Sounds a little like trying to legislate morality. Can't be done.

It's a weird proposal for a solution. It's as if a company said, "We'd like to improve our performance, so we'll start by eliminating job security." A more incremental approach, if the concern is with getting rid of bad teachers, would seem to be just treating teachers as ordinary state employees. But turning them into the equivalent of temporary contractors? That hardly sounds attractive.

The other problem is that standardized tests do not test everything that needs to be tested to show that learning actually took place.

Right. Here's what I'd do (just off the top of my head), if we were living in a world with infinite resources and access to information, and I were king: Create a body of expert evaluators who would visit each teacher's classroom and spend a week observing them. They'd produce a report of their teaching practices: Are they doing a good job? Collect demographic information about students and resource information about the schools and classrooms. Do pre-tests and post-tests on all students. Divide up results based on how well students can be expected to do, given those other factors. See whether a given teacher is (a) doing all that's possible for the students, and (b) achieving results that are appropriate given the other factors that influence student performance. This wouldn't be perfect, because of course there's lots of noise and variability, but if we wanted to improve things, this would probably help. Of course, it would be incredibly expensive and impractical.

I'm a high school chemistry teacher. If they want to hold teachers accountable in this manner, they need to give the teacher freedom to teach in his/her own style and manner. Many districts require all teachers to teach from the same model and it is extremely limiting.

Hi, Matt. Interesting--it sounds a little bit like a straitjacket, which makes the idea of holding teachers entirely responsible for results a little bit silly.

Hi Rob. My husband was on staff, not as a teacher, for a while at my kid’s school when they were in elementary school, and I think I can say with confidence the that the so-called reforms in this bill would not have done a damn thing to improve public education.

The mania for standardized testing and using it as the sole measure for teacher effectiveness is ruining the schools. In our school it was easy to be a great teacher because it was magnet school, every single kid was there because their parents took and active involved interest in their kid’s education. The teachers in our school did not have to work half as hard as teachers in other schools in impoverished areas where English was not the first language and the kids came to school hungry. Don’t get me wrong, the teachers my kids had were all good and gave my kids a an excellent education, but measuring their success vs the success of a teacher who taught at neighborhood school in an area where 75% percent of the students lived below the poverty level was is much more complex than just a number. A score of 800 in our school would have been disappointing, while a score of 500 in one of the other schools in the district would have been cause for celebrating.

Good for Crist. He is rumored to be running as an independent.

(And great photo, btw.)

Hi, Lea. Thanks, I really like that photo, too. NASA... And the political implications for Crist are really interesting. He seems to be walking away from GOP support in Florida.

Dragonfly, it's interesting to hear about the differences between schools, from your close-up perspective. I agree that Crist made the right choice.

I am very grateful that someone in the system seems to have some understanding of the complexity of the issues in teacher performance. I also like Pilgrim's comment, and Matt's comment.

The quality of classroom teaching is important, but so is the support system for the teachers and the kids. We need good counselors, wise administrators, and other personnel who can help the families so they can help their kids, so we can teach.

My god, I just said something positive about a Republican politician. That rarely happens. I'll have to pay attention to this guy. ;)

I just said something positive about a Republican politician.

Don't worry; if Florida Republicans get their way, Crist won't be a Republican politician for much longer. :-)

Most high school and lower level teachers are already teaching to what is called the FCAT test here which begins to stress out little kids at age 7. When freshman from the state educational system hit my classroom I spend the first five of the 15 weeks semester unteaching the very restricting and formulaic way they have been taught to write which constricts their ability to write or think using more than one count'em one rhetorical strategy. It is very sad. Most of them hate writing when they begin the course. I don't know if they love it when they leave but they seem to hate it less and to see writing as having more than one dimension.

This is another of the simplistic, jingoist, rightwing answers to an incredibly complicated problem -- and it won't serve to do anything but eviscerate unions in a state that has almost no union power.

What might do some good is if there was a test for legislators in FL. I'd bet money most of them couldn't pass a standardized high-school test.

Thanks for another insider's view, Dorinda. That reminds me of another thought I've had on education, which is pretty obvious: it's hard to assess the quality of an education, sometimes, except a few (maybe many) years later.

I agree, Tom. The bill sounds as much of an effort to weaken teachers' unions as it does to improve education. The assumptions it's based on seem to be "Don't trust new teachers" and "What has a teacher done for us lately?" and "Teachers are dispensible".

Rob, I consider myself as informed about education in America--both intellectually and experientially--as anyone I know, but it's become increasingly more difficult for me to talk or write it about it with anything resembling coherence. I have trouble commenting on any given sub-issue, including reform suggestions, because I don't ever want anyone to think that the particulars I'm debating or criticizing represent the entirety of my dissatisfaction with (capital E) Education. There's so damn much wrong with the entire system that I barely know where to begin. And people who emerge in the field at any moment in time (I'm thinking Diane Ravitch, someone who was essentially behind the testing and standards movement until she was against it, which is now)--are usually making broad sweeps, big reductivisms, and lots of compromises. Which is as it should be, I suppose, if one is responsible for policy, but I can't do it.

Anyway, three disparate things:
1. I've never heard anyone make the retail job connection before, and it's inspired. Thanks for that; I'm sure I will be using it (and crediting it, of course :)
2. You are probably more of an expert on K-12 education than you give yourself credit for, given your role in educating the products of that system.
3. I'm wondering if Florida uses the Tennessee Value-Added System invented by William Sanders and adopted by many states including Ohio. The point of the method is to factor out those things that are out of a teacher's control, such as a student's home environment, personality, or lack of grade-level skills at the start of the year, by measuring a kid's performance against himself over his career. The score is supposed to measure the impact of any given teacher. If a child comes in to fourth grade at the level of someone in 2.6 grade, then if he ends up at 3.6 grade, the teacher has done her job even if that kid still doesn't come close to "being" a fourth grader in skills. Everything depends on the reliability of the method, of course. Sanders is a statistician. In Ohio, Value-Added (as it's called here) is not yet published at the teacher level. It is simply seen as a plus, check, or minus on the school's report card. The information per teacher is available somewhere, of course, but the teachers' unions have kept it out of the principal's hands at this point. In Tennessee, where it originated, the information re each teacher is available to the public, but it may not factor into a teacher's hiring or firing--only in professional development.

My personal focus continues to be critical thinking, which I have come, reluctantly, to realize is at odds with a focus on testing (I used to think they could co-exist; I no longer do). Obviously kids need to be tested, but there's a vast difference between the kind of high stakes testing promoted since the 80s (when Diane Ravitch was pushing that agenda) and incidental testing used as part of a constructivist paradigm.

This was a real stinker dreamed up by our Republican brethren up in Tallahassee. They don't seem to be too keen on unions or anyone keeping their jobs. Go figure.

Christ is a pretty good guy for a Republican. I hope he turns independent and runs against that crook Rubio that the tea-baggers are suddenly so proud of. If that clown gets a Senate seat, this state is doomed. If Christ and Rubio are fighting it out, maybe Meeks can slide in the side door. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for adding your expertise to the picture, Lainey. It must be be frustrating to be aware of so many things that could be done better.

One of the things I left out of my "if I were king" comment was a concern that we might not know how to measure the educational progress of individual students accurately and on a broad scale. Thanks for the pointer to Sanders.

Hi, Michael! Florida politics is much more complicated than I understand, with respect to education or otherwise. Sometimes I think it's best to just curl up with a Carl Hiaasen book.

Performance-based pay for teachers is a great concept in the abstract, but it assumes an equality of educational opportunity that simply does not exist. What a teacher does is less significant to a child's academic performance than the environment in the child's home. The very best teacher in the world will fail when significant numbers of students have absent or uncaring parents.

The other point you make about the employment insecurity of new teachers is important, too. A constant threat of being fired is not the best way to encourage stellar performance. Sure, bad teachers need to be identified and removed early. But teaching, like any profession, has a learning curve. New teachers should be given coaching and mentoring to help them reach their potential. After going through years of expensive training in a university, followed by a full semester of unpaid student teaching (how many engineers or MBA's work for four months with no compensation?), followed by barely subsistence-level wages in their first full time position, is it really fair to force them to live under the constant black cloud of unemployment for three or four un-tenured years?

Hi, Steve. (You're looking quite youthful these days.) I agree on both points. On the first, that's what I've heard as well--there are lots of external factors that affect children's learning aside from teaching, and holding individual teachers responsible for all of it looks like the wrong approach. To some, though, it looks like an easy and cheap approach, which I suppose is its attraction. On the second point, yeah. If we want to bring more and better teachers to the profession, it's a bad idea to propose something that the vast majority of current teachers are against.

I LOVE what procopius said.

He's a smart guy. :-)

Ther is a basic tenet fo project management that applies here: You can 1) define the method for someone performing a teask and live with the results, or 2) tell them the results you're looking for and tlet them determine method. You don't get to define the method and make them responsible for the results, which is just what the Florida Legislature seems to be trying to do.

I've been seriously considering a move into teaching (I'd like HS science or history. I guess nobody teaches software engineering to kids), but I'm starting to wonder just what I'm letting myself in for.

Hi, John. Thanks--I didn't know that about project management. I guess it shows I haven't been in industry for a very long time. On teaching high school, I think that's a great idea, from everything I've read. Teachers with a science or technical background are scarce. In fact, I have heard recently that there is a huge shortage nationwide of teachers who can handle AP CS classes, so there may actually be opportunities out there. If teaching credential issues don't get in the way, which unfortunately is entirely possible.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the encouragement. One of the things that I find depressing is that we're just not graduating enough engineers (in any discipline) and CS people. Kids figure that after a few years in banking they can get the big bucks.

Engineering and project management are what happens to you whne you get too expensive to just sit around and cut code. I think there's a rule, once you can do something you really like really well, they have to move you into something else.

That I understand (both parts). Lately I've heard people saying this more often, that a country's economy really does depend on people doing and making things, rather than shuffling money around. Business and finance just don't work, I think, without some sort of productive foundation.

Back when I worked at Texas Instruments, the company dealt with the project management issue by maintaining two separate ladders for advancement, one management, the other technical. I don't know how successful it ended up being, but I always envied the positions of the senior engineers who were my mentors. They had the freedom to float through the company and attach themselves to different projects they thought were interesting, acting as technical consultants at large. That sounds attractive to me even now.