Good Loss

The news this week that Florida failed to meet the bar for grant funding under the federal Race to the Top initiative is not altogether a bad thing.

Race to the Top aims to award innovation in the classroom and came dressed in beautiful rhetoric and talking points from proponents but boiled down, the basics of each state’s plan was a local decision, crafted at the state and local level.

And that Florida fell short in the first round of grant consideration should not be a surprise given that several districts declined to even participate in the state’s grant application and unions in only a handful of districts signed on to the plan.

The reality is that the negotiation concerning a plan did not seem a high priority.

At the local level the school board rushed at the last minute to sign on to the application under a time pressure that certainly did not allow for any kind of face-to-face across the table from the union.

The local union was operating under the guidance of a state union urging its members not to agree to any application language given its stance that the Florida Department of Education had not only failed to bargain in good faith, the agency had backed out of a pledge to negotiate at all, according to the president of the Florida Education Association.

So this was a stinker from the get-go in that the various critical stakeholders in this race for grant funding weren’t even in the same playbook.

Given that the funding for Gulf County would amount to no more than a few thousand dollars is not exactly an incentive, but the more important question in play is what the state of Florida was insisting on in its application plan.

And that was a merit pay system for teachers linked to how their students achieve, in particular their performance on standardized tests.

Sure, let’s make the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) anxiety on steroids, if it is not already.

Apply more pressure than staking a student’s progression or a school’s standing and potential dollars by making it essential for teachers, not exactly socking away money for that Caribbean beach house as it is, can have part of their pay based on how their students score.

Some important points in this argument should be expounded upon.

School accountability in some form is essential. Taxpayers spend considerable money on public schools and they are entitled, especially parents and grandparents, to know that their child or children benefit from those tax dollars; that the schools they attend teach, and exceptionally.

But anybody taking a tour of Gulf County Schools during a typical year, from August to May, could understand that one test, taken over a period of two or so weeks, is hardly reflective of the learning going on in this classroom.

Does it really reflect the kind of learning about the Chinese New Year or poetry as has been taught at Wewahitchka Elementary School this year?

How about the education in engaging government, attempting to enact change at the grassroots level as learned by students at Wewahitchka High School?

Consider the hands-on science in and out of the classroom learned by students at several district schools, particularly Port St. Joe Elementary, Port St. Joe High and Wewahitchka Elementary School?

Does the FCAT really reflect what dynamic teachers there are in Anita Askew, April Bidwell, John Huft, Cindy Phillips, Lewanna Patterson, Scott Lamberson, Judy Eppinette, Marty Jarosz, Ann Comforter, Debbie Cole and a list of other outstanding teachers in the district that would fill this page and several more?

So in addition to trying to squeeze what happens over the 180 days that comprise a school year through a single formula grinder and come up with an appropriate grade, the state proposes to squeeze a portion of each teacher’s potential pay into that same grinder.

Merit pay, rewarding excellent teachers, is a worthy goal; the best educators should be rewarded.

The problem is that such a system not riddled by inter-school and inter-district politics has yet to be crafted, just as a profitable business model for the Internet is elusive in many professions.

An FCAT for teachers, if it exists, could not be anything but flawed.

Florida will have another chance to earn at least a portion of the original grant funding in a subsequent round of grant applications. But the state must come up with a plan that everybody can live with.

And starting such a proposition on the foundation that the FCAT is the definition of school performance and achievement is beginning on shaky ground.