Our Observation

Tallahassee has been at odds with education for some time, as economic realities have forced the state government to show its priorities in how it doles out meager funding.

Ask any music, art or physical education teacher how they feel about their job security and you're not likely to see their answer come with a smile. With Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test scores determining how much funding schools receive, non-core subjects that aren't focused on by the test have lost funding as lean budgets shift toward core classes. Non-core subjects have become the educational albatross of our time, based solely on their inability to generate funding for schools.

Many teachers said that the recently proposed education reforms — the first of their kind in the country — would make education even more standardized test-focused.

Teachers would receive raises based on students' continuously improving test scores in specific areas. The downside — if their students' scores didn't improve in four out of every five years, that teacher could lose their certification, an unfair expectation given outside influences such as poor parenting and bad socioeconomic environments. Good teachers could be fired due to factors out of their control, they said.

As teachers lined the sidewalk in front of the state capitol in the past month, they shouted slogans about the end result of passing the so-called merit pay bill — it would hurt the students, they said. They could only hope that lawmakers would listen.

But teachers and an increasingly skeptical Gov. Charlie Crist said that legislators hadn't listened, pushing through a bill with little teacher input.

And educators and local governments who had little input in shaping the bill would reject it at their own peril. Those school districts that didn't adopt merit pay structures would lose out on $900 million in as yet unsecured federal education funding.

The lesson from lawmakers was far simpler than that taught in already stressed classrooms: Do as we say, or do without.

But with the wave of a hand, Crist ended the reform fight and became a folk hero to teachers on April 15. And his veto of the reforms came with a parting piece of advice to Republican lawmakers: Next time, listen to the teachers.