N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's approval this month of new teacher tenure legislation should be applauded -- especially by student from poor backgrounds.
I was once that student -- a poor daughter of migrant farm workers. A history teacher named Mr. DiMarzio changed my life.
Gov. Christie's tenure reform legislation makes it more possible for the next generation of Mr. DiMarzios to reach the most challenging student populations.
Will it work? Wait and see.
It will take one extra year for a teacher to be eligible for tenure, but, as Gov. Christie said: "Good teachers will do very well under this system."
Good teaching talks. Poor teaching walks.
Expecations will be raised -- and teachers will need to rise to the occasion.
In a poor neighborhood, your typical student has more on her mind than school -- and often times the idea of going to college is pre-empted by the notion of simply getting through the day.
There is the constant threat of violence, the possibility of an unstable home life and other issues that students from affluent backgrounds just don't have to deal with.
A good teacher recognizes the challenges and responds by teaching with passion and compassion. Consider the research that shows that a child's learning will be very different at the end of the school year if she has the best teacher in her grade rather than the worst.
After earning tenure, a teacher will continue to have an incentive to teach well -- a teacher can lose tenure protections and face being fired by performing poorly in evaluations.
No teacher is safe -- nor should they be.
Teacher accountability works. The LEAP Academy University Charter School in Camden -- a school I founded -- has been the only union school in the state to offer teachers merit pay, not tenure.
We have achieved 100 percent graduation from our high school -- no dropouts. We have also placed all of our graduates into college -- eight years in a row.
A poor student is just as entitled to an education that prepares them for the demands of college as an affluent student. Gov. Christie's new law makes this possible.
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Read what Jim Collins has to say about the social sector:
http://www.jimcollins.com/books/g2g-ss.html
It is time for teachers, and unions, to police their own ranks, and to aid in the process of sending those who who not be teaching to find another occupation. Protect those who are incompetent, abusive, or even just marginal, and you will be lumped together with them in the public view. Indeed, that is exactly what is happening. You protect them, you identify with them, you are them.
I recently found this story-http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html
It is written by a Teach for America alumi, and although I am not a fan of TFA, it details the lack of support faced by a teacher and the struggles he faces (esp. being ill-prepared and undertrained). Should this teacher be fired from his job? How did the biases and politics he faced by the parents and the administration impact his job performance?
Bad teachers can and do get fired. Every single school year. In every state. "Tenure" is actually "due process"; all it means is that when a teacher is dismissed, there is a process to make sure she wasn't let go because the principal wanted to hire his wife's cousin instead, or because a school board member didn't like who she voted for in the last election, or because she turned down several invitations to an "intimate dinner" with the head of her department.
If you're going to attack the people who teach our children, I suggest you at least keep yourself informed and aware. Hopefully that's not too much to ask.
Let's look at this, because this makes clear that the author doesn't know what she's talking about: "After earning tenure, a teacher will continue to have an incentive to teach well -- a teacher can lose tenure protections and face being fired by performing poorly in evaluations."
A teacher WITH tenure faces being fired for poor performance. Tenure doesn't mean a job for life; it means that a teacher can't be fired as long as the teacher is doing a good job. A teacher who can lose tenure can be fired even with excellent performance. If, for instance, a teacher frequently advocates for what's best for children, in defiance of an incompetent administrator, tenure protects that teacher so long as that teacher is competent. What Christie has apparently proposed is providing a way to fire that teacher. That's not good for students.
So go ahead! Drink the Charter Kool-Aid and sign up for financial mismanagement, athletic fraud, a lottery system that's not followed if you're the parent of a regular kid, a scary turnover rate of teachers of your children and lowered test scores. Because hey, it's a charter. It must be better, right?
This is the same LEAP that lost in court to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association for:
1. allowed an 11th grade star basketball player to enroll using someone other than his parent as a guardian despite no prior existence of a close tie. And she was the mother of another LEAP basketball player.
2. Allowed the same student to skip from Spot #20 to Spot #1 on the waiting list (how's that lottery work again?)
3. The student was academically ineligible to play.
4. Allowed a 12th grade student, also a star basketball player, to enroll despite no real claim of his alleged guardian to the child and who moved from Spot#9 to Spot #1 on the waiting list.
5. LEAP Basketball had a good season! Although the court found that less than half of them resided in the Camden area LEAP was supposed to serve.
6. LEAP's chief administrator didn't show up to the court hearing.
7. Her replacement in the hearing provided contradictory evidence about waiting list and enrollment procedures.
8. And so on.. Full document here: http://www.state.nj.us/education/legal/commissioner/2007/apr/120-07.pdf
This is the same LEAP that shows the following stats:
2007 Graduation Statistics:
Percent of regular students graduated passed HSPA: 61.9%
State average from 331 schools: 87.9%
What are the numbers for students expelled or refused entrance in the first place.
In what way do they then have tenure?
If you aren't a banker or someone with the money needed to hire a legislator to write a law for you, then somebody with money will be writing a law to tie your hands and meddle with your workplace. That, unfortunately, has become SOP.
We offer merit pay no tenure-teachers have never wanted that little bit of money
Education is a right, not a competition
Wonder how much this I was born in a log cabin character is making now for her propoganda?