New Best & Brightest promotes teachers to be hired based on youth SAT/ACT grades

The Best & Brightest Teacher Bonus program has been controversial from the moment it was rolled out.  Proponents claim the program is to help attract and retain highly qualified teachers in Florida.  To qualify for the bonus a teacher must have scored at the 80^th percentile or higher on their personal SAT or ACT test scores.  These tests were taken largely by these teachers when they were in high school, often a requirement for college entrance (but not in all situations).  If a teacher scored in the 80^th percentile and was evaluated as highly qualified, that teacher would receive over $6,000 plus for the year.  The Legislature premise is that smart people (those that scored well as teenagers) are better teachers.  Among the many flaws is that people that score well on a standardize test are not necessarily smarter or better teachers, just better test takers.  In addition, these tests were never designed to be used in the manner that now the way the state of Florida is using them, some ten, twenty or even thirty years later,

In 2017 the Florida Legislature in House Bill 7069 expanded the program from $40 million to over $200 million. They also added a new option, that Principals (but not assistant principals) can qualify to receive a Best & Brightest bonus of $5,000 plus.

How a Principal qualifies for Best & Brightest is as headshaking and concerning as the original Best & Brightest.  A mathematical determination will be made comparing all the Best & Brightest teachers in Florida.  If the ratio of Best & Brightest teachers to total amount of teachers in a school is at or above the 80th percentile in the state when compared to elementary, middle, or high schools, then the principal receives the Best & Brightest Principal Scholarship.  Language in the statue states, “…faculty at the principal’s school must have a ratio of best and brightest teachers to other classroom teachers that is at the 80th percentile or higher, statewide, for that school type (elementary, middle, high, or combination)”.  The more Best & Brightest teachers at the principal’s school the more likely the principal should be to qualify for the Best & Brightest bonus.  This would mean that the more teachers at a particular school with high SAT or ACT scores, the more likely a principal could qualify for Best & Brightest.

Is the legislature saying that principals should use SAT and ACT scores when a teacher was in high school as part of the determining factor when hiring a teacher?  Seems that this formula and the Best & Brightest program would suggest that.

While I have faith that administrators in Citrus County will continue hiring teachers based on who is best for our students and their schools.  It is concerning that the state would develop a bonus model that would focus on the hiring of teachers based on tests they took as high schoolers.

If the Florida Legislature is truly interested in helping attract and retain high qualified teachers in Florida it can start by removing the decade long targeting and attacks on public education.  It can reverse the multitude of overreaching classroom mandates.  Eliminate tying teachers’ salaries, bonus and steps to students’ scores.

To fund the $200 million for their Best & Brightest program have had to reduce funding in other areas.  The appropriation would better serve our students, schools and teachers to increase the funding in the Base Student Allocation where we know better locally how it can be more cost effectively used to positively impact our students and teachers.

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Find – M’ Friends hope train at CRHS

Visiting our schools in the summer you always see and learn neat things. Today I saw two. One was a set of shoes pull-overs with scrubbers on the bottom the staff use when wax-stripping floors. I spent many a summer stripping and waxing floors as a teen and wished we had these to walk those slippery floors.

The other was I visited with Linda Boles, president of Find – M’ Friends, one of her youth volunteers, one of our Citrus County K9 deputies and his bloodhounds partner, as they visited Crystal River High School using the campus to train and perform search exercises.

Ms. Boles shared about the numerus successful identification exercises they had done on the CRHS campus that morning.

I am so pleased of the work Find – M’ Friends and our Citrus County Sheriff’s Office deputies are doing with the bloodhounds program, and I am pleased they our campuses offer an environment to help train these important resources.

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FRS Petition system up 14 percent

Lawmakers increase again FRS contributions, Citrus Schools increased another $370K

It was recently reported that Florida’s Retirement System is up 14.24 percent for the fiscal year. (see full story: http://www.chronicleonline.com/content/officials-expect-state-pension-fund-increase-fiscal-year)

I am pleased that FRS is healthy, but let us not forget that this was done on the backs of public education funding.

In 2011 the state of Florida changed in midstream retirement benefits for employees in FRS by then beginning having these employees contribute to the retirement plan. Common and expected in the private sector, where wages/salaries, pay scales and benefits are driven by profits and losses.  This is not the case for those that chose noble professions in the public servant sector. Teachers, law enforcement officers, first responders, state and county workers in order to service where willing accept these lesser pay scale positions knowing that some of the offset of the retirement benefits.  The public was told that FRS was in such bad financial shape that employees now had to contribute in order to keep FRS solvent.

Instead the state did not really add more to the coffers of FRS. They instead defunded areas like public education and then played a shell game with the funds and used the employee retirement contributes to supplant and fund back some of the losses.

Another better approach could have been to phase in a new contribution for new hires.  This would have permitted those new employees to weight the pros and cons of public service over the private sector.

Now again this year district FRS contributes have been increased to further pad FRS.  Citrus County’s FRS required contribution was increased by another $370,000.  This means less to our students and schools so that the state can claim they saved taxpayers money. It is a shell game and is in the end costing taxpayers more.

Was FRS ever in the poor shape some claimed and said was necessary to make this change?  Or was this further justification to reduce the value of those in these noble professions?

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