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
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