Senate Bill Six Passes

[THE Renegade Diesel]

TALLAHASSEE — The Senate passed a controversial bill Wednesday morning that will tie teacher pay directly to student performance.

Senate Bill 6 was passed in a 21-17 vote with all 13 Democrats in the Senate and four Republicans voting against it.

Read Senate Bill 6 »

“This is not a perfect bill; there are things in this bill that will change,†Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, said to his fellow Senators only moments before the bill passed. “It is a framework for going forward.â€

Other members of the Senate who also spoke before the vote disagreed with him.

Sen. Frederica Wilson, a south Florida Democrat, said the bill will likely “ostracize†struggling students because teachers won’t want to have low-performing students in their classes.

She asked that they slow-down and come up with a new bill that would solve the issues without penalizing teachers for factors outside their control.

Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, who wrote the bill, ended the discussion by bringing up his daughter, who was a teacher before she became a stay-at-home mom.

“She’s told me that she’s not fearful of this bill … because she thinks when the bill passes it’s going to inspire teachers,†Thrasher said.

He also reminded Senators that they had a similar debate 12 years ago when the school grading plan was implemented, and despite its criticisms at the time, the plan has served the state well, he said.

“I didn’t come here to be satisfied with the status quo and you shouldn’t either,†Thrasher said. “I tell you this is not a perfect bill, but I tell you it is the beginning of a historic bill.â€

Members of the Okaloosa County teacher’s union said the vote wasn’t unexpected and that they plan to turn their attention to the House of Representatives as it prepares to vote on the bill.

Teachers across Okaloosa County will wear red clothing Thursday, just as they did at Monday’s demonstration, because they are still “seeing red†where this legislation is concerned.

They also will participate in a virtual rally tomorrow.

“A lot of teachers just want to do their jobs and do it well,†said Greg Butler, the executive director of the Okaloosa County Education Association. “They don’t want to get involved in politics, but unfortunately we’ve allowed education to get political.â€

Basically, if you didn't read the article, teachers are getting paid on how well their students do. Which honestly, is a double-edged sword. Because, if you are a good teacher, you have nothing to worry about, as your students will pass with flying colors, but a lot of teacher. Shit, basically every teacher in my school is protesting, and refusing to come to work. This is stirring way too much shit, and a lot of teachers are quitting. I wouldn't be suprised if it was a ploy for the gov't to make teachers quit so they could reduce the amount of salaries they have to pay every month. Anyways, anybody else getting any word of this?

 

[Quintastic One]

I'm not worried about it anyway. It's already obvious that you're a moron if you're career path is teaching. Because unless your a collegiate professor, a teaching degree takes twice the amount of time as any other degree, and you STILL make less money than the bartender down the road, who went to college half as long as you did.

Call me callous, but it's the truth. This is just another thing screwing over the teachers and making teaching an even more undesirable position. Because all this means is that the teachers are going to give all their students A's, regardless of performance, in order to get more pay. Teaching will become pointless, nobody will learn anything, and the government gets one step closer to eliminating the middle class. So that all that there is left is one super elite class that could afford the private teaching lessons, and one super depressed lower class, who couldn't afford education and there was nobody left to teach free education, so they're a generation of morons.

No point in freaking out over it. It's the teachers own fault for dealing with their crappy pay and crappier benefits instead of standing up to this bullshit twenty years ago.

 

[Axis]

Yeah everybody was freaking out about it here in the local news. While there are a lot of problems with the bill, it's about time the teachers union got a big "fuck you" from state legislators. There needs to be some sort of merit-pay system. While I'm not convinced that it should be based on standardized test scores, something had to be laid down, because the union was going to oppose any sort of merit pay based on any scale. Now that this is down, we can judge the results, and potentially find even better solutions to judge merit on.

Edit: Also, lol @ the closing quote. Education became political the moment it became a government-protected monopoly.

 

[Lady Redfield]

Pretty dumb in the first place that a teacher gets paid based on how well their students do. I could choose to fuck around and skip class and then come back and be an idiot because I missed a ton of classes but it's not the teacher's fault.

 

[Italian Outsider]

Sen. Frederica Wilson, a south Florida Democrat, said the bill will likely “ostracize” struggling students because teachers won’t want to have low-performing students in their classes.

Moronic.

 

[Axis]

Pretty dumb in the first place that a teacher gets paid based on how well their students do. I could choose to fuck around and skip class and then come back and be an idiot because I missed a ton of classes but it's not the teacher's fault.

Isn't any other occupation judged by the results that it brings? Why should teaching be any different?

 

[Lady Redfield]

Isn't any other occupation judged by the results that it brings? Why should teaching be any different?

I never said it should be different.

I know what it feels like to be in that position somewhat because, at my old job, I was in charge of the night crew, along with the manager, so if the night crew sucked, we got in shit for it. It's frustrating because you can push and push and push as much as you want and some people will still just fuck around because it's your ass who gets in shit, not theirs. It's stupid but it's the way things go.

 

[THE Renegade Diesel]

Well the bill got scrapped because our gov. Charlie Cris made like a last minute veto, so the teachers stopped shitting their pants.

 

[Doomsday]

I like it.