The ‘worst and dumbest’ education program of the year could get even worse
There are a lot of bad ideas in education — really awful. But back in July, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran an editorial about a new one-year program in Florida under the headline “Worst and dumbest,” and it’s hard to argue with it. Unfortunately, it could soon get even worse.
As I wrote last June, the kooky program, ironically called “Florida’s Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarships,” is using $44 million of taxpayer dollars to give up to $10,000 bonuses to teachers who got high SAT and ACT scores before entering college — even if they took the test decades ago. New teachers would just need to show their test scores at or above the 80th percentile on the SAT and ACT, while veteran teachers would also have received a “highly effective” evaluation rating.
What about teachers with consistently great evaluations but who came through community colleges and didn’t have to take college admissions tests? Plumb out of luck.
What about new teachers who got high SAT/ACT scores but only have five or so weeks of teacher training through a program such as Teach For America? Ah, they are eligible for the bonuses. Quite the plum for them.
So how did such a cockamamie idea become a cockamamie $44 million program? That’s another interesting part of the story.
This was the brainchild of state Republican Rep. Erik Fresen, who somehow thinks that test scores are a good way to decide who is a good teacher — and that the lure of the bonus will entice “the smartest kids” to go into teaching,the Orlando Sentinel reported. The smartest kids to Fresen are the ones who do well on the SAT and ACT, and apparently the best teachers are, too. The wrongheadedness of both propositions is staggering.
In any case, as Jeffrey S. Solocheck wrote in this Tampa Bay Times story,Fresen’s bill didn’t pass the Republican-led Senate during the legislature’s session last spring, but somehow it was resurrected in a June special session and was included in the 2015-16 Florida education spending budget. As theHerald-Tribune reported:
“The bill went through absolutely no process,” [Republican State Sen. Nancy] Detert said. “Never got a hearing in the Senate. We refused to hear it because it’s stupid.”State Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, agreed. Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, blamed Gov. Rick Scott. “If the governor felt so good about vetoing not-for-profit health-care clinics and Manatee Glens,” he said, “why the hell didn’t he veto that line item?”A better question would be: If the Best and Brightest bill was so bad and so dumb, how did it get past so many legislators? Yes, aThe ‘worst and dumbest’ education program of the year could get even worse - The Washington Post:
