"Blame tenure for bad education!" That is the claim made by a charter school leader in the controversial education documentary Waiting for "Superman". And he is not alone. For decades, education reformers and union critics have blamed the tenure system for making it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers. How to save our students from failing, if we can't flunk bad teachers? It seems like simple math. But it's not.
While children in Finland and Singapore are world champions in math, reading, and science, the American children rank alarmingly low. The United States, the global economic and military superpower, ranks only 25th in math and 21st in science. This is another "inconvenient truth" the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim has put in the center of the documentary Waiting for "Superman". Michelle Rhee, the newly retired superintendent of Washington, DC schools, appears in the movie as one of the hard critics of teacher tenure -- a right to job protection and academic freedom teacher unions has defended since their birth in 1887! When Guggenheim asks Rhee "Do you think our children are getting a crappy education?" She responds, "Oh, I don't think. I know."
Tenure doesn't guarantee lifetime employment, but it does make firing teachers a complicated and costly process. One "that involves the union, the school board, the principal, the judicial system and thousands of dollars in legal fees. [...] In most states, a tenured teacher can't be fired until charges are filed and months of evaluations, hearings and appeals have occurred. Meanwhile, school districts must shell out thousands of dollars for paid leave and substitute instructors." In his documentary, Guggenheim vividly visualizes another problem named by California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as "the dance of the lemons": The buck-passing process that occurs in many districts that simply transfer low-performing teachers from school to school because firing is too costly.
Are the failing schools in America really to be blamed by the "torture of tenure"?
A groundbreaking research project including several hundred schools in Chicago exemplifies the complexity and reveals the key drivers needed to improve schools. Led by Anthony S. Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the research group concludes the most importing factor is not-tenure vs. no-tenure but leadership. Principals' ability and capacity to exercise leadership plays a significant role in organizing schools to make progress. In fact, Bryk and his research teams conclude that quite simply, school improvement is highly unlikely to occur in its absence. Unfortunately too often the challenge of lacking leadership is overlooked.
Improving the technical core of teaching and learning -- such as firing bad teachers -- is important. Other key technical components for successful schools reforms include the professional capacity of faculty and staff, a student-centered learning climate, and an instructional guidance system. However, real leadership lies in the ability to engage teachers, parents, and community members in working together to improve schools. No one can lead alone. And the challenge to build strong ties to parents and community is a key component principals must integrate when planning strategies for school reform. Technical solutions will not solve the problem of failing schools alone. They rest on the social base of the school community. In fact, some of the most powerful relationships found in Bryk's research is the level of trust as lubricant for school reform. Without trust, schools reforms are likely to fail.
Principals play a critical role in initiating and sustaining the necessary changes to improve student learning. They have to nurture trust to the community by actively listen to others' concerns and align their own actions to the school vision. In this regard if certain teachers are unwilling to commit themselves to do the hard work and align themselves to the mission, they should be fired. For this purpose, yes, tenure should be removed when protecting bad teachers. However, as Bryk's research team concludes, principals must take the lead and extend themselves by reaching out to others. Instead of waiting for superman and playing the usual blaming games, true education reformers should begin by improving public school leadership. Firing bad teachers is not enough. That is simple math.
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Education reform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement - Home
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Comprehensive School Reform Program
In my experiences, school leadership DOES have the ability to change schools and the course of students' lives. As Moller's article mentions, school leadership has the ability to welcome parents into the school and make them a part of the school community. I agree that parental support is key to student achievement and it is the responsibility of school administrators to invest students' families.
We put teachers in charge of the business end of the school system when we need someone with a business background.
It is a shame how we have allowed our educational system to become so poorly run because it is our children that pay the price.
As a side, have you read Mark Taylor's 2009 OpEd piece "End of the University As We Know It"? In some ways, your piece is like a K-12 version of Taylor's.
Thanks, again!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html
Any thoughts on what will happen with DC school reforms now?
"Aaron Listhaus to head Hebrew charter school incubator
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Aaron Listhaus, the chief academic officer for New York City’s Office of Charter Schools, will take over as the head of the Hebrew Charter School Center.
The Hebrew Charter School Center is a nonprofit organization created by the Areivim Philanthropic Group in 2009 to help advance the Hebrew language charter school movement. Based in New York, the center works with planning teams and existing charter schools across the United States to build capacity for designing new Hebrew language charter schools, provide resources for established schools, train teachers, create a network of Hebrew language charter schools, and help communities start the schools.
“I am thrilled to be joining the Hebrew Charter School Center team and have an opportunity to be at the forefront of this exciting new movement that is bringing innovative, high-quality, dual-language public schools of choice to children across the country,” Listhaus said. “It brings together my personal experience of learning Hebrew as a young child, my teaching experience in a dual-language setting and my work in school design and support to the development and promotion of a network of Hebrew Language Charter Schools across the country.”
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/12/14/2742160/new-york-city-charter-school-exec-to-head-hebrew-charter-school-incubator
I think many of us share your concern and skepticism about people having authorities without any real experience in the field.
However, sometimes it takes an outsider to make progress. The last three years of school reform in DC public schools with "outsiders" in the authority chair serves is a good example.
Now, I do not fully agree with everything Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee stand for. But if we ignore their (especially Rhee's) "aggressive" style that has provoked a lot of people, they should be acknowledged for the significant improvement of student performance. Though some test results sagged a bit last year, the overall trend is clear. In 2009 DC Public Schools made steady gains. For example:
49% of elementary students are proficient in reading and math, up from 38% and 29 % in 2007.
41% of secondary students are proficient in reading and 40% in math, up from 30% and 27% in 2007.
But I don't think it's productive to frame it as insiders vs. outsiders. Leadership is about dialogue and mutual respect when engaging all the different stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, principals etc.) in the collective challenge.
I'm glad you mention the school boards. I agree, leadership is not only limited to the principal. It's too easy to delegate responsibility and blame "bad administrators". In fact leadership can also come from teachers and parents - even from the old boy political network you mention.
Teachers in K-12 education do not have tenure. They have a right to due process to ensure they are not being fired for frivolous reasons and are given the opportunity to improve before being dismissed. The difference is that due process does not guarantee a job for life as people like Michelle Rhee have claimed. Tenure, effectively does make it impossible to fire a teacher, but is only applicable to college professors who have years of experience and review before receiving it.
Along with other "reforms" that result in lower paid teachers, community disenfranchisement, and force teachers to narrow their curriculum (making a student-centered learning process practically impossible), dismantling their right to due process will make it even harder to attract good teachers, especially when their fate is determined by standardized test scores. They will also make it impossible to enact many of the initiatives from the study cited in the above article.
The sick think is that the careers of these teachers have been destroyed because no other district will even talk to them with an unsatisfactory evaluation. How sinful is this? Now tell me that they don't need some kind of protection. Some of these were highly outstanding teachers and many were swept up by places like United Emirates of Dubai. Of course many with families couldn't make that kind of move and are out of work. There is dirt in every profession.