BOE member: Florida schools need more money, teacher reforms

If you think Florida’s education debates fall into predictable ruts, you’ll like this 9-page white paper from Florida Board of Education member Roberto Martinez. Martinez offers dozens of recommendations for school reform that will give the usual suspects something to love and hate, according to a copy sent to fellow board members and obtained this afternoon by The Gradebook.

Florida needs to pay teachers better, writes Martinez, a former U.S. attorney who is close to both Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush. But it also needs to reform tenure, change the salary schedule, enforce the differentiated pay law and create a performance pay plan “that works.” It should require professional development for teachers not making student gains. It should pass a law that “provides authority to the Superintendents, with the consent of the Commissioner, to remove non-performing teachers at schools in an academic emergency.”

Florida’s reforms also need more money, Martinez says. “We have too many significantly underfunded schools,” he writes. But instead of taking his word for it, he suggests the Board of Education annually review Florida’s school funding to make sure it’s enough to meet “the goals of a world class education.”

“There are certain essential resources and services that every school should have in order to meet world class standards,” he writes. He recommends that Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith, in consultation with national experts and the Legislature’s research arm, come up with a list of those essential resources and use the resources found in the state’s best magnet schools as a guide.

Martinez’s other recommendations tackle everything from voluntary pre-kindergarten to reforming the FCAT and school grading. He wants them considered at the BOE board meeting in September.

“Doing one or a few of these would make some difference in children’s lives and futures,” he concludes. “But if Florida is truly serious about the education and future of our children, we need to have a profound commitment to the great range of items I’ve outlined and make them happen. We should not seek to make gradual, marginal changes around the edges. We must make fundamental transformational reforms, and provide the necessary resources sustained over time to make the reforms succeed.”

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Comments

[St Pete]

I have seen first hand how more money is not the answer. When I started to teach at a brand new S.St Pete school, we had grant money coming out of the ears. The problem was it had to spent within a certain time period. Sounds good huh? It was wasted by creating positions that were non-essential and had no bearing on learning, pretty "eye candy" sculptures and school decorations and lots of out of town trainings. These trainings had to have cost over $100.000, and most of the people who took them left the school within the next year due to the overwhelming behavior at the school. The money has been gone for 2 years and yet sadly, each year we must find money in our school budget to keep these "appointed" jobs. That affects the amount of $ actually making it into the actual classroom. Schools waste so much money it is incredible. Sure it sounds like we need more money, but I would say no. We need better accountability for how that money is spent. Very few $ make it into the education for the students. Most of the "coaches" in the title 1 schools attend trainings and that knowledge is never even shared with the teachers doing the actual teaching. Too many coaches, too much waste and the burden for accountability is put squarely on the shoulders of the expendable worker bee.

[Nate]

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[terminator]

What Martinez knows about public education can fit into a thimble.
Him, his buddy "Uncle Tom" Willard Fair and the rest of the sham called the Florida Board of Education should be promptly abolished.
This undistinguished group hasn't accomplished a thing since their inception eight years ago.
Martinez handles Governor Charlie Crist's IRA and investment accounts. Can you say "conflict of interest"?
The great thing is, no one really cares what this group of nitwits says or does as they have no power to do anything.

[Tired of being kicked around by REMF's]

Another policy wonk from outside the Education system who thinks he knows better than the professionals who are in the classroom everyday!