"If I could change one thing, I would get rid of tenure." - Larry Rosenstock, founder of High Tech High and winner of the 2010 McGraw Prize in Education, at a public forum, September 2010.
"So would I." - Stephen McMahon, President of San Jose (CA) Teachers Union, in response.
"I could care less about tenure." - Dal Lawrence, former president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, in an interview, November 2010.
"I have started using the words 'due process' myself. I think 'tenure' is a loaded word." - Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, in an e-mail, November 2010.
What on earth is going on here? Is the question of tenure actually up for debate and discussion? If so, it's long overdue. And is it possible that teacher unions will take the initiative?
Teacher tenure is closely connected to the flawed evaluation process. After all, an evaluation system --like the current one -- that finds 97 percent of teachers to be "satisfactory" or better will have no trouble handing out lifetime jobs.
"Tenure should be a significant and consequential milestone in a teacher's career," notes the National Council on Teacher Quality. "Unfortunately, the awarding of tenure occurs virtually automatically in just about all states, with little deliberation or consideration of evidence of teacher performance. Teacher effectiveness in the classroom, rather than years of experience, should be the preponderant criterion in tenure decisions."
In the current system, most public school teachers gain tenure, generally speaking a lifetime job, after just three years of teaching. In eight states, including California and Maryland, tenure is granted after two years. Hawaii and Mississippi offer tenure after just one year, and our nation's capital requires no set amount of teaching performance before granting tenure. In other words, many school administrators are forced to make this critical and lasting decision halfway through a teacher's first or second year in the classroom.
That's changing. Several state legislatures may pass laws that eliminate teacher tenure. The New York City school administration has just acted to make attaining tenure more difficult, by requiring principals to do more than check off a box or two (the old way). New York has a problem; in the last school year, only 234 teachers out of the nearly 6,400 who were eligible for tenure were denied it. That's 3.7 percent. It was even easier four years earlier, when only 0.4 percent of those eligible were denied tenure. Under the new rules, principals must now consider a teacher's contributions in and out of the classroom and his students' performance on standardized tests.
What's the right course of action? Get rid of tenure while maintaining due process protections? Make it more difficult to achieve? Or perhaps have term contracts for five or 10 years at a clip?
I have an opinion on this but would like to hear yours first.
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Teacher Tenure Less Certain in New York City Schools - NYTimes.com
Teacher tenure vs. tyranny - NYPOST.com
Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary? : NPR
The Answer Sheet - The myth of teacher tenure
Teacher tenure, protests on line in education reform sessions
Instead of teachers as miracle workers we should have a national discussion about parenting and families.
It can begin with the book Teenagers Say the Darndest Things found at the scribd site by Irwin DaGuru.
I can prove this easily.
In middle and high school students have multiple teachers. Students who do poorly invariably do poorly in multiple classes with multiple teachers over multiple years.
Either all the teachers were to blame or the kid was. What do you think?
The Gates foundation funds a complex web of media calling into question the objectivity of journalists and media outlets desperate for funding. The Columbia Journalism Review questioned the partnership Gates formed with PBS NewsHour:
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/how_ray_suarez_really_caught_t.php?page=all
"By funding the NewsHour as well as Public Radio International, the foundation heightens general awareness of and support for global health. However, while the Gateses might not have advocated for specific programs, they and their foundation do have distinct policy preferences and require strict compliance. Furthermore, the foundation’s policy-agnostic advocacy efforts link together with its policy-shaping efforts, again by influencing the media."
The Gates foundation funds a complex web of media calling into question the objectivity of journalists and media outlets desperate for funding. The Columbia Journalism Review questioned the partnership Gates formed with PBS NewsHour:
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/how_ray_suarez_really_caught_t.php?page=all
"By funding the NewsHour as well as Public Radio International, the foundation heightens general awareness of and support for global health. However, while the Gateses might not have advocated for specific programs, they and their foundation do have distinct policy preferences and require strict compliance. Furthermore, the foundation’s policy-agnostic advocacy efforts link together with its policy-shaping efforts, again by influencing the media."
This, of course, is true of every charitable foundation. World health and education reform are hardly nefarious plots. They do insist upon a scientific/empirical approach, which offends some people.
P.S., check out the work of Geoffrey Canada. He's tackling both, using education as a way out of poverty.
Are schools perfect? No. Can we make them better? Yes. But by in large they are wonderful useful places, if the student is willing to work hard.
And while we are on the warehousing topic, what the heck is it with sitting for hours at desks in rows? Does anyone really believe that learning is what happens when you complete worksheets, or god forbid, peruse a public school textbook?
If all students were equal and if the variables shared by all teachers within their classrooms were at relative parity, you’d have a compelling argument. No such world exists.
Administrators DO inequitably stack disruptive students as well as those with learning handicaps – including those with and without IEPs and 504 Plans – into the classrooms of new teachers, those out of favor with administration, and educators nearing the end of their careers with higher salaries. Unfortunately, your reiterated endorsement of “Value Added Testing,” does nothing to state, specifically, how teachers in those predicaments will be shielded from inequitable performance evaluations or termination.
The only way VAT can equitably provide a measure of each teacher's improvements relative to their students is that they have the same students for multiple years. Such “cadre” models are being successfully implemented in districts nationwide. Otherwise your contention that VAT “offers the best objective data correcting for variations among student populations” is unsupportable.
NCLB mandates that all students demonstrate “adequate yearly progress” via percentile scores and NGEs (National Grade Equivalents) on various batteries. Because students with very high academic achievement consistently score at the performance ceiling year after year, they will show no demonstrable growth via these percentile scores or NGEs. Should teachers be penalized for this? “No,” but according to your Madame Defarge scenario, “yes.”
If the names and test scores - over time - of individual students and their parents' names were published in the LA Times, you might have something.
Thanks! FnF
--ez
Publishing kids & parents names in the paper is troubling from an educator such as yourself. Public school teachers work for the taxpayers and they should know what they are getting.
Teachers work for their students. Social responsibility and ethics are not based on money.
So if you want to change that, you'll have to pay people as much or more than comparable private sector jobs. Greater pay means the best and brightest might actually consider teaching as an option--lord knows they have school loans to pay off and a teacher's salary as it currently stands won't allow for that.
Pay now with salary, or pay later with pensions/retirement funds. Either way, reform won't come cheaply.
1. 50% Increase in salary.
2. Union negotiated labor contracts covering all of teaching personnel in the district, including charter.
3. The right to fire incompetent teachers in exchange for right of teachers to fire incompetent administrators ( principals, vice-principals,secretaries, custodians).
4, Stripping all School District administrators from civil job security and converting the district employees to year-to year contracts.
5. All School District Boards must have at least one VOTING teacher union representative.
6. All District salaries ( not just teachers) ties to student performance.
This would a good start.
On the other hand, if teacher quality is the issue, then going after tenure is too late in the process. It reminds me of old-fashioned quality control in software development, where you have a group of testers who put the finished product through its paces and find all of the bugs that need to be fixed. It's an expensive and time-consuming way to achieve quality. Better to tackle quality up-stream, i.e., by screening applicants and training them adequately (improve teacher education programs), and then by intensive evaluation and coaching in the first couple of years, where it will matter. All teachers should be observed constantly (I'm for video recording all classrooms), and provided with feedback that will encourage and enable improvement.
I'd like to say that the best teachers stayed and the worst ones were let go, but this really didn't happen. Many of the best teachers left the school or left teaching. Teacher evaluations became too political and often an influential parent with a few allies among the senior teachers could drum out a competent teacher.
At least we didn't rely on standardized tests to determine who was a good or a bad teacher. There is so much more to teaching, so much more to reaching kids.
As I look back, it is clear that a school system would need a very good, carefully thought out evaluation system which looks at many aspects of a teacher's performance before tenure is eliminated.
Public school educators and others who think that tenure should be eliminated should spend some time looking at and talking to teachers in private schools who teach without tenure. Find out what works and what doesn't.