Blogger Kafkateach thinks that the new Florida plan to give $10,000 to new teachers based on their SAT scores in high school is the worst “reform” idea yet.
She writes:
“I thought the Florida VAM was the biggest insult ever created for veteran teachers until June when the Florida Best and Brightest Scholarship was snuck into the budget which gives teachers a $10,000 bonus if they scored in the top 20th percentile on their SATs. New hires will automatically qualify but for veteran teachers you must also win the VAM lotto to qualify for the $10,000. You will now have teachers with no teaching experience making $10,000 more than 12 year veterans based on their college entrance exams. It just keeps getting worse and worser. https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/floridas-best-and-brightest-scholarship-brought-to-you-by-dumb-and-dumber/”
In this post, she writes:
I try not to slander individuals in my blog or use specific names, but every once in a while, an individual does something so incredibly stupid and offensive that they merit public ridicule. Erik Fresen has long been a Florida public school teacher’s worst nightmare. He spear headed campaigns for merit pay, the end of tenure, and has close ties to the charter industry. Unlike other bone headed anti-teacher legislation to come out of Tallahassee, there are only two specific people to blame for the fact that $44 million tax payer dollars will be wasted rewarding teachers for their high school college entrance exam scores- Erik Fresen who came up with the idea, and Governor Rick Scott, who helped sign it into law during a special budget session without any public debate or legislative approval because even members of Erik Fresen’s own party thought it was a stupid idea.
“State Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, called the legislation the “worst bill of the year” and an example of how the legislative process has broken down, the Herald-Tribune’s Zac Anderson reported.”
“The bill went through absolutely no process,” Detert said. “Never got a hearing in the Senate. We refused to hear it because it’s stupid.”
State Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, agreed. Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, blamed Gov. Rick Scott. “If the governor felt so good about vetoing not-for-profit health-care clinics and Manatee Glens,” he said, “why the hell didn’t he veto that line item?”
Fresen, who told other legislators that “multiple studies indicate students learn more from teachers who achieved high SAT or ACT scores” and that such teachers should be rewarded, has no regrets.”
Fresen says he got this dumb idea when he read Amanda Ripley’s book “The Smartest Kids in the World.” He wanted to lure more smart people to teach in Florida.
But Kafkateach portrays another scenario that plays out on Fresen’s brother-in-law’s yacht en route to a charter school convention. The question that Fresen and his sister and brother-in-law discuss is how to get the public to pay a bonus to get more Teach for America kids to staff the family charter chain schools. And Fresen got it done, bilking taxpayers of $44 million to pay new teachers for their high-school test scores.
Kathleen Oropeza of “Fund Education Now,” a grassroots parent group in Florida, says the bill demonstrates “the unbearable ridiculousness of school reform.” She says it was tailor-made for TFA. Veteran teachers can’t qualify for the bonus unless they have both a “highly effective” rating on VAM and scored above the 80th percentile on their SAT-ACT; new teachers need only the high school college admission test scores.
Imagine that you have been teaching 15-20 years in Florida, and you have been rated highly-effective by Florida’s arcane and incoherent rating system. If you want that bonus, you better find the scores on the test you took 20-25 years ago.
This may be the stupidest reform idea of all time. Of course, there’s always tomorrow.
Diane Ravitch's blog 