It's always fun to scan the headlines of the various comments on this blog. When within a few inches of column space you have "Politics Trumps Policy, Again" from one of the nation's leading teacher effectiveness researchers, and "Crist Veto Puts Kids First, Not Politics" from the head of the largest national teachers' union, one can basically fill in the blanks on the contours of both the policy and the politics.

SB6 wasn't perfect, but no actual bill that ever has emerged from the legislative process is as theoretically perfect as the think-tankers want it to be. The bill did, however, tackle some important issues that are critical to changing the way in which we make decisions in schools. We can hem and haw about which metrics to use, but the research is unequivocal about the fact that teacher effectiveness impacts student achievement, and that levels of teacher effectiveness are highly variable within systems and schools. I have spent the bulk of my career in education working directly with and in some of the country's lowest performing schools, and from practical experience I can say that current ossified tenure laws are some of the major obstacles to getting the most effective teachers in those chronically failing schools, in front of our neediest children. We can debate the minutae all we want, but something must change.

Also, to go back to my first point, it really is sad that everyone who likes the veto wants to call it a triumph of smart policy, and everyone who hates it is trying to call it a political hit job. I wish folks who like the bill would say "Yes, I like the policy, but it's pretty obvious that the sitting governor who has dropped dozens of points in the polls since the beginning of the year and is facing a primary challenge from the right made a political calculation here." It just doesn't pass the smell test otherwise.

I here address only one small issue raised in this debate, only tangentially related to the merits of Gov. Crist's veto: Charles Barone's claim that "there is a good chance that Crist’s veto of SB6 actually will make the state significantly less competitive in Race to the Top Round 2."

In reality, the scoring system used for making Race to the Top awards is arbitrary. Decisions that go into scoring are so subjective that it is fair to say that awards are based on chance. So it is wishful thinking to expect that any favored policy change can predictably increase the likelihood of winning a Race to the Top award.

A colleague and I recently analyzed this scoring system, and I will not repeat much of the analysis here, but invite readers to see for themselves at: http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/BP263/

Here is an excerpt from our analysis, relating to Florida's application:

Consider two closely related indicators, (A)(1)(ii), "securing LEA commitment [to the state's education reform agenda]," and (A)(1)(iii), "translating LEA participation into statewide impact." Averaging the judges' awards on the first of these, Tennessee [one of two winning states] got 44 and Florida got 36 out of a possible 45 points. Averaging the judges' awards on the second, Tennessee got 14 and Florida got 9 out of a possible 15 points.

However, 45 points is too large a scale to permit reviewers reasonably to make such fine distinctions. Can a reviewer — especially a non-professional reviewer with minimal training, conducting a one-time exercise — imagine 45 distinct degrees of effort to secure school districts' commitment? Can a reviewer imagine 15 distinct degrees of effort in translating school district participation into "statewide impact," whatever that means?

In Tennessee, every superintendent and school board president endorsed the state's application, but according to the notes of one reviewer, "the State expects some attrition of districts." Is "some attrition" equivalent to one point on the 45-point scale, resulting in Tennessee's score on this metric of 44 rather than 45? Why not a 3-point, or a 5-point penalty for "some attrition"? In Florida, 89% of all school districts in the state "signed on with full endorsement to the RTT application." Why didn't Florida get 40 points (89% of 45), rather than 36 for this indicator?

If, in fact, Tennessee had received only 40 points for this indicator, and Florida had also received 40, Florida would have won the overall competition, not Tennessee.

We conclude as follows:

In short, the Race to the Top 500-point rating system presents a patina of scientific objectivity, but in truth masks a subjective and somewhat random process.

This competition was a trial run for Secretary Duncan of a policy approach he hopes to make permanent. The Obama administration has proposed that formula-driven Title I funding be frozen at its present level, without future adjustment for inflation, and that increases in federal education spending be devoted entirely to a new collection of competitive grants… Because such a reduction in real Title I funding would further exacerbate state fiscal crises, and because this trial run of a competitive system has proven to have little credibility, the administration should rethink its approach to federal education aid and its relationship to school improvement.

Yet for now, …[s]tates that lost in the March competition have been invited to re-apply, and several are doing so, again investing time and expense to re-do their applications. Experts in these states are likely to spend many hours studying the review process employed in March, so they can recommend small changes in their states' applications to exploit the quirks of the Department's rating system. Such gaming is unlikely to reflect an actual improvement in the education policies of applicant states.

We recommend instead that the Department abandon this complexity, and move to a simpler "pass/fail" system for the next round of the competition. Even a pass/fail system will have errors, as states that are close to whatever standard the Department employs will either arbitrarily receive awards or be denied. So the benefit of the doubt should be given to borderline states: any states that undertake reasonable efforts to improve their elementary and secondary education systems should receive awards. Only those patently contemptuous of the reform process should be denied. Such a system would sacrifice little in national efforts to enhance the performance of American schools, and would spare states the pain of engaging in unreasonable competition where bias and chance play more of a role than educational improvement.

A popular catchphrase in education right now is that education reform initiatives should happen with teachers, not to teachers. One of the biggest lessons learned from the history in Florida, culminating in Governor Crist’s veto of SB 6, is that engaging all of the key players in conversations from the very beginning is crucial to successfully reforming education. Establishing relationships, facilitating ongoing communication, and developing a common level of understanding of the impact of the reforms is tough, but essential work.

The Center for Educator Compensation Reform has documented Florida’s tumultuous efforts to reform teacher compensation beginning with the first state statute in 1999 that required districts to evaluate instructional staff yearly. The evaluations placed a strong emphasis on gains in student learning. This provided the basis for three back-to-back attempts at designing performance-based pay programs. The first attempt (E-Comp) was designed by the state board of education with minimal input from external groups. Eventually, more stakeholders were invited to the table, but the lack of buy-in was apparent from early on in the process. Once the process is viewed as contentious, as in Florida’s case, the program’s chances of success are significantly decreased. In contrast, successful compensation reform plans have emerged from union and district or union and state collaboration, as in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Engaging stakeholders takes more than just getting the right people at the table. It also involves developing and implementing a communication plan to discuss program details with the larger public concisely and consistently. The goals of the reforms must be clearly defined. A lack of clarity can create confusion among the various constituents about the components of a program. This begins to erode support, especially when the proposal significantly alters the status quo. For more details on the importance of language, see Alternative Compensation Terminology: Considerations for Education Stakeholders, Policymakers, and the Media.

While communication and engagement is essential, it is also important to consider that education policy does not exist in a vacuum. Reforms are shaped by their local context. Some states or districts may be further along in their ability to link student achievement and teacher performance. And while states and districts are being urged to think more systemically about reform, two states -- Ohio and Maryland --addressed teacher tenure policy successfully by focusing on one issue at a time. These states did not tie tenure reform to broader changes in the compensation structure. While it is important to think strategically, it is also important to address each part of the system thoughtfully and thoroughly.

When it comes to education, there are few viewpoints that garner near-universal agreement. One rare exception is that great teachers are the key to student success. Research clearly demonstrates that an excellent teacher can significantly boost student learning, and having three highly-effective teachers in a row can actually eliminate the shameful achievement gap that has plagued public education for generations. Meanwhile, a student who has three low-performing teachers in a row falls so far behind that it is difficult for them to make up that lost ground.

In vetoing Senate Bill 6 (SB6), Governor Crist turned his back on this evidence, missing a historic opportunity to transform Florida’s public education system and the lives of its students for the better.

SB6 would have recognized the importance of the teaching profession by tying educators’ salaries to student progress, fairly evaluating teachers based on how much ground individual students gain over the course of the school year. At the same time, the bill would have made it easier to remove the lowest-performing teachers from the classroom.

These common-sense reforms would help professionalize teaching, attracting the best and brightest into the education field and offering career ladders and compensation to keep them there. And that, in turn, would ensure that students are prepared for the demands of college and the 21st-century economy. Such reforms also send an important message about our priorities and values—when it comes to educating our children, we accept nothing less than excellence.

Over the past decade, Florida has adopted bold and often controversial reforms that have yielded tremendous gains. The Governor’s decision to let politics trump the interest of school children risks undermining that progress.

Has the Florida education cocktail been diluted? Will the upward trajectory of academic improvement in Florida reverse course? Will education reformers in other states view the Governor’s veto as the most politically expedient course of action, or just as the right thing to do based on a weak bill? Will other states audaciously pick up the mantle and pass thoughtful, bold and far-reaching legislation that will make it easier to dismiss an ineffective teacher and link teacher pay and career progression to student achievement? These are a few of the burning questions that education reformers and policymakers are reflecting on following Florida Governor Crist’s veto of Senate Bill 6. For certain, the Governor’s veto has overshadowed other Florida education reform bills, but the academic and political impact of the veto remains uncertain.

I believe the Florida legislature will try again next year, but in the meantime, it is my hope that the media coverage of the veto will inform the general public, elected officials, and reformers of all stripes (and in all states) of the need for tenure reform. It is essential that a range of teacher policies – ranging from the quality of their preparation programs to candidates' readiness for certification; through their development, compensation, and career progression; and even to layoff decisions – be more directly linked to the impact that teachers have on student progress and learning. If Crist’s action motivates education reformers in other states to become advocates for these much-needed policies, it will be a step in the right direction. A single veto in Florida cannot and should not pause a movement whose time has come, one that could go a long way toward closing the achievement gap. We cannot afford to wait. These changes must be made now.

Did Charlie Christ make a political calculation in vetoing the Florida Teachers BIll? Of course: any elected official who didn't think about the political ramifications of his decision wouldn't last long. We''ll learn soon enough whether the veto will salvage Christ's future--what is clear now is that, on policy grounds, Christ made the right decision.

If statitsticians really knew how to relate teacher pay to student performance, we could have an interesting policy discussion about teaching to tests etc. But smart researchers with no ideological axe to grind have demonstrated that, at present, there's no statistically valid way to connect students' reading and math scores to who's teaching them. To add a host of new tests would multiply the statistical conundra.

It makes sense to devise criteria for paying teachers other than seniority and degrees obtained; and it makes sense as well to make it simplier to fire teachers who, by any metric, are incompetent. But the Florida bill is a reach much too far. This is one of those occasions when smart politics and smart policy coincide.

Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform, submitted the following to this week's question:

One consequence of Crist’s decision to veto the teacher tenure and evaluation bill could be the loss of $700 million in school reform funds under President Obama’s Race to the Top program.

An analysis of Florida’s Race to the Top Round 1 application released yesterday by Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform Now, and the Education Equality Project concludes that:

Florida lost 29.4 points on Great Teachers and Leaders. This category was the one in which the state lost the most points in absolute terms as well as the one in which it fared least well compared to other states. Florida's score of 108.6 in this category put it behind 11 other states. Florida’s proposal included some notable components, such as basing teacher evaluations at least 50% on student learning gains and eliminating "last hired, first fired" policies, but state-wide implementation would have been weak and spotty. For example, Florida lost seven points for its plans to equitably distribute qualified and effective teachers—almost one-third of the total possible points.

A bill to address these shortcomings was passed by the Florida legislature, but was vetoed by Governor Crist. The veto, and the debate in the weeks leading up to the Round 2 application deadline, are likely to highlight to an even greater extent the weaknesses in the state's plan and make it more difficult to implement necessary improvements to secure a Round 2 award. The fact that the veto seems to have much more to do with the politics of the Republican primary for Florida's U.S. Senate seat than with the substance of the policies proposed (Crist supported the bill when it was originally proposed), may make resolution doubly difficult.

Our conclusions are based both on reviewers’ comments as well as analyses from other policy experts.

For example, USDOE Reviewer 2 correctly observed that:

"Florida has a system that enables it to measure student growth (Learning Gains) annually using state assessment data and connect students' results with teachers and the courses students take. However, this system is not used by many districts in the state."

This squares with an analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality in its paper “Navigating the Race to the Top Traffic Jam.” After reviewing the positive elements of the Florida Great Teachers and Leaders plan, NCTQ opines:

“the evaluation process is decentralized—teacher evaluations in Florida are locally developed—and by Florida’s own admission, evaluation measures and efforts across the state are very uneven. To that end, Florida is proposing to use RTT to set statewide standards for performance evaluation and provide more intensive support for districts in the design and adoption of high-quality evaluation instruments….

“….Florida notes that it ‘seeks to change the decision-making process through this grant not by starting with state level regulatory change, but by first providing incentives and support to districts in making these changes.’ But we think there would be some big advantages to making regulatory changes rather than depending on volunteers when asking for a $1.1 billion commitment from the Department of Education.”

We wholeheartedly agree. One of the most important things the Race to the Top process has done is to expose weaknesses in state laws and regulations that previously had gone unnoticed, such as state “firewalls” between teacher evaluation and student achievement data. In the case of Florida, while the state has proposed some good reform policies, both the review process and Crist’s veto of the bill have exposed weaknesses in the plan’s subsequent execution and potential statewide impact.

If there is no follow-up legislation that can be signed into law, there is a good chance that Crist’s veto of SB6 actually will make the state significantly less competitive in Race to the Top Round 2 than if the state had not acted at all. This is a challenge and an opportunity for the Governor, state legislature, and interested parties to regroup to revise the state’s application accordingly in order to make it as competitive as possible for the up to $700 million available to the state in Round 2 Race to the Top funds.

For the DFER, ERN, and EEP issue briefs go to:

http://www.dfer.org/list/issues/racesmarter/

It has become a kind of received wisdom these days to take for granted the positive effects of removing teacher tenure and paying teachers more money for better test scores. But I wonder from where or whom this wisdom has come and whether or not our unquestioned belief in it leads to smart decisions.

Governor Crist’s political calculus aside, the question to ask is this, “How would the bill have improved Florida schools?” At best, it’s unclear. My belief is that it wouldn’t have made much difference at all. Getting rid of tenure and adding performance-based pay obviously whips up quite a kerfuffle, but it won’t improve teaching quality nearly as much as two other, simpler, subtler, and far less controversial approaches: better screening of pre- and early service teachers and a persistent long term focus on training up mid-performing teachers. These aren’t sexy ideas. And they don’t have fancy conceptual names. But they will work far better than the concepts embodied in SB6.

Implied in SB6 are several assumptions: that removing tenure would improve teacher quality, that offering performance-based pay would lead to better teaching, and that the combination would create a more fluid market for teacher talent. All these assumptions, while correct in theory, are wrong in practice where education and educators are concerned. In business, these changes would likely have their intended market effects. But since education is a cultural institution and not a business, their effects are unpredictable and, in most cases, severely muted by myriad anti-market factors.

As Mr. Bailey points out, Florida’s current system has rules that allow teachers to receive tenure after three years of satisfactory evaluations. In my experience, it is easy to predict long term teacher effectiveness within a teacher’s first three years (in many cases, it can be done in one year), so I’m not sure why a significant number of poor teachers couldn’t be weeded out under the current law.

Except for teachers who slump late in their career due to burnout, most teachers improve slightly each year, reach their maximum effectiveness most often in years 7-15, and then plateau. You’re not likely to find a 5th or 6th year teacher who is worse than a 1st or 2nd year teacher, so how would the new legislation help Florida ferret out more bad teachers than their current law? Statistically, the majority of poor teachers are represented by those in their first three years. And if Florida is like every other state, its districts let virtually all teachers slide by. How would altering teacher tenure rules stop this longstanding cultural practice?

If Florida is unhappy about the number of weak teachers quietly slipping into tenure at year four, then a stricter evaluation system would be far more effective than throwing out tenure altogether. SB6 probably owes its existence to the problem of poor evaluation, a problem that outlawing tenure does nothing to correct. If teachers at years one through three who do not have tenure protection can be passed along easily by the system, why can’t teachers at year four and beyond be treated the same way?

Bills like SB6 which seek to increase the number of teachers fired for poor performance have another structural weakness: nothing guarantees that districts will acquire better teachers than the ones they throw away. From what we know about the poor quality of pre-service teacher training, it’s likely that many of the teachers hired to replace fired teachers would themselves be fired at some point along the line. This creates the potential for a revolving door where bad teachers within the system are merely exchanged for bad teachers outside the system who then get fired shortly after their arrival.

What Florida needs is not the blunt instrument that SB6 represents but more nuanced legislation that changes teacher evaluation, teacher training, and teacher certification. There are many gates available to Florida that will keep weak teachers out of the system. Weak teachers can be screened as they enter their certification programs, when they complete their programs, after student teaching, and any time during years one, two, or three. A state that can’t sort good teachers from bad with this many chances isn’t likely to do much better with even more. Better yet, as teachers move into and through their pre-service programs, we have many more experienced educators providing constant evaluation. This is far more oversight than we have once a teacher enters the system. A focus on improving pre- and early service teacher training would have more impact than anti-tenure legislation.

If we want to argue that removing tenure will make teachers more fearful of losing their jobs, and therefore more compliant, this is plausible. But it may not improve the quality of instruction. People don’t perform well out of fear, especially in jobs like teaching which require more than rote performance. If the intent of the bill was to strengthen compliance with a new teacher evaluation system, then implementing the evaluation system would probably have been more direct, more effective, and more politically palatable. Teacher quality does not, in my experience, correlate well with teacher compliance. In fact, it often seems that the reverse is true.

The second untested assumption is the idea that paying bonuses for high test scores will improve teacher performance. There are several reasons why this may not work.

Teachers are not an economically sensitive population. No one goes into teaching for the money. So it stands to reason that money is not a top motivator for teachers, especially our best teachers who seem motivated more by helping children learn than by anything else.

For our best teachers, those most likely to receive bonuses, it’s hard to teach much better. I have worked with many teachers throughout the country who have perfect scores in nearly every subject every year. Their students have been passing tests all along. Paying these teachers more is nice and will, I’m sure, be appreciated, but it won’t lead to improvement as these teachers are already performing at the highest level. For teachers whose performance falls just below this level, the fact that a small number of their students might miss the passing mark is often a matter of statistical chance. It would not be obvious to these teachers, or to their evaluators, what they might do to improve their performance.

Ironically, average teachers would benefit the most from performance-based pay. Our system gains dramatically when we move teachers from the middle up to the top. These teachers have established themselves as essentially competent but for whatever reason they have ceased to improve beyond this basic level. Unlike our best teachers, these teachers have room to grow. And unlike the teachers who fall below them, mid-performing teachers may have potential to improve given the right support and incentives. However, a performance-based pay system focused on mid-performing teachers would seem unfair and counter-intuitive.

The problem with performance-based pay in teaching is that teaching can’t easily be changed through simplistic external motivation. Being a better teacher is not like being a better salesman who can reach new heights by making a few extra calls, staying out on the road a little longer, or sweetening the close with a variety of premiums and promises. Teachers who are already effective are self-motivated to be that way. For them, external motivation is irrelevant. For those in the middle, significant external incentives, along with intense training, might produce small gains but then again they might not; it’s a 50/50 bargain at best. For bad teachers, it’s very hard to teach well no matter how much one may want to. Bonus systems based on test score improvements tend to go to people who would have earned high test scores without the incentive. These pay schemes may validate good teaching, but they don’t inspire good teaching.

People often confuse the way test-based pay works in education with how pay-for-performance plans work in the world. For the salesman who wins a bonus for greater sales, the manger who brings his project in ahead of schedule and under budget, or the baseball player who hits that 40th homerun, progress toward the reward can be seen at all times. The salesman sees how close he is and shakes the funnel a little harder, the manager cracks the whip and puts the team through a few all-nighters, the ball player swings for the fences each time he gets up to bat. Knowing where you are relative to where you need to be influences your behavior toward the goal. This “comparative progress” mechanism lies at the heart of all successful external reward systems.

But such a mechanism is not a part of test-based teacher bonus systems. There’s no way to know, even with formative assessments, how well a classroom of kids will perform on test day. And even after the test has been taken, the teacher still needs to wait weeks to find out if he or she has qualified for the bonus. Without the “comparative progress” mechanism, there’s no way for the teacher to use the bonus as an incentive to change behavior along the way and improve the odds of reaching the goal. The salesman, the manager, and the ball player can track their progress week by week and make adjustments as needed. In this sense, the incentive serves its intended function of encouraging behaviors that make reaching the goal more likely. This essential form of motivation does not exist in performance-based pay schemes for teachers.

Finally, behind anti-tenure and performance-based pay programs is the belief that teaching quality can be improved through the creation of some form of market economy. This has logical appeal because we see this occur in other industries. But education is not a market, and teaching quality is not a commodity. Some aspects of teaching quality are personality-based, some are knowledge-based, still others are technique-based. We can change teaching technique through training and forced implementation. But inculcating knowledge or changing personality is significantly more difficult and time consuming.

As with young children, we have the best chance of changing these things when teachers are young. During pre-service training, we can shape both technique and knowledge easily. And over several years, from the beginning of one’s teaching program through the first two or three years of practice, we can inspire positive changes in personality as well. Apart from technique, much of a teacher’s malleability is used up during the first 4-6 years he or she spends learning to teach and then entering the profession. Beyond this point, intense training is required to see significant gains. After ten years of practice, many teachers are unlikely to improve even with training financial incentives.

As a nation, we have become obsessed with the notion of firing bad teachers. But there’s more malice here than forethought. Yes, we all had bad teachers when we were in school. The same portion of poorly equipped educators probably exists today. This is furstrating. But the route to improving teacher quality doesn’t run through the bottom, as proponents of anti-tenure laws would have us believe. Nor does it run through the top, as proponents of performance-based pay programs would have us believe.

The vast majority of teachers are average. While the difference between the top 15% and the bottom 15% may be shocking, the 70% in the middle don’t vary much. Yet their numbers are large. So it makes more sense to target this group than the other two. Even a slight improvement across the “middle class” would have a dramatic effect, just as a small increase in middle class taxation raises a lot of money. The bell curve of teaching quality is sharply spiked. Big gains are to be found in the middle, not at the ends.

In the years to come, we will see many more skirmishes over anti-tenure and performance-based pay legislation. At some point, something will pass. Then a few years will go by and nothing much will happen. This will be an interesting moment as one side realizes it has no hammer to bring down and the other side realizes it need not fear the hammer. Thoroughly befuddled, the parties may finally agree that neither was right. Then maybe we can get down to the business of creating sensible legislation that improves teacher quality.

Governor Crist displayed remarkable courage in vetoing this pernicious bill. Commentators have accused him of political calculation, but just the opposite is the case. He threw away his party base and did what was right for the kids, parents, and teachers of Florida. SB 6 was a mean-spirited, ignorant piece of legislation that would have removed any salary credit for education degrees, experience, and even National Board Certification. It would have based half a teacher's pay solely on standardized test scores. This would predictably have narrowed the curriculum to only what is tested and would have incentivized "teaching to the test." When legislators were questioned about their focus only on reading and math, which is taught by a minority of all teachers, they promised to develop tests for everything and to deduct 5% from the budget of every school district to pay for the new tests. When questioned about the validity and reliability of the not-yet-developed tests, the legislators blithely said that all that could be figured out later. SB 6 would have undermined the professionalism of teachers and harmed the quality of education in Florida. Governor Crist apparently spoke with a friend whose child is in a special needs program and became aware that teachers would not want to teach those who seem unlikely to make big test-score gains. This is a good reason to veto this bill, but there were many good reasons. I have read that Governor Crist received nearly 100,000 emails and letters opposing the bill, and about 3,000 supporting it. Governor Crist did the right thing. This is so rare among politicians today, who are being stampeded to treat our children as widgets. Thank you, Governor Crist.

Hurrah for politicans who listen--Crist listened to experts and chose the wise path.

Deborah.

Congratulations to thousands of Floridians for speaking out against Senate Bill 6, and to Gov. Crist for actually listening to them. The bill richly deserved to be killed in order to save Florida schoolchildren, teachers and families from its destructive potential.

Why destructive? First, it would have required a whole new series of tests in a long list of subjects to be developed and given in the fall and spring to attempt to measure student growth. The results would have been used, in turn, to measure teacher effectiveness. Students, teachers and parents know there is already too much time taken from teaching and learning to prepare for and administer standardized tests. The only winners in this would be the booming test industry, which already boasts explosive growth thanks to No Child Left Behind’s testing mandates.

Teachers, parents, students and others correctly pointed out all the flaws in thinking the test results would be an accurate and fair way to evaluate teachers. A FairTest fact sheet summarizes the evidence that basing teacher evaluations on test scores would cause score inflation rather than real learning, would intensify the narrowing of the curriculum that’s already been caused by NCLB, and would damage the collaborative environment teachers need to work together to help students. Payment for performance has been tried and failed in the US and internationally, in education and other fields.

Gov. Crist repeatedly expressed legitimate concerns about the ability of new tests to accurately measure the achievement of students with special needs, worrying how this would reflect on the dedicated teachers who work with these students. He understood, thanks to input from teachers in his own family and throughout Florida, that it would be grossly unfair to judge teachers when it was completely unclear how student growth would be determined. The Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Academy of Sciences, among others, has concluded that ‘growth’ or ‘value added’ measures are not technically up for the job of basing high stakes decisions on them.

It’s disturbing that the Florida legislature could push through such an ill-conceived bill with the muscle of the Florida business groups and former Gov. Jeb Bush. And it is too bad so many pundits, including some on this blog, can support such terrible proposals and parade them as “school reform.”

On the other hand, the ground swell of popular resistance and Gov. Crist’s response to it are both signs that grass roots responses to really horrible ideas can triumph over moneyed power and influence. We’ll need to sustain and grow these grassroots to make sure NCLB is revised to become a force for improvement and not destruction.

It would not surprise our readers that I was sympathetic with the bill. And it comes as no surprise that Dennis, among others, opposed the bill.

Instead of addressing the substance of the bill and the veto, I want to spend just a few sentences talking about Charlie Crist.

He supported this bill just weeks ago. Yes, there are weak spots in the bill. I, for one, didn't like the provision that attributed to teachers who had no assessment data associated with them the overall average of the school. Further, I think there are ways of eliminating the serious shortcomings of tenure without wiping out tenure altogether.

But here's my question: where was Charlie Crist when these issues could have been worked out in the legislative process? I've seen governors in my own state and other states use the veto threat and skilled negotiating to forces fixes to bills that have problems from their perspective.

This governor did no such thing. He simply switched positions and vetoed the bill.

This is a man, regardless of your views on this issue, who does not belong in public service. I, for one, hope the voters of Florida give him the retirement he so richly deserves.

Gov. Crist's veto of SB 6 put the best interests of Florida's students above party politics. He rejected legislation that would have based virtually all school and personnel decisions on scores from standardized tests, and listened to tens of thousands of educators and other Floridians who clearly saw a better path for Florida’s schools.

Standardized tests have their place - but they cannot and should not be the basis for important decisions for which they were not designed. The idea that "if you pay more you will get more" is tempting in its simplicity, but when it comes to teaching it just doesn't hold true. Over the past few decades there have been many attempts to tie teachers' pay to their performance. It isn't as simple as comparing two boxes of cereal - which is why there is no conclusive evidence that basing pay on standardized tests actually helps students.

If we want to help teachers get better, we should use evidence of student learning, including formative tests that help educators determine which classroom practices are most effective. Then we should help our teachers master those practices.

The same silver-bullet approaches to education reform included in SB 6 are why the Administration’s plan to reform No Child Left Behind – with its emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests that continue to label students, teachers, and schools – misses the mark. Gov. Crist recognized that the key to great public schools is great teachers, and the way to keep great teachers in Florida’s classrooms is to empower them, not punish them.

As I testified on April 5 before the Education Policy Council of the Florida House of Representatives in favor of the passage of SB 6, I strongly believe that the legislation was a necessary step for Florida as it seeks to improve and modernize its education sector. It is a real setback for education reform that the legislation was vetoed but I am confident that the measure will be back up for consideration again in 2011. This was a bill that reflected mainstream education reform and was squarely aligned with principles laid out by leaders of both parties nationally, including President Obama and Secretary Duncan.

It is clear that Florida's great teachers will continue to go systematically unrewarded and that failing teachers will continue to go unnoticed. This is evidenced by the fact that 99.7% of all teachers in Florida received a "satisfactory" evaluation in 2009. At the same time, 60% of Florida's high school students, 40% of its middle school students, and 30% of its elementary school students could not read at grade level. These numbers simply do not add up. It cannot and should not be acceptable or "satisfactory" to have 60% of your high school students unable to read at grade level. SB 6 would have ended this charade by properly evaluating teachers according to the performance of their students, allowing excellent teachers to be recognized for their fine work and ineffective teachers to be left behind.

According to the latest NAEP results, Florida's African-American eighth-grade students achieve proficiency at one-third the rate of white students, with a paltry 14% scoring above proficient. Hispanic eighth-graders fared a little better, but still lagged behind white students by 12% in the same category. Tying teacher evaluations to student growth would have been an important step in the direction of dealing with this disgraceful situation.

SB 6 represented an important start towards becoming what we need to be, and we trust that Florida's legislature - and other legislatures around the country - will persist in doing the right thing for our children.

The education status quo doesn’t work in Florida or anyplace else. The veto of SB6 makes clear that children, who don’t vote, count for less than those who do.

One reason politics can triumph over policy in this specific issue is the failure of the media to help explain to the public that it is now possible to measure the effec­tiveness of class­room instruction regardless of whether the students are rich or poor or whether their families provide them with lots of help or none at all.

The public does not know of the methodological breakthrough that permits us to express student learning results in terms of growth (the academic progress an in­di­vi­dual student makes over the school year, which is best predicted by the quality of instruction) and achieve­ment (a score on a vertical scale at a single moment in time, which is best predicted by family income).

As a result, the opponents of SB6 are able to position themselves as the defenders of fairness: you can’t blame teach­ers and schools for the academic shortcomings of their students and families. If children come to school and don’t know their colors, letters or numbers, it’s not the fault of educators.

But if the public understood that the new growth metrics, on which SB6 and the school reforms of the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion are based, level the playing field so that teach­ers and schools can be held responsible for the academic progress their students made over the course of the year, policy would have a much better chance to triumph over politics.

Nor does the public understand how deeply flawed is our current system of evaluation and compensation. Yes, the new multi-measure reform systems now being introduced are not imperfect, but they are far less perfect than the evaluation and compensation systems we have lived with for decades. Few were bothered by rewarding equally great teaching and terrible teaching, failing to remove incompetent teach­ers, or paying educators based on academic degrees when the research demonstrated no impact on student learning.

One final note about tenure: we should retain tenure, which provides protection from political abuses, but not permit it to trump sophisticated evaluation systems that have a clear and incorruptible empirical component provided by the growth metric.

I agree with John, Crist made a bad bargain in an attempt to salvage his campaign. In this blog, I suggested that this action does not bode well for RttT phase 2 and is a clear indication that despite overwhelming public, philanthropic, and federal support for teacher effectiveness, the brakes have been applied by well organized and funded forces protecting the status quo. Given similar reactions in Colorado and Louisiana, it looks like converting promises to policies will be tough sledding.

Governor Crist’s veto of SB 6 squanders an opportunity to improve teacher effectiveness, win Race to the Top, and continue Florida’s legacy of being on the vanguard of education reform.

The veto was wrong for several reasons including:

Policy: One of the primary challenges with improving public schools is rewarding high performing teachers and removing ineffective ones. Florida’s system has several challenges, including rules that allow teachers to receive tenure after just three years of satisfactory evaluations. SB 6 would advance common sense reforms such as evaluating teachers based on student academic growth and rewarding great teachers with better pay. The bill would have also strengthened Florida’s chances of winning a Race to Top grant which is narrowly missed during the first round because of low points in the teacher section. SB 6 would have helped strengthen their application for the second round, a point the Commissioner Smith made on several occasions. In fact, several provisions in SB 6 were also in the Governor’s participating LEA MOU for Race to the Top.

Politics: I believe the Governor has also misread the politics of his veto decision. He now trails Marco Rubio by more than 20 points in the race for the GOP nomination for the Senate and it is difficult to see how this veto would reverse his freefall. Republicans have long sought pay for performance systems in education as far back as President Reagan (here and here). A GOP-controlled legislature AND the additional cover of a democratic President gave the Governor the chance to take on the powerful teacher unions and pass a package of historic reforms. Instead, the veto has further alienated the Governor from the Republican party, led to the resignation of his campaign chairman, and was also cited as a reason for Mitt Romney’s endorsement of Rubio. Some are suggesting that the Governor may run as an independent, but voters tend to be skeptical of politicians that put political ambition ahead of their principles. By coming out in favor of a bill, only to later veto it, the Governor appears to pandering for political support from the unions which only fuels voter cynicism.

The vetoing of SB 6 also serves as a reminder of the importance of Governors in determining education policy. While there is tremendous energy about education reform in Washington DC, there are more than 37 gubernatorial races this year, the outcome of which will have dramatic implications for education. There is a need to engage these candidates now on issues such as pay for performance, college readiness, and strong accountability systems to ensure continued momentum on creating an education system that our students deserve.