Florida School Boards Association
Teachers can’t hotfoot it out of Kansas fast enough, creating a substantial shortage expected only to get much worse. Why? Well, there’s the low pay. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average teaching salary in 2012-2013 (the latest year for which data were available, in constant 2012-2013 dollars), was $47,464, lower than the pay…
A weak economy appears to have at least one upside: Schools are able to hire more effective teachers, according to new research. Teachers hired during recessions were significantly more effective, as judged by their students’ performance on standardized tests, than teachers hired during better economic times, according to working paper published this week by the…
They might ridicule the idea. But plenty of Florida teachers have contacted their districts, the state Department of Education and, yes, even reporters who have written about the new Best and Brightest scholarship asking how they could get theirs. Even for a year, up to $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at, after all. (The amount…
Through 2014-15, Florida school district had the ability to set teacher evaluation ratings the student performance results they received. That flexibility no longer exists for the teachers of classes that include state tests. The Florida Board of Education on Thursday adopted a new rule connecting value-added model results to evaluation rankings, from highly effective through…
The State Board of Education has approved a new statewide standard for the test-based portion of teacher evaluations. State law requires that teachers are evaluated each year. That evaluation must include how well that teacher’s students performed on standardized exams — and whether they did better or worse than expected, based on a complex statistical formula. That formula…
Since adopting the much challenged value-added model for rating teacher performance, Florida has allowed local school districts to assign evaluation performance levels to teachers based in part on local definitions. That’s about to change. When it meets next Thursday in Tampa, the Florida Board of Education is set to adopt a new rule setting standard…
SARASOTA — Florida Sen. Nancy Detert called it the “worst bill of the year,” Rep. Ray Pilon said Gov. Rick Scott should have vetoed it and Rep. Greg Steube ripped the legislation as well. Opposition to an incentive program for teachers that will pay bonuses based on their SAT and ACT scores was a big point…
SARASOTA – Josh Mocherman, a nuclear science and chemistry teacher at Riverview High School, took the SAT 21 years ago. He does not remember what he scored, but his performance on the test he took during his junior year of high school could affect his pay as a teacher next year. The Florida Legislature this…
About two years ago, state Rep. Erik Fresen picked up Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World to read on the plane. The Miami Republican had no inkling at the time that the book, an investigation into student performance, would end up driving a controversial $44 million line item in Florida’s 2015-16 budget. But as…
In their effort to tie teachers’ job evaluations to student performance, Florida lawmakers acknowledge they initially went too far. “We were trying to prove a point, and we became overprescriptive,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman John Legg, who began pressing the issue five years ago. This spring, comfortable that the idea of increased accountability for…