The republican dominated Florida legislature passed a bill in 2010 that fundamentally changed the teaching profession. The student success act ended job protections for teachers making them at will employees, required 50% of their evaluations to be based on standardized tests, whether they taught a test subject or not and called for but did not fund merit pay, which has no evidence that says it works and plenty that says it doesn’t.
This is what Don Geatz, senate president just said about the bill formerly known as senate bill 736 and mind you, he said it after he helped pass it. If you can’t explain it, then you can’t defend it.” He added that lawmakers who passed it, including himself, would be hard pressed “to explain how this system works and how it’s fair and rational.”
This begs the question why is the Florida Legislature passing bills that they can’t defend and that fair or rational. The answer is they want to kneecap the teaching profession to hasten their public school privatization plans.
Do you want our schools to improve? Do you care about Florida’s children? If so get Tallahassee out of education.
Chris Guerrieri
School teacher