Discussion for article #223768
Perhaps standards to gain tenure could be tightened; 2 years seems awfully short, 5 or 10 would seem more appropriate. Perhaps tenure could be conditional on a reasonable number of continuing education credits earned each year.
BUT, tenure is also what allows teachers to say no when fundamentalists demand that they not teach evolution, give creationism as much respect as if it had scientific validity, or that the kids be kept entirely ignorant about the facts of life by teaching “abstinence only” rather than comprehensive sex ed. Tenure might also help when a teacher is given a textbook with a warped, Texan view of American history and chooses to augment and correct the textbook with facts from more reliable sources.
2 Likes
There are a lot of billionaires who think they know how to fix education, Fisher (The Gap) in California and Gates, and this Welch guy. Too often their efforts amount to making schools less accountable, more top-down, and more hierarchical with less student and teacher input and rights. In other words, more like a business.
Can’t fault them for thinking their “success” at running hierarchical and unaccountable (except at the bottom line) businesses can be extrapolated to the community, but those characteristics of businesses are exactly anti-community. They belong in an organization focused on making money (if you’re into that), not on building community, like education.
No protections for teachers. Pretty soon all teachers will be as bad as these teachers were said to be. Because teaching will no longer be a vocation for dedicated educators who are willing to make less money than other professionals and give up their evenings and weekends to lesson planning and correcting papers and meeting with parents and spending their own money for supplies the taxpayers no longer provide, but just a job. And maybe at long last the old (wrong) adage will be true and those who can’t will teach.
1 Like
It should not a matter of completely eliminating tenure for public school teachers, but in many districts, it is granted far too early in the teacher’s career (sometimes after only two years total experience on the job), long before a full assessment of professional growth, classroom management skills, etc can be made.
It is absolutely true that site administrators should not be given the power to fire teachers.
Principals are fallible humans, and I have known far too many who have shown favoritism to faculty members who embraced the administrator’s pet projects or volunteered for committees, as well as principals who would bear personal grudges against any faculty member who did not outwardly support their pet projects.
2 Likes
So when is he going to rule that underfunding schools or cutting academics to pay for sports is unconstitutional because that, too, reduces students’ lifetime income?
2 Likes
As a teacher in California, I’d like to chime in here. I re-entered the public school classroom after over a decade outside the classroom as a site administrator and a college instructor, while working on my PhD. My university work was primarily with new teachers earning their credentials and working full time in their first position. I did this work in a highly regarded graduate school program for teacher preparation. That said, when I returned to the classroom, NCLB was in full swing. I had spent a few years conducting research on the initial results and changes happening with its implementation and felt that my shelf life had expired and that I needed to know in a more authentic way what was happening in classrooms and how to navigate the new terrain. I have been back in the classroom for 14 years now and I almost got fired my third year back in because my principal was angry that I didn’t agree with his belief that students don’t learn to read by reading and I “defied him” by continuing to allow students to silently read for 10-15 minutes each morning while I took attendance and collected homework, and such. He hounded me, documented me, screamed at me, and followed me. At one point he declared It was impossible for him to evaluate whether or not I was doing a good job if he couldn’t walk down the hall from one classroom to the next (all of us 5th grade teachers) and see the same lesson happening in a sequential manner. He had already intimidated the other younger, less experienced and probationary teachers to stop allowing students to independently read during the school day. I gained permanent status (CA teachers DON’T have tenure) on the first day of school in that 3rd year, so he had to be able to prove that I was not a good teacher to get rid of me at that point. Had he flipped out the year before (his first year as principal) he could have fired me for no reason at all.
The laws that protect due process for teachers are not the problem. The testimony at trial in Vergara clearly demonstrated that. This judge bought into the plaintiffs’ contention that he should believe them and not his lying eyes. Four of the nine student plaintiffs recruited by Students Matter didn’t even testify. Those who did named respected teachers with excellent evaluations, including the 2013-14 Pasadena Unified Teacher of the Year, as examples of so-called bad teachers and reasons to strike down these laws. The plaintiffs in this case failed to produce a single example of a student harmed or likely to be harmed by any of these laws. Some of the student plaintiffs didn’t even attend schools governed by the challenged statutes.
The so-called school reformers bought themselves a victory today. I am hoping that the appeal court will see through this sham. Arne Duncan piling on is pathetic. He is still pissed that CA stood up to the bullying of the Obama Administration and wouldn’t jump when they rolled out Race to the Top. They want teacher evaluations tied to test scores and they think that this will help them get there.
2 Likes