Pushback on Senator Wise's Efforts to Circumvent Florida's Legal Obligations

From the Florida Sunshine State TESOL Advocacy E-Group:

Senator Wise has introduced CS/SB1680 to legislate an ambitious pilot program for reading teachers who serve ESOL students. The proposal reflects a concrete action plan and seems to reflect an understanding that data should be gathered upon which to base decisions. However, this hastily crafted bill falls far short of what is needed and asks for what is currently impossible.

1) According the staff analysis, the DOE would have to find resources within its budget to meet the legislative requirements. In other words, it is an unfunded mandate. The implementation requires data and documentation efforts from participating school districts that would also be unfunded. The analysis states that these should not result in "very much" fiscal impact.

In a time of extraordinary budgetary squeeze, the proposal is amazing. It supposes the DOE has funding and resources available to complete the requirements and cannot even estimate what the costs would be. The school districts all across the state are scrambling to operate with less and less. To ask them to divert a single penny and add even a single burden to already extended resources reflect a disconnect with the current state of affairs.

2) As the bill reads, a rapid timeline applies. Beginning 2009, the DOE would have to identify, find funds for, and convene a team of experts, complete a review of existing professional development standards, design courses, produce training materials, train trainers, incorporate input from the field, identify participating districts, flag students, train teachers, and begin implementation in the 2009-2010 school year. That means training begins in August 2009. How will a quality program be the outcome with such an unfunded supersonic timeline? This plan, as written, establishes a recipe for failure.

3) The proposed pilot is incomplete as it fails to evaluate all paths leading to authorization for assignments in reading and ESOL. Its narrow focus leaves much important work undone. The level of complexity is not fully addressed for the benefit of teachers and students. Let us get it done right the first time. We seem to have a lot of time to do things incorrectly, and no time to get it right.

4) The proposed pilot includes an important evaluation component. That's a good thing. However, the proposed evaluation plan is incomplete and far too narrow to provide meaningful quantitative and qualitative data to make meaningful recommendations. This plan does not meet the basic standards for professional development evaluation making it a waste of time and a waste of scarce education funds.

The bill requires that the DOE analyze the data and then make a recommendation. To ensure impartiality and objectivity, no state agency should be in charge of evaluating this program. The evaluation of data should be conducted by a non-governmental, independent and professionally recognized evaluator. In light of the controversy that has swirled over the issue for the last three years, an independent evaluator is needed to achieve a sense of fair accountability.

4) And finally, this is the third bill Senator Wise has sponsored on this issue. The first was vetoed and the second died. This bill represents a view that does not match Florida's legal obligations and according to the Staff Analysis, is not consistent with the Department of Education interpretation of the same.

I will join efforts to oppose yet another ill-conceived plan that brings Florida's ELLs no closer to highly qualified reading teachers. I am confident our state leaders will take these views into consideration and make short shrift of this third and equally misguided effort. The majority of our legislators, like Florida's voters, want all our children to learn to read in English and teachers prepared to teach all our students to read in English. To date, two county commissions and several municipalities have passed ESOL resolutions regarding professional development representing some four million constituents reflecting this same expectation.