Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.

Here is a commentary by Leo Cruz, a candidate for the State House District 33 seat.

Read the commentary and post a comment of your own on seminolechronicle.com.
http://www.seminolechronicle.com/vnews/dis...1/4bb3c7091d07f

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Senate Bill 6 unfair to Florida educators
March 31, 2010

These days, national issues and events in Washington tend to dominate the news. It can take a serious effort to follow the happenings in Tallahassee, but right now this year's session is in full swing. There are some critical matters before the legislature that are alarming and need greater awareness and participation from the public.

Senate Bill 6 seeks to radically change education by subjecting our kids' teachers to a hodgepodge of experimental salary manipulations based on hated and anxiety-producing high-stakes test results. These tests would include a new end-of-year exam, presumably because the legislators believe it would be an excellent measure of teacher performance - since all students are at their sharpest a few days before summer break, right?

Aside from increasing the pressure on schools to further slash electives and all activities that do not "teach for the test," Senate Bill 6 is a prescription for shoving out the door the last of our good science and technology teachers and narrowing the cognitive experiences of our children in this complex and competitive 21st Century world. It's as if we measured the quality of a NASCAR crew chief by the success of the driver alone.

Teachers need both unbiased peer review and incentives to enhance their skills, but they should not be punished because parents - if they're even present - fail to turn off the video games and music players. And Senate Bill 6 does nothing to increase overall pay or resources. It just gives the school districts another unfunded mandate tied to a threat of more cutbacks.

Tallahassee is driven by hypocritical ideologues who say "no" to Federal assistance while promoting a tax system deeply skewed to favoring well-connected interests. They complain that incentives to innovative industries such as green energy and sustainable resource management would be "picking winners and losers," while doling out tax exemptions to yachts and stadium skyboxes.

Lazy, poor and dumb is no way to run a state. Lazy policies that bring transient low-wage jobs and downscale communities, while sprinting to be the national winner of the lowest per capita education spending race is what we have done for decades now, and it's high time that changed. We need to retain jobs in the space and defense industries that are being lost, and the best way to do that is to channel capital to small, cutting-edge technology companies like those in the business incubator and Research Park near UCF. Such small businesses generate many more good jobs per dollar than the corporate welfare cronies of state legislators, and the cash flow from those jobs ripples through the local economy much faster.

Leo Cruz

Candidate, State House District 33