THE SEMINOLE TIMES

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THE SEMINOLE TIMES

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Merit Pay Bill Strikes Controversy: Teacher merit pay bill sparks arguments between Democrats and Republicans.

Rick Scott signed the merit pay bill in 2011, which became an extremely controversial attack stirred up by the government itself. This will be established in 2014, after the subsiding of the arguments between the Democrats and Republicans. If you didn’t know what the Teacher Merit Pay Bill is, its purpose is to boost student performance. Backing up the democrats and the teachers, this ridiculous bill is unfair to teachers. It’s putting a lot of pressure on students. According to many educators, it is a meaningless bill. Also, the focus shouldn’t be on tests, but instead, it should be mainly focusing on learning. This bill is sure to cause intolerably actions for both teachers and students.

The Florida Teacher Merit Pay Bill introduces a new teacher evaluation system which relies mainly on student growth. Let’s put more focus and emphasis onto standardized testing. However, the merit pay bill has absolutely no mention of an average teacher salary. The main purpose of this bill, according to government officials, is to have a more efficient way of appointing more qualified and able teachers. The public, however, claims that this system is not effective at all. This merit pay bill has become a controversial issue acrossFlorida. While the Democrats, teachers, and the Florida Education Association are opposed to the bill, the Republicans support it. Democrats say that this bill calls for high expenses, and that the government ofFloridaalready has education funding issues.

In fact, Governor Rick Scott is hoping to reduce 1.7 billion dollars from education cost. According to Democrats, this could lead to an extremely high tax increase. Teachers claim that the new evaluation system cannot judge teacher performance and that it’s a very inefficient way of appointing and dismissing educators. On the other hand, Republicans believe that the same evaluation system will help retain top teachers, and that it can help get rid of the incapable teachers.Floridateachers are already ranked extremely low in terms of salary incomes, so this outrageous bill will cut teacher tenures and ban it for educators hired after July 2011.

This means that the teacher contracts only last for a year each. With this new rule, teachers, especially newly appointed teachers, can get fired at the end of the year without a certain cause. This is unacceptable, because they won’t be guaranteed a job the following years. This may change their life in a drastic way. Also, educators argue that their salaries can’t be determined by students’ academic performances. On many accounts this bill is worthless, and heartless. Many teachers have worked hard to gain their job, and it is gut-wrenching for them to not be guaranteed a job in the future. The Republicans ideas aren’t supported with strong evidences at all. There is no proof that this bill will prove to be effective for the school community. So, in this discussion, the make out of the Teacher Merit Bill is definitely centered upon unreasonable ideas and that it is further loweringFloridaeducator’s income, therefore it should be dismissed.