New ‘Best and Brightest’ Bonus Plan Proposed

According to the Tallahassee News Service of Florida, Governor Scott will support $43 million dollars in 2017 teacher bonuses.  Details of the plan are not yet available, but the Governor said that the plan will target new teachers who show great potential and veteran teachers who show the highest student academic growth among their peers.  The current method of qualifying based on test scores will change.

 

 

 

House Rep. Bileca has indicated willingness to reconsider the existing bonus program that is based on teachers’ high school SAT and ACT scores.   It appears that other legislators are also listening to teachers about mechanisms to attract and retain the most qualified teachers.  Some solutions are based on a graduated scale for bonuses and others recommend lowering the test score bar to include more teachers.

Stay tuned.  This issue has traction.  Something is likely to happen.

 

Posted in Achievement, Florida, Florida House, Florida Senate, Funding, Teachers.

3 Comments

  1. So what happens when a regular ed classroom teacher has 50% special education students in their class. Just trying to teach both regular ed and special ed in the same room means the teacher s exceptional. But test scores will not show that exceptionalism. Or the special ed teacher working with students who cannot even function by indicating yes or no in an appropriate way. Fantastic success may be gained by getting a yes indicator at an appropriate time. Will this teacher’s exceptionalism be recognized?

    • We have had some dramatic results here. The Teacher of the Year statewide was unsatisfactory. An exceptional teacher one year was poor the next. Nothing like a huge margin of error to make any thing possible. The real issue, of course, is how to encourage people to enter the profession when the whole system is designed to discourage people from becoming teachers in the first place.

  2. So ridiculous that these lawmakers think $43M is going to solve the issues of retaining and keeping our best and veteran teachers. What are they going to do when all the teachers are gone because that is their ultimate goal (Jeb’s plan) to privatize our public schools by closing them and/or turning them all into for-profit centers with no teachers and all computers “teaching” (CBE) our kids. Are they going to come up with $43M to give the “computers” a bonus? These people are out of their minds and continue to waste our tax payer dollars. ALL of our veteran teachers deserve raises and they should all get special medals for putting up with the crap and garbage they have had to endure since 2014. Ludicrous. They need to STOP TAKING DIRECTION from Jeb, FEE and Levesque.

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