The Florida Legislature is getting set to modify its “best and brightest” teacher bonus, which gave incentives to students who had high SAT/ACT scores in high school. Almost every teacher in the state gets some bonus, which is not pensionable. Average teacher pay in Florida is among the lowest in the nation, ranked 42nd.
Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel wrote:
More than 11,200 Florida teachers will earn bonuses of $7,200 each in the next month through the controversial “best and brightest” program state leaders now want to revamp, state figures show.
The 11,286 teachers earned “highly effective” ratings at their public schools — and had ACT or SAT scores in the top 20 percent when they applied to college — making them eligible for the highest awards in Florida’s Best and Brightest Teacher and Principal Scholarship program.
Nearly 81,000 other teachers are to get bonuses of $1,200 for their “highly effective” evaluations, and another 67,600 deemed “effective” are to get about $700, officials said. About 670 new teachers with the high ACT or SAT scores will get bonuses of $6,000, according to the tally released by the Florida Department of Education.
Combined, more than 171,000 teachers — or about 91 percent of Florida’s classroom instructors — will get at least one of the bonuses. And 557 principals will get bonuses worth $4,000 or $5,000, with those working at a high-poverty school earning more. The state will spend more than $233 million on the payouts.
The bonuses are to be paid by April 1, though the exact pay dates will vary by school district.
The Orange County school district had the most top-award winners in the state — 1,241 — as it did last year.
The release of information on bonus winners comes as lawmakers look to redo the program, which many have criticized for tying awards not only to classroom success but also to old college admissions exam scores.
The Florida Senate’s education committee on Wednesday approved a multi-pronged bill (SB 7070) that would do away with the test-score requirement and create a revised program that would aim to recruit teachers in high-demand subjects, retain good teachers and reward top classroom performers. Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged lawmakers to delete the test score requirement, which he said “didn’t make sense.”
But many teachers want the state to instead earmark more money for public education so teachers can get pay raises, not one-year bonuses.
“Tell the Senate Ed Committee to fund salaries not bonuses,” read a tweet posted Tuesday by the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union. It called the bill a proposal that “introduces yet another bonus scheme instead of investing in educators & neighborhood public schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is fitting that the many of the bonuses will be paid out on April Fool’s Day. DeSantis is a fool for inventing such a false system for determining the “value” of teachers. Standardized test scores reflect the affluence of students’ families and not the efficacy of instruction. High SAT scores are not always indicators of a potential teacher’s “success.” There many factors that make some teachers great, not simply scores on standardized tests. DeSantis is throwing teachers a bone rather than paying them fairly for the work they do. Florida’s policies are based on bias, not evidence.
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When policies are based on BIAS, not evidence. Yes. This understanding of how the “bonus” pay agenda in FL breaks down into actually having zero actual care for students is a great descriptor the same game being played in state after state across the nation.
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To be fair, DeSantis was not the governor when the SAT based Best and Brightest bonus was passed and one of his first moves as governor is to get rid of the SAT based bonus program. He still is advocating for bonuses instead of salary increases, so in that case he is still throwing teachers a bone.
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Merit bonuses = pension suppression. Another dirty trick.
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Is Florida breathing? Oxygen depletion? What? This one truly … takes the cake.
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I learned about this silly rule in Florida a week after the deadline for submission of scores, in my last year of teaching there. LOL. Hey, Florida. Send me a check!
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Bonuses also don’t compound. For the sake of easy math (and, yes, I know I’m being extremely generous), let’s say you could have a ten percent bonus or a ten percent raise every year. And let’s say you make $50,000. If you take the bonus, you’re going to be getting $5,000 every year. If you take the raise, you will get an additional $5,000 the first year, $5,500 the second year, $6,050 the next year, etc.
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Teaching is a cooperative venture. DUH….
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I think they’re doing the large bill to get the voucher initiative through.
They did the same thing in Illinois. All of the provisions relating to public schools were tied to passage of a voucher bill. Conditioned on passage of a voucher bill. No vouchers, no funding of public schools.
It’s the only way they can get it passed- hold the public schools hostage to approval of vouchers. They’re just using the public school students and teachers as leverage to get their top priority accomplished, which is public funding of private schools.
Public school students are the last priority. They’re useful only to the extent that they exist to be used as bargaining chips to satisfy ed reform lobbyist wish lists.
If these ed reform ideas are so popular one would think they wouldn’t have to hold every public school student hostage to jam them thru legislatures.
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It’s well understood that raises are a better deal for middle class workers than bonuses.
“Of course, from an employer perspective, bonuses are often preferable to raises because they’re generally a self-limiting cost. A company can give out bonuses when it has a year of strong sales, and halt that practice during a year in which sales drop. Raises, by contrast, are generally riskier, because once workers get a boost, companies are essentially locked into paying them more for as long as they remain employed. Even if a given business decides not to give raises in future years, that business is still required to keep up with preexisting salaries. Furthermore, because certain benefits, like 401(k) matching dollars, are often tied directly to salary, increasing set compensation can cost companies in other ways.
But while bonuses may be the safer bet for employers, that doesn’t necessarily hold true from a workers’ perspective. And though you’re better off getting a bonus this year than receiving no boost in compensation whatsoever, here are a few reasons you, as an employee, should push for a raise over a bonus.”
This is what happens when your “movement” is funded and designed by billionaires. You get compensation systems that cheat middle class people.
Don’t accept a bonus over a raise. It’s a rip off and everyone knows it’s a rip off. Ed reformers are pulling another fast one on you. They’re giving you a Wall Street system of compensation without Wall Street pay rates.
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Chiara is correct. This is another massive train bill with a lot more BS attached to the caboose (Florida-style). It’s really the Voucher Expansion Bill. DeSantis has now redefined “public education” as wherever the public goes to school. Not kidding.
Teachers and parents have spoken out.
http://fundeducationnow.org/in-their-words-three-advocates-testify-against-the-diaz-sb-7070-train/
Florida GOP legislators are not listening and they don’t care.
http://fundeducationnow.org/yes-on-sb-7070-diaz-baxley-perry-simmons-stargel/
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