About 500 teachers from all over Florida gathered in Miami Beach Sunday for NBC’s Education Nation, a chance to talk about what worries them in the classroom and in the school system.
The town hall meeting was televised on NBC 6 with NBC News Correspondent Rehema Ellis as the moderator.
"What I hear from this is a lot of optimism in this audience about the potential for children. Am I right?” Ellis asked the audience.
The goal this year was to highlight advances, improvements and accomplishments in Florida's school system.
It also delved into the challenges such as the latest state test results, how more than half of community college freshmen need remediation and how more than one in five Florida kids live in poverty.
“They need to stop the evaluation on teachers and spending so many millions on the evaluations and passing all these laws and tying student performances to teacher salaries. They need to put the money in the classrooms,” said Sara Cuaresma, a biology teacher.
Special education teacher Karla Mats also voiced her concern, “There are goals we set and they meet those goals. and then they get tested and they get this label that they are a c student even though they have worked hard all year to meet those goals.”
She continued, “And now you're labeling a community too because you're pretty much telling that community that they are a C school, a C community and that affects even real estate prices, businesses in the area. So I really think it's detrimental to label.”
