July 30, 2009--"Only Tenure"
The case for tenure for teachers, guaranteed lifetime employment, rests on the following argument--
It protects them from unwarranted and wanton dismissal for doing unpopular things such as failing influential students, becoming a whistleblower, union activity, writing unpopular articles, and school board politics.
Anyone who fears, it is claimed, that tenure protects teachers if they engage in child abuse or other crimes need not worry because they can be dismissed if they are proven to commit any of them even if they have the protection of tenure
Where the rubber meets the roads, however, is what to do in cases where teachers are deemed to be incompetent after they have been awarded tenure. We should not to be concerned about this either, tenure proponents say, since there are procedures in place to monitor teacher performance and there are ways to dismiss teachers who have been shown to be ineffective in the classroom.
Theoretically this may be true; but in practice it very, very rarely happens that an incompetent teacher with tenure is dismissed for these reasons. It is always such a complicated, cumbersome, and litigated process that few principals even begin the process. At best they shuttle these teachers around from school to school so as to spread the pain among a wide range of students.
The tenure issue has come up again recently as the Obama administration turns up the pressure on public schools to get serious about school reform efforts. There is $4.3 billion tucked away in the stimulus package that is available to schools through an Educational Innovation Fund. But unlike funds of this kind in the past, where the emphasis was on the innovating—doing new things—this time around school districts will receive funds only if they can demonstrate with data that they are instituting reform activities that have objectively improved student achievement, adopted higher standards, built credible data systems to keep track of student learning, and recruited and retained demonstrably effective teachers. (See linked New York Times article for the details.)
It is this latter requirement that is causing all sorts of problems—how to determine if teachers are effective. And has elicited outcries from many educators and especially unions that represent teachers. They see this as a threat to the tenure system—what will happen, they ask, when as a part of the effort to tap into this federal money it is found that some tenured teachers are ineffective?
Rather than state this this directly, opponents of this kind of teacher accountability requirement are trying to make the case that because of the ways schools are structured it is too complicated to link student achievement outcomes with individual teacher’s efforts.
Since most accountability systems are based on how students do on achievement tests, opponents of the Secretary of Education’s plans to link federal money to student outcomes and teacher quality contend that to rely so heavily on tests distorts the complexity of the teaching and learning process. These tests measure achievement in too limited a way. And also, since students are often taught by teams of teachers, how can one expect to hold individual teachers accountable?
It is relatively easy to counter the concern about team teaching since for the most part it is untrue. From kindergarten through sixth grade students pretty much are taught by just one teacher; and then later when math teachers teach math and English teachers teach English, why wouldn’t it be possible to assess the effectiveness of individual math teachers by how well his or her students do on math exams?
In fact, in states where teachers unions hold local legislatures by their wallets, laws have been passed to not permit student achievement test scores to have any effect whatsoever on teacher tenure considerations. When in New York this has been questioned, the chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl Tish (all of whose children have attended private schools) shrugged and said, “It’s only about tenure decisions.” In other words, only about the most important of all education decisions—to award lifetime protection to teachers to whom we assign the education of our most precious resource.
And so if not by using tests how would opponents of high-stakes testing propose to hold teachers accountable? And if some teachers after repeated opportunities to improve were still deemed to be incompetent, especially those with tenure, how should they be dealt with?
What is at issue is how poorly in general our schools are doing. More than a third of all public school students—at least 15 million of them—are assigned to dysfunctional schools. The consequences do not just involve them as individuals (though that alone should be enough to get us to be serious about real reform) but there are also dangerous consequences for our country—how can we compete in a global economy where our trading partners and opponents are doing a much better job than we of educating their next generation? Now we’re really talking high stakes.
It protects them from unwarranted and wanton dismissal for doing unpopular things such as failing influential students, becoming a whistleblower, union activity, writing unpopular articles, and school board politics.
Anyone who fears, it is claimed, that tenure protects teachers if they engage in child abuse or other crimes need not worry because they can be dismissed if they are proven to commit any of them even if they have the protection of tenure
Where the rubber meets the roads, however, is what to do in cases where teachers are deemed to be incompetent after they have been awarded tenure. We should not to be concerned about this either, tenure proponents say, since there are procedures in place to monitor teacher performance and there are ways to dismiss teachers who have been shown to be ineffective in the classroom.
Theoretically this may be true; but in practice it very, very rarely happens that an incompetent teacher with tenure is dismissed for these reasons. It is always such a complicated, cumbersome, and litigated process that few principals even begin the process. At best they shuttle these teachers around from school to school so as to spread the pain among a wide range of students.
The tenure issue has come up again recently as the Obama administration turns up the pressure on public schools to get serious about school reform efforts. There is $4.3 billion tucked away in the stimulus package that is available to schools through an Educational Innovation Fund. But unlike funds of this kind in the past, where the emphasis was on the innovating—doing new things—this time around school districts will receive funds only if they can demonstrate with data that they are instituting reform activities that have objectively improved student achievement, adopted higher standards, built credible data systems to keep track of student learning, and recruited and retained demonstrably effective teachers. (See linked New York Times article for the details.)
It is this latter requirement that is causing all sorts of problems—how to determine if teachers are effective. And has elicited outcries from many educators and especially unions that represent teachers. They see this as a threat to the tenure system—what will happen, they ask, when as a part of the effort to tap into this federal money it is found that some tenured teachers are ineffective?
Rather than state this this directly, opponents of this kind of teacher accountability requirement are trying to make the case that because of the ways schools are structured it is too complicated to link student achievement outcomes with individual teacher’s efforts.
Since most accountability systems are based on how students do on achievement tests, opponents of the Secretary of Education’s plans to link federal money to student outcomes and teacher quality contend that to rely so heavily on tests distorts the complexity of the teaching and learning process. These tests measure achievement in too limited a way. And also, since students are often taught by teams of teachers, how can one expect to hold individual teachers accountable?
It is relatively easy to counter the concern about team teaching since for the most part it is untrue. From kindergarten through sixth grade students pretty much are taught by just one teacher; and then later when math teachers teach math and English teachers teach English, why wouldn’t it be possible to assess the effectiveness of individual math teachers by how well his or her students do on math exams?
In fact, in states where teachers unions hold local legislatures by their wallets, laws have been passed to not permit student achievement test scores to have any effect whatsoever on teacher tenure considerations. When in New York this has been questioned, the chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl Tish (all of whose children have attended private schools) shrugged and said, “It’s only about tenure decisions.” In other words, only about the most important of all education decisions—to award lifetime protection to teachers to whom we assign the education of our most precious resource.
And so if not by using tests how would opponents of high-stakes testing propose to hold teachers accountable? And if some teachers after repeated opportunities to improve were still deemed to be incompetent, especially those with tenure, how should they be dealt with?
What is at issue is how poorly in general our schools are doing. More than a third of all public school students—at least 15 million of them—are assigned to dysfunctional schools. The consequences do not just involve them as individuals (though that alone should be enough to get us to be serious about real reform) but there are also dangerous consequences for our country—how can we compete in a global economy where our trading partners and opponents are doing a much better job than we of educating their next generation? Now we’re really talking high stakes.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:01 AM
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