-income schools.) Good luck recruiting teachers to this state, when they cannot even plan their finances. Good luck finding college students who will want to become teachers; those currently majoring in education will most likely choose to teach in other states when they are finished, where they can earn more, enjoy more job security and actually plan their futures.

If you think your teachers have no other options than to stick around for your experiment, you are wrong. We are overall a very qualified, very well-educated bunch. Those of us who are attached to the state will find other careers that will appreciate our degrees, our talents and our experience. Those of us who are not attached to the state will simply move to states that will appreciate our degrees, talents and experience. Make no mistake: passage and implementation of this bill will result in disastrous consequences for education in Florida. You are grossly underestimating teachers when you craft and support this bill and refuse all amendments that might make it slightly less of an assault on us. We will not take it. We will leave. You will be losing teachers, and not those “bad” ones you always talk about. You will be losing the best and brightest teachers you have.

If that is your intention, then go ahead and pass this bill. If it is not, I recommend you take another look, listen to some teachers, and think twice.

Furthermore, please rest assured that teachers are angrier than they have ever been since 1968, and UTD will work very hard to ensure that those candidates who support public education will be elected in November, and that those who are enemies of public education, as you currently are, will be removed from power.

Sincerely,
Jennifer I. Smith