ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — It might seem ironic coming from educators, but the St. Johns County School District wants to avoid a test.
It’s called the General Knowledge Test, one of the ways for teachers to become certified and recertified through the Florida Department of Education. Florida law requires teachers to become recertified every five years, but the school district thinks the test is unnecessary.
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“It’s just a burden, it’s one more thing to put on our teachers’ plates,” School Board member Kelly Barerra said during Tuesday’s board meeting.
The General Knowledge Test is a way for the Florida Department of Education to check whether teachers are qualified by making sure they understand how to teach the basics of subjects like English, reading, writing, and math. The school district wants to do away with it both as a way for new teachers to become certified and veteran teachers to stay certified.
“Our educators who have been around for 10-15 years, they already know how to teach,” Dr. Brennan Asplen, deputy superintendent of operations for the school district, said. “Why continue to burden them with the test?”
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District leaders recently told Action News Jax that the school district is continuing to fight the inner battle of keeping and hiring teachers, particularly related to pay concerns. But Asplen said taking away a requirement like the General Knowledge Test could be a way to keep teachers around by lightening their load.
“We want to make things less burdensome and overwhelming, especially for our new folks, so that they stick around,” Asplen said.
The district’s push to ditch the test is part of its yearly “legislative platform,” a to-do list, of sorts, to hand off to state lawmakers in hopes they will consider making some of the changes the district wants for Florida’s schools.
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Getting rid of the test as a requirement for teachers is one of the district’s top priorities for lawmakers to consider this year.
“This is something that prevents a lot of teachers from advancing on,” Logan Lowery, director for policy and government relations with the school district, said. “There’s no need to take it over and over again.”
The school district will send some of its leaders to Tallahassee to share its requests with state lawmakers once they start their session again. Lawmakers are set to begin their session at the start of March.
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