Florida's Teacher Bonuses Show Yet Another Way that Poorest Students are Being Left Behind

Last year, Florida legislators created a $44 million teacher bonus program that was supposed to reward the best teachers in a way that would not only help with the retention of top instructors, but incentivize more of our most talented individuals to enter the teaching profession. The bonuses for the Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarship Program were awarded April 1. A study of where the awards went show that students at the state's poorest schools were less than half as likely to have a teacher who qualified.

An Orlando Sentinel analysis found that there was one teacher for every 954 students in high-poverty Florida schools who received the $8,256 award this year, as opposed to one for every 398 students in affluent schools. Only 27 percent of the educators selected teach in schools that receive Title 1 funding, which denote their disproportionately impoverished student body and account for nearly half of the state's student enrollment. The problem of not getting the best teachers into the schools in which they are needed most is certainly not unique to Florida, but in spending nearly $50 million a year on the bonuses, it seems the state is missing a chance to create incentives that can have a much greater impact.

Each year, I participate in the Bradenton Kiwanis' Every Child a Reader Program in which members visit local VPK classrooms, read a story to the students and leave them with books to take home. A couple of years back, I had the chance to visit two elementary schools back to back that provided stark contrast. McNeal Elementary in Lakewood Ranch is among the most affluent in the district, while Orange Ridge Bullock–which is slated to be closed–has long been one of the very poorest.

At McNeal, every 4 year-old student could read competently. At Orange Ridge, not a single student could read at all. There are many reasons for such correlations between poverty and performance, but there is no question that the students at Orange Ridge would start kindergarten the next year at a profound disadvantage. Clearly, they would be greatly aided by having more highly-effective teachers in their classrooms. The fact that more of our best teachers end up in the schools that need them the least is one very good reason as to why we continue to struggle with an enormous achievement gap.

To be fair, the intent of the Best and Brightest program was never stated as a way to close the achievement gap or otherwise improve Title 1 schools specifically. It was marketed under the premise that by keeping the best teachers in the profession and perhaps luring higher qualified candidates who were confident they could earn more through performance incentives, it would create a rising tide to lift all academic boats. But in a state where 46 percent of the students attend Title 1 schools, where grades, test scores, graduation rates and school rankings all lag behind more affluent ones, that dynamic would seem to be an important consideration in any investment that large.

Some districts in Florida have gone out on their own to fund pay incentives at their lowest performing schools. Duval County raised nearly $40 million in 2014 to pay high-scoring teachers who remain at targeted schools for up to three years a bonus of $20,000, or a $17,000 bonus to attract top teachers from other schools to move, along with up to $20,000 a year in bonus for principals who succeed in bringing targeted schools’ grades up.

Pinellas County recently proposed an incentive program where teachers who went to targeted school, agreed to teach summer bridge and take additional training could earn $18-25,000 more per year, $5,000 of which would be a recruitment bonus and $2,000 that would be contingent upon their school's overall achievement. Rep. Erik Fresen (R-Miami), who drafted the Best and Brightest program, originally proposed that in the program's second year, bonuses would provide an extra $1,000 to winning teachers who taught at Title 1 schools, though that part didn't make it into the final budget.

There's long been a resistance, especially among teachers unions, to paying disproportionately based on the prosperity of the students at a school, but anyone who has spent any great deal of time teaching in both Title 1 and affluent schools will attest to the profound differences. Having students that are more likely to have two college-educated parents at home, a stay at home parent, not have to attend after school care, parents and caregivers for whom English is the first language, access to proper nutrition, and an engaged parent or caregiver who is not only available to assist the child with homework but further stimulate them with supplementary education and cultural experiences–all else being equal–makes the job a great deal easier than it is for teachers who don't.

What's worse, there's little to suggest that the money spent on the "best and brightest" program will do much toward meeting its stated goal. In a move that only a bunch of standardized-test-loving politicians could conceive, the award requires not only that teachers have been graded "highly-effective," but that they scored in the top 20 percent on either the ACT or SAT–back when they were in high school! What a test that is taken at 17 has to do with a 55 year-old teacher's ability now is a perplexing question, never mind that the tests themselves are not designed to measure such things or be compared broadly over such a large time span.

Even more disheartening, the Florida Department of Education compiled a list of "high impact" teachers last year who were most effective at helping students learn critical math and reading skills, using the test-score data of their students. Of the 9,642 "high impact" teachers and the 5,332 teachers who received "best and brightest" bonuses, there were only 393 teachers who were on both lists, according to the Sun's analysis. Also, think how teachers who were found "high-impact" and rated as "highly-effective" but didn't have quite high enough SAT scores back in high school felt in terms of being motivated to remain in the profession when they missed out on an extra eight grand.