Posted on 04/07/2010 6:23:27 PM PDT by AlanD
In a dramatic shift, Gov. Charlie Crist signaled Wednesday he might veto a bill tying teacher pay to student test scores, even as Florida legislators prepared for a final vote on the politically polarizing measure Thursday.
Crist, who appeared to support the merit-pay plan as late as Monday, said teacher concerns are affecting his thinking. The plan would base teacher pay raises primarily on student learning gains on standardized tests, such as the FCAT, and eliminate tenure job protections for teachers hired after July.
The Republican governor, who is running for U.S. Senate, said he spoke over the weekend with a longtime friend who has a special-needs son. "And he's like, ‘How can my son have progress?' It's very challenging," Crist said, referring to the learning gain requirement. "So it's weighing on me heavily."
Crist was noncommital on whether he'd sign or veto the bill, which is a top priority for Republican legislative leaders. But the outpouring from teachers has clearly had an impact. "Shame on any public servant who doesn't listen to the people," said the governor.
Compare that to Crist's statement Monday, when he praised the House for holding an eight-hour hearing on the merit-pay plan and said he hoped to "have comprehensive reform bills on my desk for action this session."
The shift fueled Capitol buzz that Crist is weighing whether to run for Senate as an independent, rather than face Marco Rubio in a closed Republican primary. Crist trails in the polls and is increasingly estranged from the conservative GOP base.
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
It is his damned if you do, damned if you don't play put on him by the GOP pols. He is having to play his hand and show he has no intention of being a GOP'r and wants to be an Indy, WAAAAYY earlier than he wanted to.
Sucks to be you, Crist. and a BUH-F'ing-BYE to you also.
Crist will lose even more. Polls showed Rubio woul dget around 43% and Crist would get 25% and Meek about 35%. Crist is a POS.
GM and Chrysler didn’t have to provide quality - why should the teacher’s unions?
Additional comment: Crist’s cojones are apparently now down to nano engineering proportions.
Why doesn’t he simply go to the infinite dumb side and declare himself a dim-bulb-crat?
This bill is all kinds of stupid. Why should teachers be penalized for things they don’t have complete control over? Kids performing well in school is not all on the teachers, there are family issues that are going on as well. I am not a Crist fan but I do hope he vetoes it because it is an entirely wrong-headed approach to the problem. My fiance is a high school biology teacher and the other day she had this exchange with a student:
Student: My dad got arrested but my mom bailed him out and I’m upset that she did.
Teacher: Why is that?
Student: Because she used our tattoo money for it.
Now you want to sit there in your judgmental chair and say that student’s success is entirely on the teacher? You have kids that don’t give a damn about scholastic achievement because of their family situation and values they have been taught long before they ever hit the class room.
I know, why don’t you take a class of kids from the ghetto and and I’ll take a class of kids from Palm Beach and we’ll see who’s kids progress the most. And then we’ll fire you because you just suck at teaching.
Nobody likes Crist cause he is a clown now...well he has always been a clown.
Crist only saving grace is Mason-Dixon poll says he could actually beat a bigger clown in Dem Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012. Nelson is now dog sh*t in FL after ObamaCare.
This could be a very smart move politically for Crist if he does indeed flip to the Independent label to run for U.S. Senate. The Democrat could even drop out and Crist will collect lots of $$$ from the large and powerful Teachers Unions and the SEIU.
Charlie plays to win . . he won’t be going down without a fight. I think he is also angry because he had to get married last year because he thought it would help him become either President or VP on the Republican ticket.
Now he is not going to get that and did he really want to be married?
If the parent above truly wonders how his/her son can "have progress"... why do schools continue to 'mainstream' so-called 'special-needs' children. If they are part of the class, they should make some progress as school is not supposed to be a place where students simply pass the time. That being said, their "progress" can be tracked separately if that is appropriate. What get's measured gets managed!
The best thing to happen is that Charlie Crist has been outed as a “George W. Bush” Republican. That is something we don’t need.
Crist wants all those teachers union votes. That’s what this is about.
Why have any other standard of learning outside the bounds of SAT? Since Florida went to the FCAT system it seems as though kids coming out of school are by average less knowledgable of the world around them than before. Is the FCAT just a stealth means of the NEA to claim standards but in reality still dumbing down our kids with bogus standards? Do we really know what these standards are?
My perception is the FCAT and other state standards were knee jerk reactions poorly thought out just so some politician could claim he/she was doing something to address the rampant lack of educational standard that were the norm?
Bullshit.
I’m a tutor and I deal with the student, regardless of the issues at home.
I take personal responsibility to get their marks up. It’s one thing to try your damndest and fall short, but it’s quite another to write people off because it’s hard.
Teaching isn’t a bed of roses. I’d rather be doing their job than mine, the pay is better and there’s far less scrutiny wrt to job performance.
My wife is a teacher in deep south TX. Good teachers get results through discipline. Sorry, I disagree with you. She and many of her fellow teachers do pretty well in spite of 90% minority classes. Administrators tend to be one of the biggest problems they face.
from what I’ve read, teachers evaluations/test scores will be compared NOT to the student population as a whole but to kids in similar socioeconomic circumstances.
in other words, this bill would not require a ghetto teacher to have the same test results as a west palm beach class. but they WOULD have to show improvement among those in the ghettos.
frankly, i think this is a step in the right direction. if the public school teachers were doing such a damn good job, then this wouldn’t even be being debated. but they aren’t.
and don’t think i don’t sympathize, i do. my mom, grandfather and mother in law were all teachers.
i missed the class where capitalization was taught. ;-)
All three of my sisters are teachers, as was my mother for 22 years. My mom (a good conservative Republican) was once cited in Newsweek as one of the Top 100 teachers in the US. My sisters (the two who still teach) are both tenured in schools in Central Florida, one in a very wealthy school/area (think Tiger’s neighborhood of Isleworth), the other in a very poor school/area. All three are against this “merit pay” plan.
They tried something like this 20 or 25 years ago. Teachers were “merit” teachers if they could pass a test with the highest grades. So, a person of very high IQ (like my ex brother-in-law) with good test taking skills but no ability to teach (like my ex brother-in-law) could make more money, while a teacher with excellent communication skills, but not testing well, may not have.
With the plan proposed by the well-meaning but totally clueless FL legislature, renewal of contract would ultimately be up to the principal, and do I really need to tell you about the politics that go on in school administration? I’ll give you a clue: a few years back, my sister’s school earned something around $100,000 for going from a “C” school to an “A” school. Now this apparently was left to the teachers to decide how the money was to be allocated. One of the Lefty dingbats (in all likelihood put up to it by the principal) suggested that the money should be split evenly among ALL employees of the school: teachers, janitors, lunchroom ladies....yes, even PART-TIME teacher’s aides.
When another teacher (who was not a Socialist moron) said, “Um....excuse me! Teachers are the ones who earned 4-year degrees, maintain teaching certificates, take work home every night and weekend, have to deal with parents,” etc., etc.......well, she was made to feel like a huge heel. She was so “mean” and greedy.
I asked my sister why she didn’t jump in and tell them they were all a bunch of commies. She explained that her principal had clearly wanted things split evenly and anyone who protested....well, let’s just say their work life would become subtlely but markedly difficult. It just wasn’t worth it.
So my sisters now look to me, the loyal Republican, and ask why we want to take away their job security when they’re already making just $38,000 year and just trying to put a roof over their heads so they can come home to a dry place to collapse from exhaustion every night. Well, how do I answer that?
You have absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Recovering Dem:
My sister who teaches in the rich school said her TOP gifted students, who are already bored out of their minds with the class material (which she MUST teach), will also have to show tangible “improvement” in order for her to be considered a “merit-worthy” teacher.
This is a STUPID, STUPID thing for the Florida Republicans to be doing, especially right now. Jeez, can’t you try this crap after November???
Well I am sorry that you disagree with me but my fiance teaches in Florida. Texas is not Florida. Therefore her experience in the matter is relevant and yours is not. Here’s an example.
She has a policy on late work. Her kids do not do the work. She then marks them as failed. At the end of the year she gets fired because her students refused to do any work.
How is this her fault for “not having discipline”? She has discipline, she failed them for not doing their work.
They don’t do their work she refers them to the dean. The dean ignores the referral.
The point of the matter is that some kids care about school. Some kids don’t. Parents are a huuuuge factor here.
If he can't show progress he shouldn't be in "school" or taking "school" resources. If ANY child cannot make progress in a public school then they should be in a different type of socialization program.
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