Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging chancellor of the Washington public schools, thinks teacher tenure may be great for adults, those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance, for instance. But it hurts children, she says, by making incompetent instructors harder to fire.
So Ms. Rhee has proposed spectacular raises of as much as $40,000, financed by private foundations, for teachers willing to give up tenure.
Policy makers and educators nationwide are watching to see what happens to Ms. Rhee’s bold proposal. The 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union has divided over whether to embrace it, with many union members calling tenure a crucial protection against arbitrary firing.
“If Michelle Rhee were to get what she is demanding,” said Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation, “it would raise eyebrows everywhere, because that would be a gargantuan change.”
As someone with a minor in education, I have mixed feelings about this idea. I always thought a bit of competition for otherwise mediocre teachers was a good thing. I witnessed several of my colleagues’ teaching skills drop dramatically after they got tenure.
That having been said, I do think there is some merit to the argument that getting rid of tenure would raise the probability of unjust firings, especially as political a scene as schools, administrators, and boards can create. I can virtually guarantee that someone who wasn’t in line with whatever agenda or teaching dogma a school board had fallen in love with would soon be shown the door.
[i] Many union members [call] tenure a crucial protection against arbitrary firing. [/i]
Why would schoolteachers need that protection more than most other employees?
I’m also concerned about how that plays out with standardized testing scores. I could easily see a scenario where either a school board with a grudge against a particular teacher or the Federal government could just come in and ax someone because their testing scores didn’t match up with “guidelines” even if the scoring was completely unfair, such as one of the No Child Left Behind points where a school can fail (even if they pass every academic subjects) if a certain minority group does poorly in attendance for the testing, even if the group in question is truant the day of the test.
As a teacher and administrator of long tired years, I can tell you that this proposal would do a lot more than raise eyebrows. This is radical stuff. First of all, the increase in salaries is enormous and would do mind-numbing things to a school budget. Second, the removal of tenure would mean that incompetent teachers could be dismissed when the evidence accumulated. Do you have any idea how many teacher would be out of a job before you could say Michelle Rhee? I could no more fire an incompetent than I could grow wings and fly. Moreover the absence of tenure would force the teachers’ union to develop and defend real academic standards. You can hardly begin to imagine the war this would start.
The teachers’ fear is, of course, fully justified. Nevertheless, something like this must come to pass before teaching in public schools becomes a profession real competence will seek out.
Larry
[i] I do think there is some merit to the argument that getting rid of tenure would raise the probability of unjust firings, especially as political a scene as schools, administrators, and boards can create. [/i] —Archer of the Forest
Fortunately, there’s a huge middle ground between (1) tenure as lifetime employment for the inept, and (2) giving free rein to cronyism and political purges.
The law can generally prohibit firing teachers based on their politics just as it already prohibits firing teachers based on their race, sex, or religion.
Archer [#3]: I don’t think students’ test scores should be sufficient grounds for firing or disciplining a teacher.
Even where tenure exists, K-12 administrators and school boards find “creative” ways, rightly or wrongly, to get rid of ineffective or abrasive teachers, or sometimes teachers who don’t make enough effort to fawn over their bosses while otherwise being effective and personable teachers well-liked by students, parents, and teachers. Teachers can be involuntarily transferred to schools that have themselves been ignored by administrations as dumping grounds, or from school to school, or be demoted to substitute teacher with loss of tenure and a drastic reduction of salary. If the teacher dares call for a hearing, somehow the result is always in favor of the school administration. Imagine that! Sound familiar to anyone in TE”C”?
The latest issue of THE ATLANTIC has a long and fascinating article about Michelle Rhee and the changes she is making in the DC school system. Well worth buying the issue.
You can also read it here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/michelle-rhee
One difficulty about “performance” as a way to rate (and thus to retain or fire) teachers is the fact that children are not so many widgets rolling down the assembly line. Each child is genetically unique, and each child has a differing home environment. My wife is in her tenth year of teaching at an elementary school. Some kids have very supportive home environments; others do not. Some are very bright, others struggle to remember where to put their lunch. Last year she had several kids with striking emotional problems; this year there are none – so that the class environment is markedly different.
If there is no tenure, what will protect a good teacher with a classroom where there are many “low” or emotionally disturbed, unparented kids?
I think if you read the book by Charles J. Sykes “Dumbing Down Our Kids – Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add”.
This book explains very well the history of abuse of the educational system by bureaucrats (called “educrats” in the book). Money has been grossly mismanaged to fill the desires of the educrats, but the students suffer. Emphasis has been taken away for core education subjects such as math, science, reading & writing, history, geography, etc., to “self” subjects focusing on self-esteem, psychological problems, etc. A huge focus has been placed on “sex” being taught in school. I was shocked at what I saw being taught in schools; things that even teen-aged kids should not be introduced to, yet were being taught to elementary kids.
You will also find in the book really good documentation of things that have occurred in the educational system way back in the 30’s. Stupid teaching methods that are being re-introduced now, but under a different name. Methods that have already been grossly proven to be ineffective, and even harmful.
You really must read the book. It’s quite enlightening and gives a very good perspective on why it’s absolutely necessary to overhaul the system. Since a lot of damage is being initiated by the so-called “educrats” I agree that getting rid of massive numbers of those people is a good place to start. I think she’s on the right track. A fresh start with a clean slate, and a SOLID academic based (NOT mushy “self” based) curriculum needs to be firmly put back in place in all schools across the country. All the educational system has been producing for several decades is a bunch of self-worshipping, spoiled brats who don’t know how to add 2 + 2. If one takes a good look around them, they will quickly see how our society got to the sick, sexually dominated state it’s in today.