So much, thanks to Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto, for the top-down, heavy-handed Senate Bill 6. But the issues of teacher tenure, pay and overall accountability are still alive and, well, divisive and will return.
Whatever the form, here’s hoping that a Tallahassee consensus can rally around — or at least accept — a few fundamental principles. To wit:
*Tenure should change because teaching can’t be a sinecure for those who are not very good at teaching kids. Being boring, irrelevant and ineffective should be a fire-able offense.
*Any tenure and pay changes should be premised on teacher input — and not overly dependent on tests that are too vulnerable to variables that skew results.
*Let’s not evaluate teachers as if they were foremen responsible for the widget output of generic shift workers. Schools aren’t learning factories. Indeed, many are de facto, one-stop social agencies for whoever and whatever comes coursing through their portals.