Sen. Don Gaetz on Florida’s Ed Accountability System: “There’s a danger of all this imploding”
In a story by Florida Current’s James Call, powerful Florida senate president Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) made a some stunning admissions.
“If you have a C school, 90 percent of the teachers in a C school can’t be highly effective. That doesn’t make sense,” Gaetz said.
Results released in December by the Department of Education revealed that 96 percent of all Florida teachers are rated effective or highly effective in their job. But school grades from earlier in the year showed that 27 percent of elementary, 36 percent of middle and 21 percent of the state’s high schools were given a letter grade of C or lower. The disparity in the ratings of the statewide faculty and schools raise questions about the reliability of the measurements Florida is using.
Newly appointed Education Commissioner Tony Bennett told lawmakers this week that the