Florida Creates New Restricted Classical Teaching certification, Bypassing Subject Matter Mastery, etc.
Florida’s Classical Charter Schools Now Able To Check a Box And Certify any New Hire to Teach Calculus, Italian and Physics.
1012.54 Purpose of instructional personnel certification.—It is the intent of the Legislature that school personnel certified in this state possess the credentials, knowledge, and skills necessary to allow the opportunity for a high-quality education in the public schools. The purpose of school personnel certification is to protect the educational interests of students, parents, and the public at large by assuring that teachers in this state are professionally qualified. In fulfillment of its duty to the citizens of this state, the Legislature has established certification requirements to assure that educational personnel in public schools possess appropriate skills in reading, writing, and mathematics, and adequate pedagogical knowledge, including the use of technology to enhance student learning, and relevant subject matter competence so as to demonstrate an acceptable level of professional performance.
In Florida, according f.s. 1012.54, “it is the intent of the Legislature that school personnel certified in this state possess the credentials, knowledge, and skills necessary to allow the opportunity for a high-quality education in the public schools.” When a teacher is assigned to teach a class with subject matter that is outside the field in which the teacher is certified, the parents of all students in the class are notified in writing that their child’s teacher is “out-of-field” and those parents may request their child be reassigned to an “in-field” classroom teacher. In addition, school districts must publicly post a list of all “out-of-field” teachers on their website. In 2016, then Representative Manny Diaz, Jr. passed HB7029, with the above language, which ensured public school parents were informed whether their child’s teacher had the “relevant subject matter competence so as to demonstrate an acceptable level of professional performance.”
That was then. This is now.
In April 2022, the Oseola County School Board voted to terminate its contract with the American Classical Charter Academy in part due to “deteriorating financial conditions reaching a point of emergency.” The academy appealed the termination to the state where their appeal was denied. The administrative law judge in Talahassee upheld the School Board’s decision to terminate the charter noting only 10 of the charter’s 28 teachers were certified. The school, which opened in 2019, informed its families it was closing just days before the start of the 2022-23 school year.
As I wrote back in February 2024, Classical Charter schools are seen as part of a political effort to advance conservatism and many of Florida’s Classical Charter Schools have connections to the politically powerful (including Florida’s current Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz Jr. and former Commissioner, Richard Corcoran).
During Florida’s 2024 legislative session (perhaps coincidentally?), lawmakers created a watered down version of a professional teaching credential that would only be valid at classical schools. HB1285 required the State Board of Education (FLBOE) to adopt rules for the issuance of a special Classical Education teaching certificate which would not require the demonstration mastery of general knowledge, subject area knowledge, or professional preparation and education competence required by the standard teaching certificate. Instead, teachers could ‘demonstrate competency” through the classical model of professional learning provided by the school and “and any other criteria established by the DOE.” [Spoiler alert: there were No other criteria established by the DOE.] With this new law, moving forward, all classical charter schools will be able to claim they have 100% state certified teachers and none of them are “out-of-field.”
For the record, the Florida Department of Education will insist their new “Restricted Classical Education Teaching certificate” is not watered down but merely the expansion of “choice” to teacher certification “pathways.” I disagree, but more on that in a bit.
In the 2023-24 school year, 17 Classical Charter schools recieved school grades in Florida. Seventy percent (70%) of those schools recieved A or B grades (compared to 60% of Florida’s schools overall) but 12% recieved D or F grades (compared to 3% of Florida’s Schools overall). Some of these schools perform very well; others, not so well.
In July, Florida’s State Board of Education (FLBOE) approved the rules (Rule 6A-4004) for the issuance of the classical education teaching certificate during a board meeting that coincided with the state Teacher of the Year Gala. You can watch the meeting here.
Rule 6A-4004 replaces the standard teaching certificate requirements for demonstration mastery of general knowledge, subject area knowledge, and professional preparation and education competence with
- A school intends to hire or has hired the applicant for a position at their classical school and
- “The school is constituted, practices, and provides professional learning to its educational staff in a classical school model that emphasizes the development of students in the principles of moral character and civic virtue through a well-rounded education in the liberal arts and sciences that is based on the classical trivium stages of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.” (Florida’s statutory definition of a classical school)
The application for issuance of the new certification is literally the check of a box.
When Senior Chancellor Paul Burns presented the rule in July, FLBOE member Esther Byrd, whose daughter attends a classical school and is “thrilled to death with classical education,” said “I love that this certification is being created.” She asked:
“I’ve heard a little bit of chirping [perhaps teachers were emailing her?] about this being a reduction in standards or somehow bringing down a lower standard than your typical teacher certificate. Why is that not true?”
Chancellor Burns told her this rule was simply offering more choice in pathways to teacher certification and “this pathway, this new classical education certificate, like any other pathway, will be a great pathway in schools.” It was noted that classical school models would provide that professional learning “like all of our other teachers receive across the state of Florida.” Board Chair Gibson repeated “I think this is just another example of essentially us removing the red tape and the barriers for people to enter into the teaching profession.” [Of course, the red tape and barriers, in this instance, are only being removed for a specific type of charter schools.]
During public comment, two teachers spoke out against the new restricted certification. One emphasized the importance of teachers being able to demonstrate subject matter knowledge of the courses they were teaching and felt this amounted to a lowering of the bar for teachers while educators were trying to raise expectations for students. The second speaker felt the rule would create a double standard and “circumvent the general standard of entry for the profession.” Again, Chancellor Burns insisted this was not a lowering of standards, just the creation of an alternate pathway (which did not require mastery of general knowledge or the mastery of professional preparation or the mastery of subject area knowledge) for this new certification. Chair Gibson said he thought the new rule was “great” and echoed “we’re not lowering the bar whatsoever.” He said classical schools are very popular and believed we would see a growth of such schools because “a lot of parents just want to get back to the basics.” The rule was approved unanimously.
On Tuesday, October 15th, the FLBOE met in Tallahassee, where they approved a rule updating the Course Code Directory for the 2024-2025 school year to include the new restricted classical education teaching certification. Freed from the restictions of requiring mastery of subject matter, etc., teachers with the new “Restricted Classical Education Teaching Certificate” were now eligible to teach over 1,400 different courses, everything from Calculus to Physics to Chinese, Italian or Latin – essentially every thing but Drivers Training, Exceptional Student Education (ESE), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and Athletic Coaching.
Dr. Sunny Chancy, Deputy Chancellor for Educator Quality, presented the new rule, telling the board, “With the approval of this rule today, classical schools will continue to have flexibility as they recruit educators and make course assignments for students and teachers” (because there will be no restrictions at all). Chair Gibson was delighted “that prospective teachers can learn from a classical school how to teach classical education without being hampered by some of the burdensome requirements that wouldn’t necessarily apply to a classical teaching method” (like understanding Calculus or being able to speak French…).
During public comment, two representatives of the Florida Education Association (the teacher’s union) spoke. The first commenter felt, in order to make an informed choice, parents at classical charter schools deserved information about the qualifications and credentials of their children’s teachers and asked that such parents be notified when their child’s teacher held a restricted license that did not require demonstration of subject area mastery or any specific training. The second speaker said every parent wants to have “caring, professionally trained content area experts teaching their children. For years now, Florida has compelled schools to make parents aware when that is not the case.” He claimed this rule moves in the wrong direction, shielding parents in classical charters, from “knowing whether or not their teacher actually understands what they are teaching.” He pointed out the irony that Commissioner Diaz had been the representative who passed the bill (in 2016) ensuring public school parents had that information. He called the new rule “a gift” to classical charter schools, saying “the gift comes at the price of the loss of transparency to parents, and the gift comes at a loss of qualified teachers for students.”
Commissioner Diaz called the comments “patently false,” saying “this notion that schools have to be run by the government, I think, again, has been proven erroneous over and over again.” He said no parent is forced into a classical model, parents seeking a classical program for their students have their eyes wide open and understand that this is a different model and things like logic, rhetoric and Latin are being taught. He said “oftentimes these schools are looking for individuals to teach these subjects, it becomes a niche situation.” In the future, these schools will be able to claim these “niche individuals” as certified teachers.
The rule was passed enthusiastically and unanimously.
In case it matters. Last year, in Florida, 7,268 students took Latin, almost 60% were in district managed public schools – like Escambia High School in Pensacola or Richards High School in Tallahassee – in courses taught by teachers certified as subject matter experts.
As evidenced by f.s. 1012.54 : Purpose of instructional personnel certification, Florida once was a place that valued importance of having teachers with the credentials, knowledge, and skills necessary for a high-quality education system. Florida used to understand that appropriate certification of school personnel would protect the educational interests of students, parents, and the public at large by assuring that its teachers were professionally qualified. Establishing such certification requirements was considered the Legislature’s duty to the citizens of the state.
That was then. This is now.