Sara Stevenson, school librarian in Austin and a member of the blog honor roll, is intrepid. she reads the Wall Street Journal every day and responds promptly to every attack on public schools and teachers, one of WSJ’s major preoccupations.
She wrote the letter below. She forgot to ask Peterson and Hanushek to give up their tenure at Harvard and Stanford to prove they don’t believe in tenure:
From: Sara Stevenson
Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Subject: Response to Paul E. Peterson on Teacher Tenure (8-18-14)
To: “ltrs, wsj”
Paul E. Peterson cites surveys of parents, communities, and teachers to determine the percentage of current teachers whose performance deserves a D or F rating. He underscores that even teachers rate 13% of their colleagues as failures. Stated inversely, teachers approve of the performance of 87% of their cohorts. Peterson and Eric Hanushek use this data to fuel their mission to exterminate “bad teachers” from the profession. At the same time, our current Congress has an 8% approval (92% disapproval) rating. I’m interested in the percentage of “bad” actors in other professions.
Rather than focusing on drumming out “bad teachers,” why don’t we focus on improving teacher conditions and training and on attracting more talented young people to the profession? With 40% of all teachers leaving the profession within five years, it’s certainly not a sinecure, in spite of certain states with teacher tenure. Finally, Peterson cites other nations, including Finland, as role models in education in spite of the fact that 100% of Finnish teachers are unionized with tenure protections. We need to shift our focus in this tired education debate.
Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Right on. Good job.
#Dueprocess must be done right.
I have been giving this Tenure – Due Process issue a lot of thought lately. Like anything else worth doing, it is worth doing well. How we supervise and develop better teachers and even how we get rid of bad ones has to be done the right way for the right reasons.
We all have to be ok with the fact that due process can, and maybe should more often, find someone duly criminal or that he or she needs to be removed from their job because of incompetence or just plain laziness. What if due process means assuring that?
Are we ok with that? I am, as long as every person and every case is judged individually and fairly. There are lots of teachers I know who, like me, who wish their supervisors were more qualified and had the “cojones” to do due process on those who make our profession look bad.
The pride we have in our schools means we all work hard to get better at what we do. Those who can’t or won’t (and we know there are too many of those) put in the time and effort become a huge problem for everyone, especially our students.
I had my share of colleagues, teachers and supervisors both, who ranged from absolutely incredible at their jobs to absolutely awful. I had principals and assistant principals / department chairs who knew great teaching from lousy and worked with people to improve their skills. However, if those teachers didn’t knew enough to understand that they brought our department, school, and staff down several notches, they had to be brought to justice.
Principals must be principled. The following story is from my book, Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks:
“Adlai Stevenson’s first principal Leonard Littwin scared people, but Lenny knew teaching. He was blunt and direct. He sat in the back of classrooms, watching and taking notes. He was a master social studies teacher before he became an administrator. His goal, which he filtered down to his department chairs, was to develop as many talented teachers as possible. Mostly, he succeeded. Many succeeded to pass on what they learned, including me. What he told me, he must have shared with hundreds of teachers over the years. He asked three essential questions:
• What do you want your students to know, understand, do, and communicate by the end of your class?
• How are you going to assess those?
• What do you want them buzzing about as they leave, so that they want more tomorrow?
With those questions as our focus, we discussed how projected outcomes, goals, and objectives are to be achieved and measured using authentic assessments (essay writing, projects of all sorts, and even multiple-choice and short-answer questions).”
But for those who couldn’t pass muster, life was different. Lenny played no favorites or harbored no grudges. He had one goal and one goal only, and that was to make you a better teacher. Tenured or not, he would come to classes with that goal in mind. We all have to get better.
If you couldn’t, didn’t, or worse yet, didn’t try… other “opportunities” would be offered. Perhaps a transfer to another school? No? Ok, then you choose more observations and conferences? These weren’t to harass but to encourage growth. But I guess that depends on one’s perspective. Most of these “lesser qualified” teachers left on their own accord, to other schools they found more comfortable, but many of us felt bad for the students in those schools.
A few bucked back and either “endured” more supervision or in some cases were “2030A’d”, the NY legal term for the due process route for dismissal. The one I witnessed actually became a famous case and the person got exactly what he deserved. He should not have been teaching and it was a good thing that our principal had the principle to use the system to get rid of him, as difficult as it was.
But I warn people not to take this the wrong way or to take my words lightly. I am in favor of due process. I am in favor of helping both old and new teachers improve. However, I am also in favor of helping those who should leave the profession, shall we say, make a timely exit.
If we don’t do both our profession will continue to suffer the consequences of poor prestige, constant attacks, and a dearth of qualified people going into the profession.
What is it exactly that we are supposed to do as teachers? You very eloquently described the skill of an administrator with whom you worked. I should underline administrator. As teachers, we can recognize a weak colleague and support them if they ask, but we have no formal role in their supervision. It is not my job to “help” a colleague to leave as it sounds like you are suggesting. I refuse to accept the blame for the existence of bad teachers.
Here is my response to the WSJ op-ed by Paul E. Peterson to the friend who gave me a copy. …
Hi Xxxxx,
I read the opinion piece you gave me from The Wall Street Journal. It’s interesting.
The author, Paul E. Peterson, is a well documented education “reformer”, meaning that he supports public tax dollars going to private companies that are neither accountable to the public, through the democratic processes established over the past couple centuries, nor transparent in how they spend those public dollars. This style of “reform” has led to unprecedented fraud and mismanagement.
Peterson runs Education Next, which did the poll, and the Harvard Program on Education Policy which, according to the article, oversaw the poll. He seems to be caught in a feedback loop of his own research supporting his own opinions based on his own research…and so on. If his polling data is legitimate we should see it supported by sources other than him.
Most of the public, if they know anything of tenure, seem to believe the suddenly hip, suddenly important, inflammatory misinformation that tenure means that a teacher cannot be fired. Members of my own family, who worked as public school administrators, can attest to the fact that teachers can be fired…because they fired teachers. Every year in Xxxxxx County, in Indiana, in America, teachers are fired. If there truly are “bad” teachers and an administrator can’t figure out how to document the problem, that’s evidence of a problem at the administrative level.
“Tenure” for a public school teacher means that an administrator has to document why they are firing a teacher. There has to be due process. That’s all. Tenure protects teachers in that an administrator cannot fire a teacher for having facial hair, teaching evolution, having students read a banned book (such as To Kill a Mocking Bird or Of Mice and Men), because they just don’t like them, because their buddy or nephew wants a job, because they are experienced and cost more than an inexperienced teacher, because they are unpopular with students who don’t want to work hard, etc. Tenure protects “good” teachers, not “bad” teachers. “Bad” teachers will be fired regardless of tenure.
Peterson (a truly tenured and therefore eternally protected professor at Harvard) doesn’t explain any of this to his readers (I wonder if his pollsters did). I’d like to ask him why.
Furthermore, when the measurement tool used to determine “good” and “bad” teachers is so flawed that it “just happens” to condemn teachers working with poorer populations while celebrating teachers working with wealthier populations, how can we honestly determine whether a teacher is “good” or “bad”? A class with high standardized test results in a school with high wealth could be the perfect hiding place for a “bad” teacher. Just as low standardized test results in a poverty stricken school could be masking a brilliant teacher, holding her back from being the subject of the next Hollywood excursion into the American classroom. Not to mention, if we teach kids to do well on standardized tests they are only going to learn how to do well on standardized tests! That is not what I, as a parent, want for my kids. I’ve never met a parent that does.
This issue is so much broader than what I’ve written here…I could really go on for hours.
I appreciate you passing these on to me. Please keep it up, I promise I won’t always send my analysis. Thanks, Xxxxxx
Mr Glen wrote…
“Tenure” for a public school teacher means that an administrator has to document why they are firing a teacher. There has to be due process. That’s all.”
Due process is enshrined in the Constitution as the 14th Amendment and in most states all public employees have due process procedures and rights of appeal. Tenure is statutes or contract language on top of due process. So, no, it is not ‘That’s all’, tenure is more than due process.
Due process applies in a court of law, not necessarily in a professional workplace. Major difference. People can be fired for any reason in an at-will environment. I’ve had friends that were fired or laid off without any real reason. It simply met the standard of not being arbitrary or capricious.
And yes, I’ve seen it happen to friends in public sector jobs.
CW,
No, “tenure” for K12 is not more than due process rights. That is all it is, nothing more.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/08/19/ohio-teacher-turns-down-studentsfirst-in-spectacular-fashion/
A powerful reply to the “Student First” con artists
Much has happened to undermine the effectiveness of the Fourth Estate in our free society during the past decade including the loss of much of our investigative journalism infrastructure due to the massive declines of revenues in the daily print media industry.
One of the greatest losses that has occurred in our freedom of information was the decision by the Bancroft Family to sell for the huge amount of five billion dollars, its Dow Jones & Company, which owns The Wall Street Journal to the ultimate social climber, Rupert Mudoch, who has some of the most dubious credentials in the publishing industry.
The WSJ no longer holds the lofty respect it once had earned, as it has lost so many of the highly effective journalists that we had trusted for decades.
One of the greatest losses is in the area of the indepth page one humanitarian columns run several times per week that provided in incredible insight into important topics.
One of the most important of these pieces was the one addressing the vast chasm in readiness of young students arriving for kindergarten at a public school in Los Angeles serving a population with enormous variances in family wealth as well as preparedness of the children in the family for kindergarten.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB998511295703108758
This piece offers, in my opinion, the best single reasoning for the need for high quality pre-K professional instruction so as to bring up the abilities and social skills of those in lower socioeconomic families so that there will be a parity of readiness the first day of kindergarten in our public schools.
Keeping the incredibly effective resource of well educated parents to assist teachers in
shouldering the tsunami of grunt work imposed on faculty members as well as planning, organizing and executing enrichment activities to complement classroom learning is absolutely essential in any school type.
“why don’t we focus on improving teacher conditions and training”
You mean school district administrators, teacher unions, and Ed Schools do not already do this?
“and on attracting more talented young people to the profession?”
I can only name only national one group that is helping to attract talented young people. Are there any other than TFA? Maybe NPE\AFT\NEA could put some of their efforts and resources into doing the things suggested by Ms Stevenson.
>You mean school district administrators, teacher unions, and Ed Schools do not already do this?
None of those are because pro-private governors and superintendents are keeping them from doing that. Too bad many young talented people are being deceived, brainwashed, and screwed by those self-proclaiming Ed Deformers bankrolled by wealthy donors, billionaires, and hedge-fund managers. It’s just so naïve to expect WSJ to report the truth about public education.
The good news is that each member of the House can be fired every two years.
I was surprised that the percentage of teachers thought to be poor by teachers (13%) was not all that far from the percentage of teachers thought to be poor by the general public (20%) in another survey reported on in this blog (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/08/education_next_poll_shows_comm.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2).
You, the voter, do not have the power to eject those whom you have lost confidence in due to the exceptional prowess that both of the major parties have developed in their ability to gerrymander House districts after every US Census.
There is a tendency for these gerrymandered districts to keep in office many who are out of favor of voters, but whom are receiving huge political donations from special interests, who favor office holders who appear to be able to hold onto their seat in Congress.
We need constraints on the ability to manipulate district lines for political purposes, perhaps with a limit on shape of a rectangle with limits on length in comparison to the width of a district.
You, the voter, need to be put back in power, not the special interests who are willing to pay up to keep the interest of elected officials.
Dormand,
I agree that gerrymandering is a huge issue. My suggestion would be legislation that would require districts to be convex, that is a line connecting any two points in the district must lie entirely in the district. Given that there are some odd shapes at state borders though, we might have to relax the requirement a little.
TE, Until your suggestion happens, your original post is then incorrect at worst or flawed logic at best.
The difference between your ideal proposal and reality is wide. Trust me, I live in a district so Republican that a Santa Claus impersonator who has a history of strange mental episodes won in a landslide simply because an (R) was next to his name.
I certainly don’t think my suggestion will be the solution to all the problems. I have not voted for a successful senatorial candidate for a couple of decades, nor have federal electors voted in a way consistent with my wishes for the same length of time. That is not the fault of gerrymandering as my stars boundaries do not change with the census. It is what comes from being in the minority.
Good to keep on top of nonsense. On Aug 28, EdWeek will be publishing my reply to a commentary that attacked both teacher unions and blamed unions for everything from “egg crate” school architecture to the length of the school year. The writer claimed to be a democrat, ex-union worker in California, and a professional in communications. He knows how to spin.
Bravo Sara! But all Diane Ravitch fans please keep in mind all good liberals rarely read the WSJ editorial page or the stupid letters because it is known to be in the grip of conservatives. If slanted anti-teacher material creeps into WSJ news, we all should POUNCE. That is where real damage cannot be allowed. On the editorial page, Sara reaches a few conservatives with an open mind and perhaps persuades them. AND we liberal pro public school fans of Diane love to read how Sara skewer anyone she wishes because she write so well in a few well-chosen factual sentences. Again Bravo Sara.