Mark Weber, also known as blogger Jersey Jazzman, advises New Jersey legislators not to mess with teacher tenure.
New Jersey has tenure laws that work, he says.
For one thing, they keep political patronage–for which the state is infamous–out of the schools.
He writes:
“Over the years, while so many of New Jersey’s public institutions have fallen victim to cronyism, teaching staffs have remained largely immune from the stench of political corruption. Tenure is a big part of the reason why: Thanks to the right of due process, most teachers haven’t felt undue pressure to submit to New Jersey’s political machines to retain their jobs.
“And seniority protections, closely tied to tenure, have helped to make and keep teaching a profession, rather than a job whose workers churn with the rise of each new political regime. So long as senior teachers continue to demonstrate their effectiveness, they need not fear the reprisals of those who would love nothing more than to turn New Jersey’s schools into their personal political fiefdoms.”
The state tenure law was reformed in 2012, and it now takes four years to earn tenure–meaning, due process, the right to a hearing. The process for hearing an appeal by an arbitrator is limited to five months,
Forty percent of teachers in New Jersey never earn tenure.
Weber concludes:
“As a proud New Jersey public school educator, I’ll be the first to say it: Teachers matter. And that’s why we need to keep teachers out of the political muck. Tenure is good for taxpayers and students, and it’s an inexpensive way to keep good teachers in the profession.
“Unless we want another 125,000 patronage jobs in New Jersey, we should keep tenure and seniority for teachers.”
– See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-don-t-tamper-with-teacher-tenure-1.1034638#sthash.Io3TTDWv.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Are you kidding? Christie is frothing at the mouth!
You would kind of think that keeping political patronage out of public schools would matter to most people. Strange world we live in.
Reblogged this on We Are More and commented:
“So long as senior teachers continue to demonstrate their effectiveness, they need not fear the reprisals of those who would love nothing more than to turn New Jersey’s schools into their personal political fiefdoms.”
How exactly should senior teachers (or any teachers) “demonstrate their effectiveness”? By making sure they get the easiest, most affluent kids?
I am a senior teacher with a bull’s eye on my back. It is open season on veteran teachers. Get real!
Dear NJ Teacher, I am an older Ohio teacher with a bull’s eye on my back too. We are not alone. I’ve told the younger teachers that they need to wake up. I’ve always had outstanding principals up to this year. On the new teacher evaluation system, the new principal felt empowered and marked several older teachers down. On my 50% I had effective, good test scores (I know VAM is a sham), and on my other 50% I was severely marked down for directly instructing my students.
The rubric is set up for poor teaching strategies which promote socialism. “Race to the Bottom” wants everything done in groups, and then they make our students work all alone on high stakes testing. I never thought things would ever get this bad. Yes, older teachers turn bad teachers overnight. I spend hours and hours in my classroom and students/parents and past principals loved me. All of that can change overnight, and you can find yourself being evaluated by someone who does not know you and hates older teachers. For years we have been told what we are going to teach, but now we are also told HOW to teach it – even when we know those teaching strategies do not work.
You and I are very blessed to be in the last groups of teachers who will get a retirement to this dying profession. I thank God every day for that, and I mourn for the younger teachers. However, many of the younger teachers are totally unaware of the freedoms that are about to be taken from them. Will they wake up in time?
Sad Teacher – I wondered about the tipping point, when we turn from being “highly effective” into doddering old fools. I think it has something to do with that AARP card that comes in the mail. It also could be a side effect of the colonoscopy we get about the same time. Those two acts push us over the edge.
Beware, my friend, beware.
Ha..Ha..You are funny…I think we become a bad teacher overnight when we turn 50 years old. I have always been a very popular, well liked teacher by all of my past principals. I’ve been highly requested by parents and students. My test scores are outstanding. It just takes a new ineffective principal who does not know you and dislikes older teachers. Everything changes overnight. My test scores saved me on my evaluation, but he marked me down on directly teaching my students. It has all become a big joke. The younger teachers must realize that being an excellent teacher will eventually not be enough. Age discrimination is alive and well. Thank you so much for your response. (:
No, they will not wake up. The TFAs look at me like a reptile. We have teachers screaming all day getting effectives. I was told by my principal today that I am not a good fit for the school! I am busy packing up.
I am so sorry NJ Teacher. I hope you find a safe haven to land in – somewhere that will appreciate your talents.
Thanks, Diane!
Jersey Jazzman: thank you for your blog!
😃
A small addition to this and other recent postings on this blog.
Tenure/due process and the rest? Don’t the privatizing free market fundamentalists ever think past their own hype? By their own brand of thinking, if you slash and burn INCENTIVES and replace them with DISINCENTIVES like fire-at-will [fear by management] employment and pathetic benefits & pay then you will not end up with the most highly qualified teachers in the neediest classrooms. Rather, you will get the opposite of what you proclaim you are for.
Oh, I forgot… Like bean counters everywhere they knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
My bad? Not really.
Because when it comes to walking their own talk, saying what they mean and meaning what they say, the self-styled “education reformers” will never abandon their core Marxist principles:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” [Groucho, the famous Marx]
😎
Great comment, Krazy TA
You hold up your head high and walk out of that school. Kick the dust off your shoes and do not look back. There are much better things ahead for you! I am an older, master teacher, and there are teachers in my school district who hand out packets and do not work with their students – who have a higher rating than me. My good test scores are not enough anymore. The kids, the parents, and the community know that you are a good teacher. They are putting incompetent “apes” in power in many schools. These incompetent “apes” replace principals who did a wonderful job. It is a very painful thing to watch.
In this new age, awesome, older teachers are being labeled “out to pasture.” Sadly, these teachers, like me, do a wonderful job but are being discriminated for their age. These “apes” in power mark teachers down, not because the teachers deserve it, but because they can. It is a huge power trip. Teachers are in trouble.
Sad Teacher, the students know my husband is the best science (Earth Science) teacher in the school. The Vice Principals who evaluate him tell the Principal what a good job he is doing. She responds “Then why don’t more of his students pass the Regents Exam?”
The capable students get higher scores than any of the others, but those who refuse to try end up failing.
You only can do so much with a population who doesn’t care. One of his best students told him last week that she doesn’t plan on taking the final (it’s not one of the required five – so much for rigor).
Thanks Sad and Ellen! The principal said that although I am technically proficient, I am not building community. It is a rough neighborhood with all the concomitant problems. I appreciate your support. One of my kids was crying. I felt so bad for him. It is my fourth school in three years.
Been there. I always have the support of the other teachers, the parents, and the children, but I also tend to tick off the principals.
Maybe next year will be better.
I’m not sure where to leave this info, so I’m posting it here.
“Los Angeles’ top juvenile court judge is objecting to a planned diversion of $13 million to school police there from state funds earmarked to provide special learning assistance to disadvantaged kids.
“In a June 6 letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles County Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash said this particular pot of money should not be diverted to support the L.A. district’s own school police force, which has an annual budget of around $57 million.”
What’s going to hurt students more, diverting $13 million to fortify the classroom-to-prison pipeline, or teacher tenure?
Let’s here Judge Treu’s take on this.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24375-la-judge-objects-to-school-police-getting-millions-reserved-for-struggling-students
Realistically, tenure will be gone everywhere very soon. Let’s deal with reality. A lot of rich, powerful people have paid a lot to make this moment happen. Teaching will be a temporary job. No, they don’t care about good teaching, and helping kids, blah, blah. They don’t care at all about the bottom 90% of the country. That is the way our system works. If you are poor (or in the bottom 90%) then you must be lazy, or stupid, or both. That is how they think. Also, it doesn’t matter what we think. It only matters what those in power think.
I had to read this twice, to see it wasn’t my comment – I feel the same way, written this same thing many times.
Mike, I completely agree with you about the rich and powerful. This country is in a bad place. I shudder to think it could get worse.
Mike, You are right on the mark! They just have to get the older teachers retired (who have a continuing contract). With the new unfair, subjective teacher evaluation system, they will withhold continuing contracts from teachers (who immensely deserve a continuing contract). Teachers will be bullied, manipulated, and scared into accepting a very poor working environment. Teachers will have a very hard time reaching retirement. Many teachers will never reach retirement. The ultimate result will be very few young people getting degrees in Education. All sad, but very true…At that time, the charter and online schools will completely take over the education of our children…except the children they do not want. Segregation will be alive and well!
Kansas has new “innovation districts” now. The schools are exempt from state laws, including licensure requirements. They’re governed by yet another appointed board that is accountable to no one.
The text of the state law was pulled directly from the national lobbying group, ALEC.
I’m sort of mildly curious why our lawmakers bother coming to work, since lobbyists are drafting both state and federal law.
http://cjonline.com/news/2014-02-26/governor-helps-pick-innovative-school-districts
Innovative means “blended” learning, which means computers, no unions, no certified teachers, etc. It failed elsewhere, it will fail in Kansas too. Clearly, these reformer don’t give a damn about education, just the ka-ching.
Donna,
You did notice that the local school districts have to apply to get this status and the superintendents were very enthusiastic about the opportunities it offered.
If the goal here was to make money, a school district of a thousand students in a county of under 10,000 people in an isolated part of a rural state would seem to be a very poor way to go about it.
The article’s comments are among the most stupid I have ever read. Innovation – to bring in unqualified, unlicensed, uncertified “teachers”.
These will be some of the dumbest scholars when the innovations are done.
This is all, of course, to reduce costs (computers), and get those damned teachers out of the way. When you get rid of teachers, kids learn! Sure. Of course.
Donna, it baffles me why parents would send their children to these schools. Wouldn’t they notice the deficiencies after a while?
I think the superintendents of these small isolated rural districts are not choosing between licensed and unlicensed teachers, they are choosing between unlicensed teachers and no teachers.
TE – I agree with you, but why is it necessary to try so-called innovative practices. Surely they’ve had to use these tactics in the past to provide enough teachers to fill the classroom needs. Now there is a need to name these actions? I’m leery of the motivation.
I have made it a habit to ask my more senior students how many want to move to a city, suburb, or small rural town after they graduate. The small rural town has had one vote in the last five years or so. The town of Concordia has been steadily dying along with most of the isolated small rural towns in the center of the country. They need the flexibility of being freed from top down regulation from the state.
Agreed! To attract teachers, I suggest a program which helps pay off student loans for teachers who remain in service at least five years. They need to sweeten the pot to attract new recruits.
That kind of program has been in place for a number of years out here in the middle of the country. Concordia, with a population of a little over 5,000, is the largest town in the 5,345 square miles of Cloud plus the surrounding 6 counties. How sweet do you think the pot would have to be to get your children to move there? They need to have the freedom to make do with what they can get.
Those are my suggestions. But, as you say, there isn’t much to attract an outside teacher to the area unless they want a quiet life style.
And there are many more districts just like this throughout the country.
Interesting program. According to the article the districts have to apply to be an innovation district. The two districts that are furthest along have 2,3060 total students and 1,070 total students.
The superintendent of the smaller district seemed very enthusiastic. Here is a quote from the article:
Mortimer (the superintendent)said the regulatory exemptions would help Concordia pursue a goal of 100 percent of students completing college work or industry certificates before leaving high school.
The district wants flexibility on regulations for high school credits and teacher licensure, for example. Mortimer said this would allow local experts who aren’t certified instructors to teach culinary arts and other courses.
It would also let the school give students credit for extracurricular activities, Mortimer said. She cited the example of a student who plays several sports outside of school yet has to take a gym class.
“There’s something wrong with that picture,” she said, adding that the student should be given flexibility to use that class time for something else.
It seems like a reasonable idea, especially in isolated small school districts.
TE, the Devil is in the Details, not the rhetoric. Students often are given credit for outside school work taken at local universities, such as the UB Math Program starting for fifth graders. Nothing innovative in that.
I’m not so sure about forgoing gummy credit for playing in a league sport. I thought PE was supposed to expose students to all sorts of sports, not just one or two. However, students who can’t take gym due to a disability often write a few papers describing various sports, so I suppose this could be done.
I know that taking chorus, band, or orchestra can take the place of a general music requirement, again, not rocket science.
And Buffalo had professionals, who were not certified, teaching electronics and avionics in their vocational schools, that was why the principal stole my husband away, since he was a certified teacher who also had a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In NYS you can teach one course outside your certification area.
Again, it is in the actual implementation of the plan, not the “pie in the sky” description, which will determine the success or failure of the schools. After being a part of opening a new, innovative high school, I can tell you that not everything went as planned, especially the first few years when mistakes were inadvertently made that did effect student performance.
I was drawn to the ability of the school district to call on local practitioners to teach in the school. Comcordia is a town of 5,320 souls. I suspect that most of the high schools in Buffalo have more students than the entire Concordia district. How many professionals do you think live in Concordia?
TE, I agree, rural districts have a completely different set of problems, including the ability to draw well qualified teachers to teach in the stix (although I’m sure it is a delightful town). The state should already have accommodations in place for areas like this. I know that sometimes school districts in WNY encompass more than one town for just this reason.
Let me know what happens. Obviously these parents don’t have much choice, unless they are willing to move or home school.
I would say that the state is finally now making the accommodations that these small districts need. Better late than never.
I read the article. The ALEC lobbyist who wrote the law hopes to save money on publicly-funded education by hiring people who aren’t teachers to replace teachers.
I’ll make a bold prediction. These “innovation zones” will be placed only in lower-income urban and rural areas.
It’s odd how ed reformers experiment only in lower-income schools. One would think children who have more resources would be better able to shoulder the risk of the adult experiments.
So you think that a rural district with a little over 1,000 students should be bound by the same rules as urban districts with 50 times as many students? If Concordia did not wish to have this status, perhaps it should not have applied.
Any guesses about Concordia high school? First, it is not a high school, but a secondary school serving 460 students in grades 7-12 . Please move there. It is the county seat, and I am sure they could use another attorney. At 5,320 it is the largest city in the count and larger than any city in the adjacent six counties.
TE, that is actually a decent sized school district. Not everyone attends a high school with 1000s of students. The last school I worked at was 5-12 and had less than 600 students. The main problem is that the district is rural and the pay is probably lower than average so the attraction for those “high quality” teachers is nonexistent. And how they think they are going to attract “highly qualified professionals” from other disciplines is beyond me when those individuals can make so much more money in their original career choice.
I would think that the main problem is that there is only one town of over 5,000 in the seven county area. Was your school as isolated?
I don’t think they will attract highly qualified individuals. I think they just hope to attract someone.
TE, the school I was describing was a part of the BPS. However, in the beginning of my career I worked at a JR/SR High School in Gowanda, which was a small rural town whose students included Senecas from the local Indian Reservation. I also visited nearby small school districts. They all had either local talent or beginning teachers on their faculty. There are many schools throughout NYS in the same boat.
And I bet most of them also hope to recruit qualified applicants, in spite of their locations.
The superintendent specifically mentioned a culinary arts teacher. I’m sure that the district would like to hire Alice Waters, but I am not sure she would accept.
In my day, culinary arts was taught by the home economics teacher (now called home and career).
I have been doing a little more research into Concordia. It is the county seat of Cloud County (county population 9,533 and an area of 718 square miles). The population peaked in 1890 at 19,295 but has steadily declined for the last century. The majority of the citizens in Cloud county live in Concordia which is also the home of Cloud County Community College. Perhaps the superintendent hoped that some of the faculty at the community college could be employed in the high school if the district was given “innovation status”.
Joining forces with the local community college would be a good thing.
(Just one point, teachers at the college level are not necessarily trained as teachers.)
However, this is not that innovative. In Buffalo we have a school located on the campus of Erie Community College where students receive an associates degree after five years or less. They obviously take classes from ECC professors. Other schools in the area have a partnership with the local colleges for high school/college credit.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
Perhaps we can agree that being an innovation district will allow Concordia to enter the 21st century.
Perhaps! TE, I honestly wish them well.
Here’s the lobbyist-written law that will now govern certain public school districts in Kansas.
It’s nearly identical to the “Kansas” law.
The sheer laziness and complete lack of shame is stunning. They don’t even bother changing the title of the laws anymore. They just copy and paste the whole thing from ALEC.
Is there some reason they just don’t go work for the business interests they serve directly, instead of going into government? If they want to work for a corporation, they can do that! Why do they insist on remaining on the public payroll?
http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/the-innovation-schools-and-school-districts-act/
The ousting of tenure in a profession that is predominately female, is right up there with banning abortions, eliminating access to birth control for the poor, and closing planned parenthood centers. The whole thing smells of misgyny or anti women tactics.
It’s a white male world for the privileged few who are attempting to brainwash the voters with glib talk which sounds good but contains little to nothing of substance.
Ultimately, until the public respects teaching as a profession and doesn’t buy into the concept of education as big business, those in power will exert their muscles to gain as much control as possible.
This is an uphill battle. Many still think that teachers are overpaid for only nine months of work. Our white knights will be the suburban parents who see through the rhetoric.
The troops are in place, ready to storm our fort. May our champions not arrive too late, after the battle is already lost.
Someday in the not too distant future, perhaps most women won’t be allowed to vote anymore, or hold office, or even work. Maybe the 1% will just kill us, or hook some of us up to insemination machines to pop out their babies. I wonder what the requirements for that station in life would be. Good looking? Thin? Big boobs? How will they be able to test our IQ’s when they’re done making us dumb with the common core?
Oh, Donna. I have hope. Eventually the old guard will die out, one way or another. The upcoming generation (pre common core) will take over and their views are more liberal. Also, cream rises, and our astute children will look back and see the problems that CCSS has created and demand adjustments for their children. I just hope there will be some certified teachers left to fill the void.
Canadian Margaret Atwood wrote a book about that: The Handmaid’s Tale. Scary when science fiction becomes reality.
Nimbus, many on this blog have already embraced that our lives have become a dystopia novel.
Never forget our mantra:
Soylent green in people!
I meant “Soylent Green IS people!”
David Boies and Theodore Olson, who argued Vergara for the plaintiffs and are promoting similar court cases nationally, are coming to Maplewood Middle School to hawk their new book about marriage equality. Although they are ostensibly on the right side of this issue, does anyone really believe they give two shits about the LGBTQ community?
Why are they hawking their book at a middle school? I can’t imagine that there are many middle schoolers, gay or straight, who are too concerned about marriage.
I’m hoping the Obama Administration can get Starbucks to fund the public schools they’ve abandoned.
Should we have the kids beg the CEO directly, do you think? Maybe the Netflix guy could throw a couple coins their way.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/states-that-already-spent-less-on-education-have-made-bigger-school-cuts/
Fort Wayne, Indiana bucks the Democratic-Republican consensus on collective bargaining:
“Mayor Tom Henry has vetoed the ordinance passed by the City Council that would have ended collective bargaining for non-public safety union employees.
“By working together, we’ve experienced unprecedented momentum in the City of Fort Wayne,” The mayor said via a press release on the veto. “Through innovative and engaging partnerships, we’ve built a nationally-recognized, affordable, and high-performing city government. Now is not the time to risk the progress we’re making in our community by rushing through an ordinance that takes away the rights of our award-winning city employees. We win the future by making smart choices, not by jeopardizing the formula for success and demoralizing our city team.”
Fort Wayne resisted the ed reform sales pitch, too.
It’s interesting how politicians can smell a con job in little Fort Wayne, IN but big, sophisticated Chicago politicians fall for every gimmick that comes down the pike.
Remember, Chiara, Indiana bucks the system already by refusing to participate in Daylight Savings Time.
Indiana – You go, girl!
“Non-public safety union employees” = predominantly female. Scott Walker did the same thing, and the police and firefighters unions endorsed him. So much for union solidarity.
BTW, hard hats in Illinois receive far more largess than teachers. the are guaranteed prevailing wages on public construction jobs. The state of Illinois now allows voters to pass referendums to increase sales taxes for school construction only – not instruction. Again, the building trades are predominantly male.
Meanwhile, the state chronically refuses to fully fund its portion of public schooling.
I am not meaning to disrespect our union brothers, but this is the reality.
Christie is not going after the other unions the way he is going after teachers. Police and firefighters are doing dangerous men’s jobs and we should be home baking cookies after we leave our part time jobs.
It’s a sad sign of the times that women must once again stand up for their rights.
Beware New Jersey!! Just look at the politics that control every district once tenure was removed from the position of superintendent of schools. Many districts have turned the position into a revolving door. Every election that results in a shift in district politics run the risk of the superintendent becoming an “endangered species”. Tough.
honest assessments cannot be made being overly concerned with the political ramifications for your actions.
They should eliminate tenure for K-12 AND College/University teachers. PERIOD!!! If any skilled/educated worker, ex. Electrical/Mechanical Engineer, can get fired why can’t teachers!!
The last I checked electrical engineers make A LOT more money than public school teachers. If an electrical engineer gets “let go” I am sure he/she has mobility and can move to another company or another state to obtain new employment with their highly trained skills. Sadly, when a teacher gets “let go”, sometimes due to unfair labor practices, they have absolutely no mobility at all. They cannot move to another state due to retirement system requirements, and the school system across the county does not want them either. A Bachelor’s degree is completely down the drain. Period.
In the teaching profession age discrimination is alive and well. I am an outstanding teacher with great test scores, and I have been highly requested by parents and students. In my last 2 years of teaching I am very thankful for my continuing contract…I stay until 6 PM many evenings working on my curriculum, and I go in several hours over the weekends to work in my classroom. All of my beloved principals have moved on to greater opportunities, and my staff presently suffers with an ineffective principal who targets the older teachers. He talks “down” to us, and we all feel stressed and had very low self esteem this school year. Without my continuing contract, I think he would terminate me before I could get to my retirement. I work HOURS on my job, but I have been targeted by him because I am now in my early 50’s. In addition, a teacher deals with MULTIPLE personalities on his/her job daily. We are subjected to hearsay, vendettas…A teacher has to have due process. Teachers could be fired on the spot just because of a false accusation. Electrical engineers just do not operate under these job conditions.
The continuing contract of a teacher cannot be compared to that of an electrical engineer. The electrical engineer can move to another state quickly for another job – or a new job across the city. The teacher’s job and teaching career is over. Period. It’s done. Stick a fork in it. You can’t compare the two.
Another good argument in favor of a defined contribution retirement plan rather than a defined benefit plan.
JBizzle –
You are repeating a mantra I have heard over and over from the general public. And it seems reasonable – what makes teachers so special that they need tenure?
Sad Teacher presents a good argument, but I’ll go one better, tenure protects both the teacher and the school district.
A top notch school is filled with master teachers, new teachers, and mid career teachers. Together they create a cohesive whole led by a forward thinking principal. They share ideas through grade level and subject level meetings, various in services, and faculty meetings. The staff remains together for the long haul – oh, sure, there is some changeover, but the basic group remains.
For example, I recently ran into a friend that substitutes at my old high school. One of my old teachers recently retired after 40+ years in the building. My own daughters had some of the same teachers that taught me when I attended that same high school. The school has only had 4-5 principals over its 70+ year existence. This stability strengthens the learning environment and keeps it as one of the top schools in the area. Programs are developed, maintained, and adapted over a period of years to reach their maximum potential.
Now, in the business world, this stability doesn’t exist. In the twelve years my daughter has been working in her field, she has had 6 different jobs. Head hunters have enticed her away from her current positions three separate times, with a pay increase for each new placement. The last leap was back to one of her original jobs. They wanted to rehire her and were willing to pay her asking price. Not only does she have a higher salary and more benefits, she also gets a yearly raise plus a bonus.
Do you really want teachers to be a part of this system? Don’t you think the best talent would be stolen away by a more affluent school district? And would this entail large raises and signing bonuses? And what would keep teachers from job hopping from one district to another? As I said before, the best schools are the ones which are the most stable. Especially in the urban areas, children need to feel safe, and a constantly fluctuating staff can be unnerving, for both the children and the faculty.
Tenure is the thread that maintains the necessary constancy. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have seen our best principals from the BPS be lured to lucrative and high profile suburban positions. I have also seen Buffalo teachers decide to forgo their tenure and start over in the suburbs (where the teaching is easier and the pay is so much better). However, most of the teachers in a district, after they receive tenure, remain where they are. They like the guarantee. They like the comfort of a known situation (even at the most difficult schools). They love their students and prefer to stick it out rather than “move on”.
So tenure binds them. It’s a two way street – you give me job security, and I’ll pledge my loyalty and stay. Yes, tenure does protect the indolent hidden amongst the dedicated teachers, but a good principal has a way to prod those stragglers along so they remain productive.
Perhaps you feel it’s easy come, easy go. But your original premise is that education should be compared to a business (a la engineers). Think it through, is the described scenario really the way you envision public education? Or did you sent your child to a private school and don’t care what happens to the non privileged children?
(One last comment – incompetent teachers can get fired, but all teachers are entitled to due process so they aren’t fired on a whim.)
Ellen, Your article was beautifully written. With a continuing contract, teachers do stay and invest in the school and the community. My daughter was blessed with having the same Chemistry teacher I had. She was outstanding! I am now teaching children of my past 5th and 6th grade students…I am able to say, “You look so much like your mom…You are great at Math just like your dad was!”
You are so right. Do communities want to lose this? I guess they need to be careful what they wish for. They just might get it. I loved your comments, Ellen. Thank you so much!
Thank you for your kind words, sad teacher. Since tenure is now being threatened in NYS, perhaps I should put these sentiments into a letter to the editor.
And now that school is almost (or already) done, perhaps for a little while we can give you the nickname of “happy” teacher.
In the New Yorker, Jell Lepore writes about Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, the huckster who in his classes, lectures, and book “The Innovator’s Delimma” has marketed “creative disruption” to thousand of gullible would-be entrepreneurs and hedge-fund managers:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all
Excerpt:
“If your city’s public-school district has adopted an Innovation Agenda, which has disrupted the education of every kid in the city, you live in the shadow of “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” If you saw the episode of the HBO sitcom “Silicon Valley” in which the characters attend a conference called TechCrunch Disrupt 2014 (which is a real thing), and a guy from the stage, a Paul Rudd look-alike, shouts, “Let me hear it, disss-ruppttt!,” you have heard the voice of Clay Christensen, echoing across the valley.
***
“The idea of innovation is the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics. Disruptive innovation goes further, holding out the hope of salvation against the very damnation it describes: disrupt, and you will be saved.”
***
“Disruptive innovation as an explanation for how change happens is everywhere. Ideas that come from business schools are exceptionally well marketed. Faith in disruption is the best illustration, and the worst case, of a larger historical transformation having to do with secularization, and what happens when the invisible hand replaces the hand of God as explanation and justification. Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business.”
Interesting, Harold.
I relate to the Pendulum, or “what is old is new again” or even “What goes around, comes around”. Or, “those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it”.
As technology advances, life changes for the moment, until we move on, but ultimately the basics remain.
We see it in education. We had Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry/Advanced Algebra. Then it was reconfigured into Course 1, Course 2, and Course 3. It was subsequently determined that students might need more time to learn math, so we had Math A for all over a one to two year period, Math B for some, and Math C for even less. And within the last few years we now have Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry/Advanced Algebra. It was determined that the subjects were easier to learn if they were correctly labeled. I’m sure CCSS has a new slant.
Don’t get me started on all the reading strategies which have come and go.
Or the various computer programs. I was very fond of sticky bear for my oldest, and Chicka, Chicka, Boom Boom taught my youngest his alphabet. My son learned to write via texting – his cousin forced him to pay attention to spelling if he wanted an answer. My two youngest sent and received thousands of texts each month. My daughter is a master of “thumb” typing. My grand daughter expresses herself through Instagram.
Innovation or the Cycle of Life? I don’t obsess over what I can’t control, but I pay attention to the implementation of far fetched ideas which might or might not work, adopted solely in the name of innovation.
I’ve learned – Not on my child!
“I relate to the Pendulum, or “what is old is new again” or even “What goes around, comes around”. Or, “those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it”.
Hopefully, we won’t get fooled again, eh!?
Don’t count on it, Duane. Humans are stupid creatures. While an animal will eventually learn from their mistakes, humans repeat their inane actions hoping for a different result. And even when we are surprised by a specific event, such as the ousting of Cantor, the reasons for this change of heart (anti-immigrantion) selfishly bordered on the in humane.
And our propensity for self destructive behaviors allows the rheformers to take advantage of our ignorance of good vs evil.
I know Darwin’s survival of the fittest fits in somewhere, but where does that leave those of us who know what is going on, but can’t stop the annihilation.
Ellen,
It seems to me because most Americans are “believers”, i.e., not only religious but lacking in creative free rational and logical thinking because that is what “belief” demands of those under its sway.
““I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” G. Spence
Duane, you have a valid point. Unfortunately, people use religion as an excuse for their behaviors. If they really understood the true meaning of the religion they profess to follow, this would an entirely different world. However, I know some absolutely wonderful people who love a good life and continually help others, yet do not have a clue of the true implications of current political policies.