You chastise others for stating opinion as fact shortly after stating that your children had the "BEST" teachers in the district. Facts are determined based upon empirical data. What empirical data are you using to determine that your children's teachers were the "BEST"? Perhaps the empirical standards you use could be incorporated into teacher evaluations and solve the debate altogether. I asked the question yesterday : are there any teachers in the Walton County system who have secured national certification? If the response is ...that doesn't matter....that is a valid opinion (not fact) and probably implies that none have met the standard and that there is no system in place to encourage it. Regarding your comment about voting...I started this thread and discussed it in my first post. Voting for change has been a constant theme from most of the posters. Glad to see you agree.
My children did have national board certified teachers, and teachers who obviously had outstanding teacher evaluations since they are all still employed in this district (if they made the choice to remain living in this district). Teachers do not look at National board certification as a huge incentive anymore due to the cost of renewal. Below you will see the cost and incentive for teachers....please note that South Walton schools are not schools with high needs/low performing.
Per FLDOE: The state funded fee subsidy was eliminated by the Florida Legislature during their fall 2008 session. For the next application cycle, only federal funds allocated to the state of Florida will be used for new candidates. These limited funds have been allocated to each district based on its teacher population and will be assigned only to teachers who teach in high needs/low performing schools within the district. Each eligible candidate receives a fee subsidy equal to 50% ($1,250) of the NBPTS application fee. The candidate is responsible for paying the remaining portion of the certification fee and the non-refundable $65 application processing fee. To receive a fee subsidy, you must apply between June 1st and November 30, 2011.
Through the amended Dale Hickam Excellent Teaching Program Act, legislation provides teachers, who achieve National Board Certification, up to a 10% annual bonus for 10 years, and an additional 10% to those who agree in writing to provide the equivalent of 12 work days of mentoring and related services to public school teachers within the state who do not hold NBPTS certification. Note: The mentoring bonus will not be funded by the state for the upcoming 08-09 fiscal cycle.
Hope this information helps you see why many teachers in Walton county most likely have decided not to get the certification. They have not had raises in over 3 years and would have to pay full price for the certification. The cost of living has went up yet, they still make the same base pay. Very sad.
School Accountability Report can be found here: http://schoolgrades.fldoe.org/default.asp
Teachers must be doing something right.
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