Can you imagine that the governor of your state would tell teachers which books they are allowed to assign or use in class?
Can you imagine that the governor of your state would tell college professors which books they are allowed to assign or use in class?
Can you imagine that the governor of your state would use his power to try to audit and close down a program at a university because its director dared to criticize him?
Well, all of these things happened in Indiana when Mitch Daniels was Governor.
And this, dear readers, is why teachers need tenure, to protect them against thuggish politicians who want to control what teachers are allowed to teach. It is called “academic freedom.” Yes, teachers need academic freedom. Otherwise some very important historical controversies, some basic scientific ideas, and some major novels will never be taught for fear that someone will be offended.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
K-12 teachers don’t have “academic freedom.” What they have had is the same civil service protections other public employees have. Unfortunately, it has been misnamed “tenure,” when in fact it is no such thing. “Tenure” is in effect a lifetime appointment, and it is confined to postsecondary education.
The fact states are doing away with civil service protections should be grounds for a lawsuit, as other public employees are still allowed “due process” rights. That should be unconstitutional on its face.
Yeah in NC tenure in NC is really career status which is really a right to a hearing if we are dismissed. Teachers with career status can be dismissed. We now have lost that protection. What worries me is that veteran teachers may now easily lose their jobs for arbitrary or frivolous reasons.
Have seen that happen
I believe that is exactly the plan, just as in the private, corporate world. In Fl. we don’t even use the word tenure any more, we use Professional Service Contract. We are going to start seeing veteran teachers being dismissed at a high rate if things continue. Many days I wish they would offer me an early retirement and i will just walk away.
Teachers will be losing their jobs ironically BECAUSE they have put in many years of teaching and have higher salaries. Now this of course applies to teachers who already have years of experience. Newer teachers now teach year after year without raises (not even cost of living increases). Experienced teachers who have been teaching year after year for the past decade with stagnant wages are giving up. It is just what the corporate world wants… no unions to protect basic issues of humanity… and a “wage” completely at odds with the level of education and experience required for the position.
The trend is to get rid of the veteran teachers that require a higher salary and will fight for correctness.
Hire new teachers who
1. Require less Pay
2 Will behave like “A puppet on a String”
A now Texas super super that worked in NC did just that.
Dismantling public universities and colleges will be next, by the way.
Absolutely. That is why Daniels is where he is at…
That and privatizing other public services such as fire, police, etc…
Academic Freedom – Teacher Autonomy – Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences – Constructivist Teaching philosophies – Creative Writing – ART, MUSIC, DRAMA – all these things we the teachers and the parents cherish. They ALL need to be returned to public education!
Daniels turned Indiana into a right to work (FOR LESS) state. It’s severe anti-union legislation that guts and renders unions powerless and irrelevant.
Mitch Daniels is extremely dangerous to public education, workers, women & children. His policies as governor left Indiana lacking in living wage jobs, worker & teacher protections in the workplace, State support for public education, supports for children living in poverty & right to privacy for women & their doctors to name a few.
Our legislature is bent on continuing his policies. I’m afraid people in Indiana agree with his reactionary & destructive policies. Indiana, while never a progressive thinking state did support education & working people in the past. A turnover of our legislature is the only way to stop Mitch’s race to the economic bottom for working people in Indiana.
Well, point taken, but here is one Hoosier who never agreed with Daniels.
Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue and commented:
Ever wonder why we should support tenure for teachers? Here’s a pretty good reason why.
OOOoooo… can’t WAIT for the next election 😡 !!!!
Which is probably going to be every bit as inane as the last one. Pence against some off-the-wall Democrat who probably won’t be much better than Pence. Hopefully the next Democratic challenger will be known for more than his hat.
How disgusting for Purdue to have hired him in the first place and then give him a raise after 6 months on the backs of the students? Irresponsible. Why didn’t he refuse it? At the 2 minute mark, Mitch Daniels talk about the tuition freeze.
Purdue hired him and gave him the raise because he appointed them. In his mind? Job security.
It’s very important to note that teachers have “due process” and not true tenure, which is given to university professors and judges. This distinction is critical because almost all public sector employees enjoy due process protections. If teachers are stripped of these protections, does that mean that mostly male police officers and firefighters will have due process while mostly female teachers will not? Is this “equal protection under the law?”
Not to me.
I recall a lot of university professors noting that they only have “due process” rights whenever university tenure is attacked. How is university “tenure” different from K-12 “tenure”?
University tenure is nearly airtight. It comes close to having a job for life so long as you don’t commit a criminal act. K-12 teachers have due process, not tenure, which means the right to a fair hearing, with evidence, before an impartial mediator. Unlike university professors, teachers may be fired for many reasons, including being a bad teacher. I have never heard of a university professor losing his tenured job because he was not a good teacher.
If that’s the case re: university professors, then those who say university tenure isn’t a job for life shouldn’t be taken seriously. I had assumed that incompetence was one of the potential grounds for termination of tenured professors. It sounds like you’re saying that’s technically true but basically never happens in practice. On the other hand, that’s exactly what the anti-tenure crowd in NYC has been saying about tenure for years, too. How many tenured NYC teachers have gotten fired for “not being a good teacher” over the last several years?
I should add that I don’t know much about tenure in other places besides NYC; that I do understand that tenure can mean very different things in different places; and that I understand that given the new evaluation framework, tenure in NYC will be different in the future. But for an outsider, it has been difficult to weigh the “it’s only due process” argument versus the “that’s true in theory, but in practice it’s a job for life” argument.
Oh boy. Where to start.
Let’s assume the book contains propaganda. May it be removed from public schools? Suppose, for example, a book shows Cuba as an idyllic land of butterflies and unicorns. May that be removed from a public school?
Yes. Courts have already decided schools have a “right to apply accuracy.” See: “Cert Denied: Vamos a Cuba; Cuban-Americans Lead Way for Districts to Back Parents Rights Against ALA/ACLU False Claims of Banning and Censorship.” Here’s a link:
http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2009/11/cert-denied-vamos-cuba-cuban-americans.html
Turning now to the Zinn book. Let’s assume the book contains propaganda. Suppose, for example, the books shows the United States of America is exactly the opposite of an idyllic land of butterflies and unicorns. May that be removed from a public school?
The answer is yes.
As to Zinn’s book, whether or not it is propaganda depends, I suppose, on if it is your propaganda.
As to Mitch Daniels, he believes it to be propaganda. Therefore, his call to remove the book is mainstream and legal if the book is propaganda. A governor saying a state should not use propaganda in public schools sounds like a governor actually governing.
The question is, is the Zinn book propaganda or is it not.
If the book is not propaganda, then Mitch Daniels was simply mistaken. But he’s not a “thuggish politician[] who want[s] to control what teachers are allowed to teach….”
Dan, read the story. Daniels wasn’t even dealing with removing the book from K-12 schools; he wanted to remove it from COLLEGE reading lists, in program training ADULTS as teachers.
That doesn’t bother you?
I have not read the book. So I don’t know.
That said, if the book is propaganda, and if it is used to promote rather than expose the propaganda, then I have to wonder why any educational institution would see it as a positive educational experience, excepting, of course, if the institution is promoting that sort of propaganda.
For example, for just a very limited example, if you are in school and you are learning about the US Supreme Court for the very first time, and in the second sentence you learn that the US Supreme Court is a racist institution, then you need to ask if the book is for educational use or for propagandistic use. If the book serves only as propaganda, then I see no problem using another book, one that presents an accurate picture.
Kind of like the “right to apply accuracy” I mentioned in the court cases.
Worse, if the propaganda is being taught to teachers to spread the propaganda, that is even worse.
That said, I’ll bet such books are extremely few and extremely far between, major emphasis on extremely, like maybe one every quarter century. But you can’t say they don’t exist at all, especially since the courts already allowed for the removal of one such book from a public school.
Dan, I would hate to think that part of any governor’s job consists of reading every book taught in college courses and banning those he or she doesn’t not agree with.
@dianerav, I agree with you 100%.
Just Found this elsewhere:
AP Exclusive: GOP donor’s school grade changed
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold “failing” schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett’s education team frantically overhauled his signature “A-F” school grading system to improve the school’s marks.
Click the link and read the rest. Unsettling, hubris, and how is this not illegal? Those are the first things that come to mind. I better stop right now before I have an aneurysm.
OOOps, forgot the link:
http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/AP-Exclusive-GOP-donor-s-school-grade-changed-4693659.php
thanks, I could not figure out how to post this piece. mitch and tony and their staff manipulated the data to make it look good for their beloved charters. Bunch of liars. But they have all moved on to better positions in govt. really sad.
K-12 teachers need real tenure, not the eunuch’s shadow of tenure that they have had, and they need unions that will fight for this.
Jonathan Kozol starts his wonderful Savage Inequalities with a story about how he was fired from a segregated, all-black elementary school in South Boston, back in the 1960s, for daring to teach a Langston Hughes poem (“A Dream Deferred”). Public school teachers have not, for the most part, had anything like real tenure and real academic freedom, but it’s long past time that they did have. We need some real unions in K-12 education, not those handmaidens of the oligarchy, the AFT and the NEA.
It’s amusing to hear idiots talk about the “power” of the teacher’s unions, which are essentially powerless as presently organized and legally constrained.
Yes, and Weingarten and Roekel are behind the compromise and self serving deals that have given birth to the powerlessness you describe . . . . History will, I think, prove to be harsh and unkind to both these leaders and the reformers they continue to politically fornicate with.
You’ll be waiting for Superman for a long, long time . . . if you kill him.
This is funny!
There is absolutely no way, as a parent, I would agree with teachers having “academic freedom” with my minor children.
You don’t trust your children’s teachers ?
Ok.
Order Fish at a Steak House and you will get Fish Sticks.
I’ve worked in both higher ed. and K-12.
In higher education, tenure is ideally a mutual commitment between the university and the professor. This includes having academic freedom in one’s teaching and research, as well as the right to due process. However, there seem to be fewer and fewer tenure track positions.
In K-12, tenure used to at least protect teachers from arbitrary dismissal and guarantee them the right to due process, but that’s assuming that one’s tenure rights will be respected.
No due process in Arizona.
Why don’t you talk about the trash that was being taught to our children? Academic freedom does not include the freedom to propagandize our children. You wonder why record numbers of informed parents are pooling their kids out of public school.
What trash were they teaching your children?