"All Stick and No Carrot"

The title of this blog comes from a current teacher at Hialeah High School, Jennifer Smith, in an interview with the Miami Herald. The interview was about the recently passed bill in Florida that will revolutionize the way our teachers are paid, at least thats what they say its going to do; but to Jennifer and many others, such as myself, it looks more like an "all stick and no carrot" incentive designed to make teachers easier to fire. 

This incentive was not thought up by our dear Governor but it was put in place by him. This bill was signed in March of 2011, much to the dismay of many Floridian educators. These educators feel like this bill strips them of their protection from arbitrary decisions made by higher-ups that can cost them their jobs. After all half of the 'merit' in this merit pay system will be judged by the principal of the school who is not even required to supply a reason for dismissal. The other half of the potential dismissal relies on the dreaded FCAT and the new end of the year tests that will cover all curriculums, which by the way have yet to be funded for development. Core classes are no longer the only teachers on the chopping block, those who teach music and other electives will now be evaluated based on their students' progress which will be measured over three years by, you guessed it, standardized tests. 

Now this all sounds like a decent enough plan. Teachers will be held accountable, students will be encouraged to learn more because teachers will depend on them for their paychecks, and bad teachers will be so easy to fire that the principal won't even have to fill out paperwork! So where does the 'all stick and no carrot' come into light? That would be the PAY part of the merit pay bill. Those individuals in charge of this new bill have spent so much time thinking about how they are going to weed out the bad teachers by rewarding the good that they forgot to allocate some funding for this fun new idea. This bill will take effect in July of 2014. It will strip teachers of their tenure, possibly lower their starting salary, put pressure on them to teach to the test, pit them against one another for the top spot and discourage many possible teachers in the state from becoming teachers in the first place. That is a lot of stick. The carrot comes in when their students show improvement over the course of three years. If the improvement is adequate and their principals say that they have done a nice job than they get a nice little raise. They also supposedly get a pay increase if they have higher degrees, but only if they are in their curriculum area. This carrot however is nowhere to be found. The funding isn't there for this program and it doesn't appear to be popping out of thin air between now and 2014 either. 

A study done by the University of Florida showed that this idea has merit because if you give the top teachers a bonus when they do a splendid job, they tend to try harder to succeed. David Figlio, the researcher said that "We demonstrate that students learn more when teachers are given financial incentives to do a better job." To this I say fantastic, brilliant and congratulations on having some common sense. Of course people will try harder to succeed when they are given 'financial incentives' to do so. The fundamental problem I see in this statement is the whole concept of 'financial incentives.' For one there are no finances to support this venture. Teachers will most likely face a gross amount of layoffs and a pay decrease as it is, though our state is already at the bottom of the teacher pay totem pole, which doesn't bode well for teacher bonuses. And for two, this sounds more to me like financial threats than financial incentives. There is much more bad coming from this bill than good and I think it will honestly injure the educational process. While I do believe that there are some teachers that need to find a new profession, I do not believe that basing their pay on an objective assessment and a standardized test is the way to go. As Jennifer Smith said, this looks like a lot of stick and no carrot.

Images courtesy of: fruitgum.wordpress.com, quinnthebrain.blogspot.com and newmexicodietitian.wordpress.com

A little correction and investigation...

As I was continuing my research in this area I came upon a startling bit of TRUTH that I missed in my last post. I was incorrect in stating that the class size amendment was loosened by voters last November. It fell just short of the 60% it needed to pass, so take that how you will, the amendment stands as it was passed and I need to improve my research skills.

I also looked into a few reviews of some studies done on the class size amendment and its effects on our schools and those in Tennessee. Most of the preliminary results show that there wasn't a big difference unless the teachers knew that they were being studied. Big surprise right? A human performing better when they know they are under scrutiny... It also appeared to work better on a smaller scale (in Tennessee) than on a state wide scale (Florida). This may be attributed to overall better funding or to a lack of enthusiasm in Florida as it was more of a pain than a fun experiment.

If there was one thing I learned from my statistics professor, aside from how NOT to teach (or do my hair), it was that correlation does not imply causation. Meaning that just because the schools that participated in the class size reduction in Tennessee saw improved results, does not mean that it was caused by the class size reduction. It also means that even though Florida didn't show much improvement there still may be hope for the class size amendment. I can't say for sure whether I believe that smaller class sizes are beneficial to our students or not, but I still maintain that Florida could clean up the process.

A Numbers Game in School, Who'd Have Thought?

I don't like politics, when asked what my political stance is, I simply fill in 'apathetic.' I do realize that this probably makes me a bad American but honestly, who can follow along with them? So I understand that there is a need for a lot of background information before I begin ranting but first consider: As I begin my blog on Florida's Educational system I would like you to think about being a teacher or any school personnel really or even a child in a public school and how these changes might affect you. 

I began my research today on educational reforms in Florida, only going back about six months and was un-pleasantly surprised to find a hurricane brewing off the coast of my future career; and just like with a hurricane there seems to be a chance to wash away some of the grime that has been building up but there also stands the huge potential for widespread damage. This hurricane however, has been a long time coming, so I decided to widen my search and came up with a topic that has been brewing for almost a decade. 

The Idea:

The controversial shake-up topic of today's blog, which has been floating around our great peninsula waiting to pounce, began all the way back in 2002 by voters in Florida but has only recently been fully implemented in our school systems: the dreaded class size amendment aka amendment 8. This amendment, like many others, is wordy and confusing, but the bottom line is you can only have a limited number of students in a core education class at one time. The cap is 18 for preK-3, 22 for 4-8 and 25 for 9-12. 
                                                The idea behind this cap was that students would receive more individual attention from their teachers because there would be less students in each classroom. Theoretically this was great because these students would be able to get the help they need but financially, this is the iceberg to our proverbial Titanic of a budget that we had at the beginning of this venture. This has sunk the ship of educational budget and now we're all floundering in the water trying to get back on course. 

The Problem:

Schools all over the state struggled to fit into this strict restriction which has been steadily tightening around the necks of every school since 2002. This tightening began as a district-wide average cap for the core classes (English, math, science and social-studies) which allowed for a lot of wiggle room. So long as there were enough teachers in the district to bring the core class student:teacher ratio down to the required cap everything would be great and no one would get fined. (The state had money to funnel into this system as well, which by the way has thus far cost us a whopping $18 BILLION dollars.) 
                                   
                           The noose began tightening in 2006 when the average was was to be calculated by school instead of by district and our budget started to look less like the Titanic and more like a nice yacht. Student were shuffled from class to class to fit into this puzzle but most schools managed and survived the fines if they didn't. Last year however, in the 2010-11 school year, schools really began to feel the scratch of the rope and our budget had shrunk to a rowboat. The averages are now calculated by individual classes, and while the standards have loosened somewhat to 21 in K-3, 27 in 4-8, and 30 in high school, there is still a huge problem fitting a school full of students into a restricted set of teachers.

These teachers are facing pay cuts of their own (which is a lengthy subject for a future blog…) and above them each district is cutting back as well. So the idea of fining schools who can't afford to meet the class size amendment because they can't hire new teachers, because they can't pay the teachers because the state can't fund the new teachers even at a reduced salary based on merit without tenure… seems preposterous to me. For some counties it is cheaper to ignore the amendment and pay the fine than to hire the required teachers because the money to expand the staff is simply not there. If they are so much as one student over the cap they are expected to hire a teacher and spread out the students to fill the classes. This is a logistical nightmare. Reshuffling an entire school to fit in one more student doesn't really seem like a good idea to me. When you think about how many classrooms, teachers, lunch breaks, students, desks, fire codes, textbooks, electives, projectors, pencils, principles, custodians, chairs, lights and class scheduling personnel are required to run a school, reshuffling the whole system is ludicrous for one student that could transfer in late when you have each class tightly fitted beneath the required cap! Ludicrous! (not the rapper…)

My somewhat-simple Solution:

The idea of cutting down the class size was great. Students need teachers who can take the time to help them, the execution however, was much more expensive than we could hope to afford. The expense however is not the only problem because five horrible teachers are not going to feel better than three good ones, no matter how many students are in their classes.
 Let me give you a pop-culture reference as a prime example. You've probably seen the previews for the new movie Bad Teacher, think about putting someone like that in front of 30 9th graders, now think of the teacher from Freedom Writers in front of 40 9th graders… 

                      

Do you see what I mean? I think the focus needs to change from a numbers game to a quality requirement. I'm not saying that I am jumping on the merit pay band wagon but maybe focusing on teaching teachers how to teach rather than kicking 3 students out of their class would be a more influential adventure. For those of you who really love this amendment take heart in that I still believe it has potential, just at the school wide average level, I just don't think there is room for it in the classroom.

Something to think about for my next blogging adventure..

Sources for further information on this subject:

http://www.fldoe.org/classsize/

http://www.ocala.com/article/20100523/articles/5231014?p=5&tc=pg&tc=ar

Images in order:

onlinemovieshut.com

filmcritic.com

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/jparker/uploaded_images/100205-770809.jpg

diogenesii.wordpress.com

About Me.. well, about my blog

Beginning this blog is like starting college all over again. I feel exactly like a freshman walking into chaos but instead of searching for the perfect major, classes and textbooks I find myself searching for my own personal interests. You would think that being 20 years old, engaged and about to graduate college I would have a good handle on where to locate these interests but I have done more flip-flopping on the topic of this blog than a Floridian in the summer. 

It began as a cooking blog, which given my history in that area would have been a complete disaster. To give you a taste of my cooking expertise I once subconsciously decided that water was not a key ingredient to the ramen noodle-making process. The smell was epic and the bowl was destroyed, I am mostly just thankful that my dad was nearby to catch my mistake before it turned into a blazing failure. 

I then had the remarkably daft idea to blog about knitting. Knitting. If you've ever tried knitting then you understand my apprehension, if you haven't, you don't want to. I feel like I would be more successful tying the yarn in knots with my toes, blindfolded, upside down and unconscious, and yes, the redundancy is intentional. 

So I  reconsidered my blogging strategy, trading temporary hobbies for more long time interests and so I decided to blog on my chosen career: education. I live in Florida and I want to be a public high school teacher. I am probably sentencing myself to a life of mayhem at the hands of - confused - politicians. I say this politely because while this blog is understandably anonymous, I know that once something goes out into the internet you can never really take it back. It is this feeling of frustration that will drive my blog. 

This will be a learning experience for me in a lot of ways, the first being blogging. I have kept a journal about thirty times in my life and none of them have lasted more than two weeks and honestly most of that was… we'll call it creative musing. Writing about something I am passionate about consistently and in complete sentences will be challenging, as will be holding my tongue when faced with someone who is of the opinion that teachers really don't deserve to get paid year-round. I also hope to broaden my horizons in this area of exploration, there are a lot of issues bouncing around the house in Florida when it comes to education and I hope that by the time I graduate I will at the very least understand them.