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Report Suggests Florida Should Weaken Teacher Tenure

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By ADAM EMERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 18, 2009

No meeting of the Legislature would be complete without political sniping over education, particularly when it comes to expert opinion.

State education leaders this week heralded the release of a report they commissioned and that highlights some policy suggestions for a state dragging in a souring economy.

But these suggestions have inflamed partisan tensions between the state education officials who favor the ideas of weakening teacher tenure and strengthening school choice and the teachers union and state Democrats who condemn them.

"There is a saying that 'a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,' and the political motives of those championing this report are transparent," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association.

Despite the economy, Florida is well positioned to provide incentives that promote higher achievement among students and eliminate expensive policies that do not, according to three scholars from Harvard and Stanford universities who wrote the report.

Among their recommendations:

- Continue funding programs that tie teacher pay to a school's performance, and even consider similar pay scales for principals and other school-level administrators.

- "If workforce reduction is necessary," the state should consider "minimizing" expensive tenure policies that favor highly paid senior faculty members and opt instead for an approach that retains the best teachers.

- The Legislature should consider asking voters to amend the state Constitution, reining in the most stringent requirements of Florida's class-size law.

- And the state should expand school choice options that yield savings for taxpayers, particularly a program that bankrolls private school vouchers with corporate taxes.

Many of the proposals already have found their way into legislation, including a Republican measure that would weaken tenure policies and make it easier for schools to fire bad teachers.

"Instead of focusing on who should be fired first, shouldn't Florida focus on retaining the teachers who have worked so successfully in raising student achievement and test scores?" Ford said.

Democrats have responded with their own ideas to raise money for schools, including a proposal to increase the sales tax by a penny for three years, generating $3.5 billion. Union leaders and PTA members are rallying for the penny tax in Tallahassee today.

The scholars' report, though, gained a lot of currency this week among members of the state Board of Education, which commissioned the study.

"For the sake of our state's future, the educational priority for Florida must remain the same – providing an environment that fosters high academic achievement for all of our students," said Willard Fair, chairman of the state Board of Education, in response to the report's findings.

The report was prepared by Paul Peterson and Martin West of Harvard University and Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University.

The Florida Education Foundation paid them $31,000 to complete the work. No state money was used, said officials with the state Education Department.

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.

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