A key Republican leader, who is closely tied to Florida’s booming and profitable charter industry, slipped into the state budget a bill to pay a bonus to teachers with high SAT scores. His bill is known as “Best and Brightest,” assuming that those with the highest SAT scores are or will be the best teachers.
In this post, Florida teacher Melissa Halpern explains the absurdity of this plan. Veteran teachers will get the bonus if they can locate their SAT scores, even if they took the test 20 years ago, but only if they also received a “highly effective” rating based on test scores.
Halpern explains the absurdity:
“Let’s start with the very notion of rewarding a correlation. Incentives work when people have the power to respond to them with effort and action, when they can initiate a cause of success. What if studies found that teaching performance correlated with race, gender, or socioeconomic status (all of which are correlated with SAT scores, by the way)? Would we ever find it acceptable to offer a gender bonus? Of course not. Aside from being discriminatory, such an incentive would be illogical; it offers no room for effort, no goal to work toward.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to discern which correlations are actually causal, but common sense helps. While a teacher’s 20-year-old SAT score is probably not the cause of her success in the classroom, her training, credentials, and years of experience might be; incidentally, these are all proven correlations with teacher performance that Florida has downplayed under its current “merit pay” system, which replaced the old experience-based salary schedule in 2010….
“It seems, then, that the Best and Brightest incentive is not really an incentive at all, and that whatever it is, it certainly wasn’t devised to reward experienced teachers in the first place.
“So who does stand to benefit from this program? Primarily new teachers, especially those who might like to grab a bonus for a short teaching stint, and bail for a career that actually pays. Teach For America corp members, who are only held to a two-year teaching commitment, might just fit the bill.
“Interestingly, teachers coming out of TFA tend to populate the revolving employment doors of charter schools run by for-profit companies—much like the ones with whom Rep. Fresen happens to have close business ties.
“It shouldn’t come as a shock that a Florida legislator might vote for a financially motivated policy in the name of public education—at least it makes their ultimate goal of privatizing education a little more transparent.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New requirement for state legislators: Post your SAT scores, by date, and with the national norms.
A key Republican leader, who is closely tied to Florida’s booming and profitable charter industry, slipped into the state budget a bill to pay a bonus to teachers with high SAT scores. His bill is known as “Best and Brightest,”
So glad we’re not ranking people solely on test scores! Dear God. What does that make people who get lower scores on standardized tests?
Great! Put that in a school bill. Let’s send as strong a message as we possibly can that test scores are all we care about in schools.
Just remember, when Halbersham used the phrase “Best and Brightest”, he wasn’t being complimentary.
And the edudeformers and their ilk are the bestest and brightestest!
Isn’t this quirky? The former governor of this state who is currently attempting to get a nomination to run as president isn’t bragging about his SAT scores. However, he chose to announce ( proudly, in my not at all humble opinion) that he smoked marijuana in high school. I googled his data and it seems that he literally smoked it IN the Massachusetts boarding school he attended. I presumed that he meant that he did so during the time in his life that he concurrently attended high school. But it seems that it was actually an extra curricular activity (probably not sanctioned?) AT his school. So, perhaps this has something to do with his love of alternatives to traditional public education. Who knows?
I see some pretty good indication that Florida public servants who developed this budget idea have altered their mental process with something. Perhaps post varsity league cannabis team participation? This weird budget decision sounds like something one would come up with while under the influence of a substance. But then one should reconsider and scoff at oneself later when sober or not high and not follow through. It is just mind altering to even ponder how absurd this is….no chemical alteration required. I cannot even apply the question “What were they thinking?” We are living in insane times.
“I see some pretty good indication that Florida public servants who developed this budget idea have altered their mental process with something. Perhaps post varsity league cannabis team participation?”
There was no “mental process”. They promised some campaign donor they would carry that donor’s inane pet project thru the state legislature by attaching it to a budget bill, and that’s what they did.
Chiara, in Florida the legislature’s charter love is not only campaign cash. Some in key positions aid charters owned by their family
Now let’s not place blame on a friendly natural herb. Those decisions are more likely than not agreed upon with a martini in hand and not a blunt!
Morons. They are morons.
This a useless, bad idea from the state that brought us “stand your ground.”
I have no problem with “stand your ground” as a means of legal defense for personal self defense. To conflate that “useless, bad idea” (of which I totally concur but would use much harsher language to describe) with “stand your ground” laws makes no sense to me. Two totally different concepts, one wise and the other insane.
The problem I see with stand your ground is that it is subjective, and it has been used as a defense for white people to commit an act of violence against unarmed people of color. I felt threatened, therefore, I acted. I have no problem with any people defending themselves or their property, but stand your ground seems like a convenient defense to justify an act of violence.
Isn’t this just yet another gift to TFA? Doesn’t this play into their propaganda that teachers who actually WANT to be teachers are from the bottom of the intelligence and GPA barrel? Can the BS be seen through?
Yes, yes, and hopefully yes!
I suggest that we propose a bill that causes a Florida legislator to lose his seat if his SAT is below a cut score.
Wonder how that would fly?
They would probably clear out half the legislature! Then, we could clean house and maybe get some ethical people.
Off topic but noteworthy: slick new $55 million middle school in San Francisco is going off the rails. Scads of money from Salesforce.com mogul plus youthful “quality” staff, including Harvard educated principal, can’t save it from being one of “those” schools. Goes to show that no one has the secret sauce for inclusive urban schools.
http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Amid-hope-of-rebirth-in-S-F-Bayview-new-6522692.php
The prinicpal claims to have personal reasons for leaving. Maybe he just needs more experience dealing with some hard to handle middle schoolers. I would think with only 200 students he would be able to divide and conquer.
I work in a courthouse in a large metropolitan area. My brother is a county attorney. Wanna know who the best lawyer in the place is? The secretary who has been my judge’s secretary for the last 20 years. Every lawyer and even some judges ask her advice, which she refuses because of the legality. She didn’t go to law school, but has typed hundreds of thousands of orders and listened to years of testimony and has predicted more case outcomes than I have ever seen. She got a 14 on her ACT’s twenty some years ago. Her guidance counselor made her retake them and she got a 14 again. She graduated cum laude from state college and has never taken a sick day, paid off her home in ten years and has a hefty retirement fund on a civil servant salary. I, on the other hand, had a nearly perfect score. I hated college, dropped out, and struggled for years. These days I would forget my name if I didn’t have it in my badge. These scores show a very narrow piece of intellect.
It is now official: the first Florida state college to eliminate tenure and make all professors sign annual contracts so they are at-will employees.
With all the political interference in education in this state no one can honestly say rhis won’t impact academic freedom. They simply don’t care. VAM and test score ratings won’t be far behind!
http://www.bradenton.com/2015/09/23/6005630/scf-board-eliminates-tenure-at.html
Wow only in Floriduh and coming to a District near you.
Here is the problem with the mass email strategy followed by Moveon.org, Daily Kos, Diane Ravitch et al. You are preaching to your choir and wearing them out. Although many of the issues you cover are important to me I find myself deleting before I read because it is too much. The conservative portion of the political divide has been winning for over two decades for two simple reasons. They control access and they control the message. Like conservatives, progressive operatives suffer from the same malady because they believe the electorate to be simpletons. Here’s a proposal: Quit spending valuable time and money filling up the inboxes of other progressives. Begin developing a campaign of making the electorate aware of whom the politicians are. You don’t even have to take a side. Simply send mass emails that introduce local and state representatives, what they do for a living and who contributes the most to their campaigns. Put billboards up that tell the electorate who their state representatives are. This by itself would create doubt among these politicians and cause them to move much more cautiously with legislation. Simply bring them into the light. Stop sending me mass emails about the evils of the political opposition. These mass emails will not change the political momentum. Provide information.