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 