Florida school district superintendent weighs bill to relax teacher requirements

With just a few months left of this school year, the Hillsborough County School District is short of about 400 teachers.

“We need help right now,” Hillsborough County School Principal Addison Davis said.

But the head of the state’s third-largest school district is hopeful that Florida’s decades-long teacher shortage crisis could lead to a narrowing of the teacher gap.

This is in part because of a new bill that proposes changes to what is required to become certified as a teacher in the state.

School Voucher Expansion Bill (includes a provision that would allow teachers and candidates to waive the controversial general knowledge exam.

Also known as the GK exam, this is a required test that investigative journalist Cathy Lagrone and photographer Matthew Apthorpe have spent years studying.

In 2017, Lagrone and Apthorp found that changes to test state led to unprecedented failures in the test.

Their series of reports questioned the credibility and relevance of the exam, as they also found that test failures forced counties to lay off over a thousand teachers in one summer alone.

Under a recently filed bill, if a teacher is deemed effective or highly effective for two years and can pass a test equivalent to the general knowledge test, the GK exam is not required.

“Score alone does not determine how effective a person can be in a classroom,” explained Superintendent Davis, whose district also had to fire effective teachers who did what was required of them in the classroom but could not pass the state test.

“These are some of our greatest educators. But maybe they are not the best raters or they may have gotten bogged down in the last few years, we should give them a chance,” he said.

When asked if the proposed changes lower teacher requirements in Florida, Davis replied, “Absolutely not. I have a lot of confidence in our grading system. I have a lot of confidence in our administrators,” he said.

But Florida Democratic Senator Shevrin Jones, a former Florida teacher and the first legislator we spoke with after our 2017 investigation, expressed concern that the bill could make it too easy to get a seat at the front of the class.

“The concern that I have focused on is that we will not be doing any certification testing at all. I don’t think it makes sense for us,” Jones said.

The bill still requires teachers to take exams in the subject they teach. It would also give them more time to take these exams by extending the temporary teaching certificates for teachers from three to five years.

In a recent interview, Republican Senator Corey Simon, who introduced the bill, clarified his intentions.

“We have very good teachers and we want these very good teachers to stay in the classroom and give them the time they need to hone their skills,” he said recently.

“This is a step in the right direction,” added the principal of the Hillsborough District School.

But will this change the situation with the shortage of teachers in Florida?

“We’ll see, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Superintendent Davis said.

SB 202 will go to the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.