2011 Legislative Agenda
2011 Legislative Priorities
- Ensuring quality teachers for all Sunshine State students
- Transforming education with technology
- Empowering parents and students with more choices
- Funding student achievement
Ensuring quality teachers for all Sunshine State students
SB 736 – Passed
With research confirming the importance of effective teaching in determining a child’s success in school, Florida has taken a bold step to brighten every student’s future. Legislation passed this year modernizes the teaching profession by ensuring a quality teacher for every student and rewarding Florida’s outstanding educators.
Highlights of the legislation:
- Requires student progress to comprise at least half of a teacher’s or principal’s evaluation.
- Expands the evaluation scale to four meaningful levels of performance: highly effective, effective, needs improvement and unsatisfactory.
- Requires higher salaries for Florida’s effective teachers, teachers of high-demand subjects and teachers in high-poverty or low-performing schools.
- Ends tenure for all teachers hired after July 1, 2011 and places new teachers on annual contracts, requiring schools to consider student performance, not seniority, when determining layoffs.
- Ensures parents are notified if their child is placed in a classroom with a consistently ineffective teacher.
Transforming education with technology
HB 7197 –Passed
21st century technology has the power to revolutionize education by customizing and personalizing courses to meet each child’s learning style and pace. This groundbreaking legislation gives every student – from rural communities to inner cities – access to quality educational content and rigorous courses tailored to meet their unique needs and interests.
Highlights of the legislation:
- Allows any public school student to take any virtual course offered by another district if the course is not offered in their home district.
- Requires districts to provide part-time and full-time online learning opportunities for students in grades K – 12.
- Allows schools to offer blended learning (traditional face-toface instruction combined with digital instruction).
- Requires high school students to take one digital course to graduate from high school.
- Requires state exams to be administered online by 2014-15.
- Allows school districts to certify qualified individuals to teach virtual courses.
Empowering parents and students with more choices
A key part of Florida’s successful reform package is its strong emphasis on educational choice. The Sunshine State proudly offers its families one of the largest arrays of educational choice in the nation. By giving parents the financial freedom to select the best educational environment for their child, our state is closing the achievement gap and preparing Florida’s students for success beyond the classroom.
SB 1546 –Passed
Since Florida’s first charter school opened in 1996, parents and students have embraced this option to choose a customized, quality public education. Today, Florida’s 400+ charter schools are working hard to prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed. Legislation passed this year recognizes Florida’s best charter schools and removes unnecessary barriers, allowing these top schools to meet the growing demand of parents seeking quality educational choices in public education.
Highlights of the legislation:
- Rewards high performing charter schools and systems with the ability to increase enrollment, expand to more grades, open more schools and receive a longer charter term.
SB 1550 / HB 1225
Providing the best education for every child does not mean providing the same education for every child. These bills sought to provide all parents with the financial freedom to choose the right school for their child through Education Savings Accounts.
Highlights of the legislation:
- Would have established Education Savings Accounts – a special account funded by the state – that parents could use to send their student to the school of their choice – public, charter, private or virtual.
- Would also have empowered parents to invest in their students’ college education by using Education Savings Account funds to open Prepaid College Plans or similar 529 plans, cover textbook costs for dual enrollment courses or dual enroll at an ICUF institution.
HB 1331 – Passed
Opportunity Scholarships allow parents of students in failing public schools to attend a better performing public school of their choice. Legislation passed this year expands the definition of a “failing school” to offer more students trapped in low-performing schools with a lifeline to a quality education.
HB 1329 – Passed
The McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities empowers disabled students with the opportunity to receive a quality education in the school of their choice – the school equipped to meet their needs. This year, the Legislature expanded McKay Scholarships to serve students with 504 accommodation plans.
Funding student achievement - investing in programs to incentivize and reward student learning
The Legislature faced one of the toughest budget years in recent history. The constitutional requirement to produce a balanced budget made spending reductions necessary, yet despite this, our lawmakers continued Florida’s historic investment in proven reform programs by maintaining strong funding for high quality assessments, recognition for schools that earn good grades, reading programs, charter schools and bonuses for effective Advanced Placement teachers.