Does Performance-Based Pay Have Any Merit?

Background

Florida is a pioneer in the effort to base teacher salaries on student performance and give those teachers with the best results the highest raises, and a bill creating a sweeping new merit pay system was the first legislation Gov. Rick Scott signed into law in March.

Merit pay is a reform pillar of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the Foundation for Excellence in Education he founded. Bush pushed for the idea while in Florida and is now touting the benefits of performance-based pay nationwide. the idea is to reward teachers who get the best results or most improvement from their students — just as the private sector would pay for performance.

The concept has district-level support too, such as Hillsborough County Public Schools superintendent MaryEllen Elia, herself a former teacher. Elia believes testing students’ knowledge before and after a course will reveal how effective a teacher is.

Data-based analysis of teacher performance is here to stay. Hillsborough County is using a $100 million Gates Foundation grant to design a new system to evaluate and train teachers. Florida won a $700 million federal Race To The Top grant to design a similar statewide evaluation system — which lawmakers now require.

Teachers and their unions object to basing teacher pay on the results of standardized exams designed to test something else entirely, but many teacher unions signed on to the Race to The Top grant.

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May 6, 2013

Governor Launches Victory Tour To Celebrate Teacher Raises

Gov. Rick Scott hopes teachers remember his efforts to get them more money, now that the Florida Legislature has adjourned. Scott embarked on a Teacher Pay Raise Pep Rally Tour today as part of National Teacher Appreciation Week. Scott requested $480 million for raises. He got the full amount, but it won’t be doled out [...]

May 1, 2013

Teachers May Receive Raises Sooner Than June 2014

Teachers might not have to wait another year for a raise after all. Leaders in the Florida Legislature are working on a fix to the education budget that provides $480 million in raises for teachers and other school personnel. But according to the budget, that money won’t be in paychecks until June 2014. Lawmakers say a [...]

April 29, 2013

Lawmakers And Gov. Scott Compromise On Teacher Raises

Lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott reached a compromise on $480 million in raises for teachers and other school workers. The raises are part of a $74 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Districts will have flexibility in how the money is awarded based on local collective bargaining agreements. The Governor’s Office [...]

April 18, 2013

Study: Error Rate Of Test-Based Teacher Evaluations High, But Might Still Be More Accurate

The error rates of test score-based teacher evaluations is "quite high" according to a new report. But the evaluation may still be better than traditional performance measures.

A new study says error rates for teacher evaluations based on student test scores is “quite high,” but that the evaluations may still be more accurate than traditional measures. The study, by Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington-Bothell and Susanna Loeb, of Stanford University, might be cited as evidence as Florida’s largest teacher’s union challenges [...]

March 29, 2013

House Speaker On Proposed Budget: ‘Education Is The Big Winner’

Speaker Will Weatherford says the House budget proposal goes above and beyond what Gov. Rick Scott requested when he asked lawmakers to prioritize education.

The Florida House has released its proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Speaker Will Weatherford says education was prioritized over everything else. “The big winner is education,” Weatherford said. “We invested over a billion dollars into our K-12 education system from last year.” He said that amounts to a 6.2 percent increase [...]

March 20, 2013

Proposed Senate Education Budget Includes Teacher Performance Pay

A Quinnipiac University poll released today finds Florida voters approve of one of Gov. Rick Scott’s top budget priorities. Nearly three-quarters of respondents like his proposal to give $2,500 raises to the state’s public school teachers. Legislative leaders like the idea of more money for teachers — but not necessarily across-the-board raises. The Senate Appropriations [...]

March 12, 2013

How Florida’s Senate President Would Change Teacher Evaluations

Gov. Rick Scott and Senate President-Designate Don Gaetz.

Florida’s Senate President says the state’s teacher evaluation system is confusing and should be reworked so teacher ratings more closely match those of the schools they work in. Senate President Don Gaetz, a former school board member and elected superintendent, says schools should no longer evaluate some teachers based on test scores of students they [...]

March 6, 2013

Why Hillsborough County Schools Add Extra Tests To The Schedule

State lawmakers might require school districts post a schedule of district-required tests online, something Hillsborough County schools and other districts already do.

The Hillsborough County school district website lists 38 different testing dates for high school students. They range from Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests and biology exams required to graduate high schools, to alternative tests for special needs students and personal fitness exams. Not every student has to take every test — those personal fitness exams, for [...]

February 25, 2013

Florida Department of Education Asking You To Evaluate Teacher Evaluations

Lawmakers are working on adjustments to the state's teacher evaluation law, including requiring evaluation be based only on students in the teacher's classes.

The Florida Department of Education is drafting rules surrounding the way Florida teachers and school administrators are evaluated. DOE is holding a series of workshops this week seeking input on the teacher evaluation system as well as the value-added model, or VAM. Teachers will be able to give DOE their opinions about the new system, which bases [...]

February 18, 2013

Today at 4pm: Online Chat On Florida Education Changes For 2013

StateImpact Florida and WLRN are holding an online education chat where you can ask lawmakers about their education priorities. We’ll talk about teacher raises, evaluations and in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants.