Andy Ford has been president of the Florida Education Association teachers union through a tumultuous time that has included legal and legislative battles about merit pay for teachers and how they’re evaluated. This year, for the second year in a row, the union defeated a bill (SB 862) that would have let parents petition for plans to turn around failing schools, with options to include turning them into charter schools run by for-profit management companies — the so-called “parent trigger” legislation.
Last week, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill (SB 1664) aimed at requiring teacher evaluations to be based on students they actually teach. That change came after a union-led fight against a measure that passed in 2011 to link teacher pay and evaluations to student performance. While the union welcomed SB 1664, it plans to continue a lawsuit against the 2011 measure because of what it sees as remaining problems in the evaluation system.
Ford represents more than 140,000 employees of public schools, colleges and universities. He has taught in a Catholic school in Trenton, N.J., and in public elementary schools in Jacksonville, where he was president of Duval Teachers United.
The News Service of Florida has five questions for Andy Ford:
Q: Teachers got some love from the governor and Legislature this year. Was it enough?
FORD: It was a very good session. Still a long way to go. When you look at funding, yes, Gov. Scott did provide more funding, but we’re still at a level that’s lower than when he was first elected. So we do have some ground to make up. And school employees’ salaries are still well below the national average, and they continue to decline.
Q: The parent trigger bill ended in victory for the FEA. Talk about the role parents played.
FORD: Well, the defeat of parent trigger the second time around was just as good. We wish we didn’t have to have the fight.
Parents in Florida really look at this as: It’s just a scam. It has nothing to do with parent empowerment and getting parents more involved. It’s all about charter companies and running away from your neighborhood schools. The parents in Florida — in organizations and just singularly — are looking at trying to improve neighborhood schools and not bring outsiders, in terms of a corporation, to come in and run a school that probably they won’t have any say in at all.
(Of course this is going to be back next year.) We always anticipate that when former Gov. Bush doesn’t get his way, he just keeps coming back until he can try and get it. So we’ll be ready for it, and I’m sure the parents will, too. They played a huge role in defeating this.
Q: Do you think most Floridians support the FEA’s positions or support what are called reforms, such as parent trigger?
FORD: Our polling shows — and this is the polling of Florida voters — it shows that most voters support their public schools, they believe that teachers and other school employees are underpaid, they lack the respect that they deserve, and that Florida is really headed in the wrong direction.
They do not support what we are doing with the charters and giving away our schools and the authority of the local community to run those schools.
So hopefully, someday when the voters go to the polls, they’ll actually look at the education policy that the candidates are offering and come up with something different, because what they say on a poll is different from the way they’ve been voting.
Q: Will the FEA play a role in next year’s gubernatorial election? Could Scott be moving closer to your positions because he’s reading the same polls?
FORD: Well, it’s still too early to tell. There’s a lot of candidates rumored to get into the race. There’s one Democrat now and one Republican. We’ll evaluate all the announced candidates in the next several months and support the one that really supports neighborhood schools, students and school employees. And we’ll see how it goes. But it’s still too early.
I think where we are is — coming out of the legislative session — the governor took a bounce on the education piece, Medicaid was still not dealt with. There are other issues that weren’t dealt with. And we need to just see how it goes. It’s 17 months from the election, I believe, and 17 months in the world of politics is a lifetime.
I think, back in the session, that the governor did look at probably the same polling results that we had, of what voters think — which is different than what legislators believe because they run in different districts. The governor has to run statewide, where a legislator runs in a specific geographical area, which does tend to allow them to be a little more radical in their approach than what the governor needs to be. And I think the governor moved a little to the center in order to be able to get his poll numbers to bounce up.
Q: How do you see the state’s readiness for Common Core?
FORD: I think school districts are preparing for Common Core as best they can. We’re moving very rapidly. The standards are a very good idea, and we should not put in a system that’s going to destroy people from believing in the Common Core standards.
I think we’re moving too quickly. I think the consequences that they’re putting in place — if they do hold to those — are going to derail the train, which will be a shame because these are the best standards we’ve seen in years. There’s an over-reliance on testing, and hopefully we’re going to be able to reel some of that back in before it all gets implemented. Otherwise people are going to lose confidence in this system, just like they lost confidence in the Sunshine State standards and the FCAT. It’s just too many consequences, too quick, and not building the time for teachers to be able to retool their whole way of doing instruction. And Common Core is a good thing if we can get over the obstacles and we don’t hurt it.
The (Florida Department of Education) really has the ability of destroying this if they’re not careful.
