Florida Teachers Push Back on New Legislation

This from the Huffington Post:

The heavily Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has been hard at work for the last few weeks drafting draconian legislation that would strip teachers of tenure, negate their advanced degrees and length of service for salary consideration and install a merit pay system that would reward results based on test scores rather that how well they teach.

The legislation would also accept new teachers with less than a college education as long as they follow the guidelines of the Florida Dept. of Education and obtain a Bachelor's degree from an accredited university or a FDE approved non-accredited school, thereby lowering the standards for teacher certification. If this kind of thinking were to be applied to the medical profession, the kid flipping burgers today could possibly be taking out your appendix in three years without a medical degree or board certification in surgery.

At best it's a ludicrous situation. If it's not okay for other professionals, why is it okay for teachers?

In addition, under this new legislation School Boards would have to comply or risk losing five percent of their funding which would have to be augmented by a property tax assessment. Basically, SR 6 and its companion HR 7189 hold teachers hostage to teaching to the test and reduce School Boards to being merely ATMs....