Florida Senate kills teacher tenure pay system; raises tied to student success

If this bill in FL passes, it will ROCK the ed world – I just hope it's written in a way that evaluates teachers fairly.  Nobody is a bigger champion than I of using student test scores to evaluate teachers (and principals, schools, ed schools, etc.), but tests alone are a very crude tool (especially when the tests are poorly designed).  There needs to a balanced, robust teacher evaluation system in place.
 
In a major shift, the salaries of Florida's 167,000 teachers could soon be tied to student test scores, rather than seniority and education level.

The state Senate on Wednesday approved a controversial bill by a 21-17 vote to dismantle teacher tenure, a decades-old system in which educators' pay is based on years of experience and whether they earn upper-level degrees.

New teachers hired after July 1 would work on one-year contracts and face dismissal if their students did not show learning gains on end-of-year exams for two years in any five-year period. For them, job security would be based soley on two factors: standardized scores and job reviews by principals. Existing teachers would have future pay raises tied to student scores and reviews but would keep their current job security.

 

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Florida Senate kills teacher tenure pay system; raises tied to student success
 
By Josh Hafenbrack
www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-teacher-tenure-bill-032310-20100322,0,3262837.story