Photo by Brianna Jesionowski
Teachers have been monetarily affected by decisions made in the Florida Legislature for many years. As a result, they marched in Tallahassee, Florida to fight for what they, and their supporters, believe they deserve. Over the past 20 years, many events have taken place that have caused teachers to become increasingly enraged at their lack of monetary support for their passion to educate the youth.
Jeb Bush became governor of Florida in 1999 and soon after signed legislation that required annual testing of all children in grades three through ten. This led to public and charter schools being assigned “A” through “F” labels and required students who did not meet critical scores in the state reading test or provide other evidence of reading skills to remain in third grade. The real-estate market was booming while Bush was governor, which allowed him to give bonuses to teachers in schools with “A” or highly improved ratings. Although this situation was positive for teachers in successful areas, teachers in areas that were poverty stricken or had language barriers suffered unfairly from this new rating system, which is still in place today.
“I don’t think the system is fair. We, as teachers, are judged on how well or poorly our students perform on a single test. These students might be poor test-takers, which reflects on us as the teacher. Schools in poorer areas, areas with a high ESOL population, areas with a high transient population won’t do as well as schools in a more affluent area. I think the system is broken,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher Sarah Lerner said.
In 2007, the Great Recession left educators in Florida without raises for six years as the economy recovered. Despite the economy’s recovery, per pupil funding, which is where teacher raises come from, has never recovered. According to Florida Today, “per-student spending in Florida has declined by 13.8 percent since the Great Recession after adjusting for inflation. That's the largest reduction in the nation, according to a 2016 study by the National Federation of Teachers.”
In July 2011, then Governor Rick Scott, signed a new pension bill into law that required all teachers to contribute 3% of their salary to the state pension fund. The law came at a time when teachers had not received raises in five years. The Florida Education Association sued the state, but ultimately lost in 2013 in a 4-3 decision by the Florida Supreme Court.
In 2011, Florida lawmakers passed a Pay for Performance law, meant to improve the education of students by increasing the annual salaries of educators who excelled in their line of work. The purpose of the law was to encourage teachers to better their performance through motivation. The law ended continuing contracts, often referred to as tenure, for any teachers hired after July 1, 2014. It also based raises for annual contract teachers on their yearly evaluations, which include student test scores. In doing so, the legislature decreased teachers’ job security. According to a study by the Brookings Institute, there has been little to no increase in student test scores since the law has been enacted.
“The worst part of being an annual contract teacher is knowing that the state is using it to silence us. Knowing that you can just not be asked back the next year makes many teachers afraid to do anything that may upset administration, such as giving students the grade that they actually earn rather than passing students to make the numbers look better,” Ramblewood Middle School teacher John Falkowski said. “The pay is also an issue because of how subjective it is. There is a huge discrepancy from county to county in how many teachers are highly effective, and it has no correlation to educational results.”
The Pay for Performance law adversely affected veteran teacher salaries. Before the law, these teachers received raises based on their years of service, with the highest raises coming in the 19th and 20th years of teaching. The law requires that an annual contract teacher that is rated highly effective receive a higher annual raise than a veteran teacher, even if that veteran teacher is also highly effective.
“While not totally against pay for performance, it ended up being a double edged sword that struck veteran teachers the sharpest,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher Eric Garner said. “Since the full implementation in 2014, many of us have lost over $100,000 in income to support ourselves and our families. To replace that, instead of having time to get higher degrees to bring even more to students, we’ve become waiters and tutors and real estate agents to make ends meet. Exhausted, we will do it all again tomorrow.”
Story by Noa Livni and Fallon Trachtman