I also think the argument is thin, but not for that reason.
I’ve seen some districts use what I call a “dump school”. Its a school mostly poor and minority, where they put their worse performing teachers and then they send their best teachers to the schools with the richest and whitest parents - the ones most likely and could afford to, either move or put their kids in private schools.
I agree this is absolutely appalling, and the administrators responsible for this should be fired. Legislators should direct the department of education to clarify HR guidelines such that this behavior is specifically prohibited.
What shouldn’t happen is blaming teachers or teachers unions for this administrative behavior.
But along with that is things like;
Internal politics - principals having their favorite teachers.
Sports - maybe the bad teacher happens to be a good basketball coach.
Race - I know here in Kansas City they are desperate for black and other minority teachers so often they will pardon some teachers poor performance.
Replacements - I dont know about California but I hear they have a teacher shortage while here in the midwest their can literally be dozens if not hundreds of applicants for every teaching job. Teachers are forced to work harder if they know there are a dozen eager young newly minted teachers itching for their job.
Administrator turnover and burnout - principals already have alot on their plate plus the fact that many schools seem to change principals every other year or so so who does all the administrative work?
And then the whole problem with a teacher being - sort of bad, but not totally bad enough to fire. Basically unless a teacher touches a kid and still shows up to work, they are probably glad to just have a warm body in the classroom.
Help me out here. I am following the legal arguments, though have little to add to them. I am, however missing something basic about the broader picture. What is the justification of teacher tenure, and 18 months to get it? I understand the need for tenure for research-conducting professors at universities; they need the academic freedom to conduct research into unpopular areas without the fear of losing their job. It is a direct benefit to the increase of knowledge. Even then, though, it takes four to eight years. I do not see how teachers (not researchers) provide the same benefit, or what other benefit is obtained by them getting tenure.
The first mistake you’re making is equating the situation of school teachers with that of university academics. The “tenure” system for California teachers is really quite different from the tenure system that applies in institutions of higher education.
Really, what “tenure” effectively means for California teachers is actually just the end of a probationary period, during which they can be fired very easily. Getting tenure basically means that the teacher now has permanent status, and that a certain set of procedures have to be followed in order to terminate that teacher’s employment. It is not a guarantee of lifetime employment, and it doesn’t mean that teachers can’t be fired. It means that the teacher has demonstrated sufficient skills and competence to be permanently hired, and can no longer be fired on the whim of a single person, or for some minor misstep.
I’ve already argued that the period before this sort of job security might be too short in California, and i also believe that, in some cases at least, the current system leads to mediocre teachers retaining their positions when there might be better teachers available. But, as others have pointed out, this is often also the fault of pass-the-buck administrations who would prefer to dump their crappy teachers on someone else rather than taking the time and effort required to remove them from the system.
In all the whining about the possibility of tenure saving poor teachers, no-one seems to be discussing the fact that it also protects good teachers from the whims of bad administrators. As Urbanredneck says, principals and others in authority often have their favorites, and these favorites are not always chosen based on their teaching ability. Having due process reduces the likelihood of personal gripes and grudges depriving students of good teachers.
Parents can also be assholes. If one or two parents kick up a stink about a teacher, some administrators might contemplate firing the teacher just to make the trouble go away. Due process means that the complaints of one or two asshole parents won’t necessarily lead to a decent teacher being dismissed, which benefits students, parents, teachers, and the system as a whole.
For me, the most valid criticism of the California schools is the last-in-first-out system of layoffs. I agree with the teachers’ unions that experience is one of the criteria that can make for a better teacher, but this should be used as a general guide alongside other factors, and not as an ironclad measure of relative competence.
I agree that experience should be a factor among other factors, but I don’t think the only weight it should be given is based on the fact that it makes for a better teacher.
Fact is that, as noted above, there are relatively few employers of teachers in a given area. If you fire a teacher, it could be very hard for them to remain in the field altogether. The more seniority a teacher has, the harder it would be for them to either uproot themselves and move elsewhere or shift to another field.
And this is different from any other profession how?
Regards,
Shodan
I’m in favor of seniority in other professions as well, though again not as an iron-clad rule.
But it’s different in professions where there are typically multiple employers in a given area, as compared to teachers which the field can be dominated by a few employers or even one big employer. If the school district in a big city sacks a bunch of teachers, those teachers are going to be out of luck.
The state generally does not employ 95% of the people in other professions.
CA teaching is different than other parts of the country. An example from anarticle written in Jan-13:
Yes, teachers can be fired in CA. It doesn’t happen very often, and it isn’t because the quality of teachers here is different than anywhere else, or in any other industry. Administrators should be following the process when it’s warranted. But if the process is so onerous, is it still laziness if they pass in order to focus on other areas where they could make more of a difference?
Fewer than 10 per year. Out of 300K. The system in CA is broken.
I’ve never suggested that there isn’t room to improve the system. In fact, i’ve made quite clear, in numeroud posts in this thread, that there are thing that i dislike about the California system, and things that could (and should) be changed in order to make it easier to fir bad teachers.
But yes, if administrators truly believe that a teacher needs to be fired, then they need to get off their asses and go through the proper procedure, rather than just fobbing the teacher off on someone else. If they don’t, then they are being just as irresponsible as the teachers they’re trying to fire.
Also, in the specific case that you use as an example, you neglected to note:
The law requires that teachers have performance reviews. The district didn’t conduct one. This made it more difficult for the district to fire the teacher.
Whose fault is the district’s failure to conduct performance reviews?
The CTA has lobbied for, and the state legislature has enacted policies that make the proper procedure particularly onerous. If the procedure said, before you fire a teacher, you must bench press 500 lbs. - well shit, that can be done, but it’s freaking hard. Is the answer then administrators better hit the gym and start training? The right answer would be to change the process. It’s not laziness if an administrator chooses not to go to the gym everyday to train in order to meet the 500 lb requirement.
I’m sure some administrators are in fact lazy. Evidence suggests that there are very few firings of teachers in CA. I doubt it’s because school administrators are particularly more lazy than any other sub group.
The district should conduct performance reviews. But because they didn’t, child abuse in the classroom isn’t an instantly fireable offense? Not filling out HR paperwork is not in the same league as countenancing child abuse.
There’s a MAJOR piece missing from this statistic, which is this: how many teachers resign upon being informed that the alternative is the initiation of dismissal proceedings? And how many teachers who begin teaching don’t reach tenure?
I know at my school, there have been multiple teachers who were denied career status (our version of tenure, granted by a school board vote after four years), and other teachers who were forced out by being informed that they would be put on an improvement plan, the first step toward firing “tenured” teachers. Actual firings of tenured teachers are extremely rare in NC, but that’s because most bad teachers are weeded out during their first couple of years, and most of the bad teachers who need firing afterward choose to resign rather than go through an extremely onerous and humiliating dismissal procedure.
Do you actually know what the process is? I do and it is not onerous, just takes work beyond “Get the fuck out!”
Isnt part of the issue in California is the shortage of teachers where the school is just glad for a warm body?
In Kansas and Missouri it takes 4 years to get tenure and they can really make your life hell during that 4 years. A teachers goal is to stay under the radar, and smile and kiss butt to whatever the principals say.
I don’t actually. Can you enlighten me? All the articles I’ve read on the subject characterize the process as onerous but don’t have specifics on the process start to finish. Here’s from the Mercury News link I posted above:
Here’s from the LA Times a few years ago:
I did see this link from the CTA. It talks about myths about tenured teachers and basically reiterates what mhendo has been saying.
So the Mercury News and the LA Times thinks the process is onerous. The CTA says it’s fine, and any difficulty is because administrators are the suxors.
Ah, that helps.
Is this enough of a problem for teachers, and so much worse than other career paths, that it needed the addition of tenure to rectify it?
Around the same time, LA Weekly did a long investigation on how difficult it was to fire LA teachers and came to the same conclusions (“LAUSD’s Dance of the Lemons: Why firing the desk-sleepers, burnouts, hotheads and other failed teachers is all but impossible”). They also concluded that firing teachers is very expensive and onerous. The expense comes in the form of district legal fees and settlements.
One egregious example in the story was an elementary school teacher (Colleen Kolter) who allegedly went for days without teaching anything and had bad reviews and evaluations for a couple of years. A competence panel concluded that “[she] cannot teach.” It took $300K from private attorneys working alongside LAUSD attorneys to fire her.
As a non-parent, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this “bad LAUSD teachers are protected” perception is the most common one that my friends with kids have.
From my experience one can indeed have a bad teacher and your kid does suffer.
You see according to data a good teacher in a year can advance your kid up to 1.5 years in knowledge. But get a bad one and your kid will learn less than a full year of knowledge. So hence, you want the best teachers for your kid and every school has its good and bad. Its part of the reason you get involved in the PTA to make sure your kid has the best ones.
When I was in jr high we had the same crappy math teacher for 7th and 8th grade and her poor teaching and failure to teach us the fundamentals lead to so many of us failing algebra in high school.