From a reader:
I guess the thing about tenure is this: Most critics say it protects bad teachers. In essence it is just the opposite. It protects good, excellent teachers from “helicopter parents” and personality conflicts with administrators. Say you are a clerk in a store, and a customer accuses you of being dishonest In your dealings with them. The accusation is not at all true. Do you think you should be fired? This happens quite often to teachers. Tenure is to make sure proper procedures are followed to make sure accusations are true/false. I am not saying what is said is always false, but there are 2 sides to every story. I was once accused of something I did not do, and there were 5 adult school employees present who were witnesses for me. There were even students who volunteered to come forward with the truth. I was lucky that I had school administrators who were willing to get to the bottom of the situation by a fair investigation, but all teachers are not that lucky. You might also have to deal with school board members who have a personal vendetta (this is especially true for those who are teacher/coaches) or want someone let go because they gave a daughter, son, wife,etc. that they would like to give that position to. Tenure is also needed in these situations.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s a sticky situation for sure. But I take offense to the term helicopter parent. I am very involved in my kids education. Does this make me a helicopter parent? I hope not. I 100% support my kids teachers and I’m not the mom who says “not my kid” but I will challenge a teacher any time when I disagree with decisions that do not make sense to the education of not only my child, but any child in the class.
I agree. A few bad teachers does not mean all teachers are bad; a few helicopter parents does not mean all parents are helicopters. I think the media has promoted the myth of bad teachers, while also further perpetuating the animosity between teachers and parents. Another aspect of education reform that needs to change.
I actually welcome any challenge by a parent and use that as an opportunity to pull them in to the learning process. It is usually an eye opener.
tenure is not to protect you from accusations, it’s to protect your academic freedom:
“Academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: ” -wikipedia
Tenure should **not** be automatic, but based on **results**. It’s already well-documented that teacher lay-offs are rarely based on results, but on length of teaching.
You’re mixing in academic freedom with union protections.
Any accusation against a teacher should be handled the same **regardless** of tenure or length teaching.
Wikipedia apparently doesn’t recognize a very common use of the word in US K12 education, which is a guarantee of due process afforded by collective bargaining.
There are other remedies for bad teachers and bad performance. They are utilized in real world work places every day. Tenure is not beneficial for school or student.
Career status (right to due process) is beneficial for school teachers. Public schools are also real world work places.
Sorry. But I’ve worked for my share of relatives and croonies in the private sector to know your “remedies” aren’t exactly beneficial. I’ve seen honest people set up and fired based on accusations. Or good people have to choose between integrity and livelihood. Or bad employees run companies. Teachers often have to make difficult and unpopular decisions and, believe me, beyond unions, no one has their back. Call it “due process” if that makes you more comfortable – a very American idea.
“Tenure” (properly known as due process rights) would benefit everyone, including in the “real world”. The problem isn’t that teachers have such rights, the problem is that other employees don’t. Believe it or not, due process rights would benefit employers as much as employees. People are much more productive when they feel secure in their jobs.
And to add, if employers cared a fig for the integrity of their companies, they would offer due process as a protection for whistleblowers. Unfortunately, it’s usually the top dogs responsible for the wrong-doing and they really don’t care a fig for integrity (which such word is rapidly becoming archaic these days).
The entire tenure debate is a distraction. All tenured teachers have is a continuing contract with right of due process. It is no harder to fire a teacher than a DMV clerk. Teacher detractors want to claim that teacher tenure keeps our schools full to the brim with “bad” teachers. This cannot be supported. It is just another tactic to keep focus from the real issues in education.
As long as we are tricked into finding solutions where there is no problem (teacher performance), we are kept from facing up to the difficult truths. Through history, the real wrongdoers must find a scapegoat for the duped public to vent on. Today, the education deformers want you to despise the very person you entrust your child with every day.
It is sickening.
TAGO!
I agree 100%. The majority of “news stories” (the media itself calls them that) are hyped-up spin or irrelevant. However, we have allowed this to happen. Perhaps, the recent passing of Pete Seeger will remind people that they have to speak out against injustices every single waking hour of every single waking day! Thanks, Michael Weston, for reminding everybody what is really going on.
They aren’t “tenured”–they are post-probationary. STOP using the term “tenure” because that applies ONLY to post-secondary teachers, both public and private and exists because of the concept of “academic freedom,” which does NOT exist for K-12 teachers.
+1
I agree that the tenure debate is a distraction; but how do we respond to it, publicly, in a way that truly turns the discussion around? It seems as though I encounter media teacher bashing on a daily basis from the left and the right that are frequently followed up by blaming tenure. Often I want to respond, but can’t find the words without appearing to be on the defensive.
Concerned teacher: don’t use the word “tenure.” Speak instead of die process and the right to a fair hearing. That is the American way.
All you have to do is look at the differences in school performance between states with strong unions and sates with weak unions and it becomes obvious unionized teachers are better.
Except the last part, true. Unionized states have other things going for them. Non-unionized states have more poverty.
It’s not the teachers.
Please cite your source(s).
But the data suggested by Victoria certainly could not be used to show that unions are the main roadblock to good education, which is a claim often made by those who would like to further destroy unions.
Folks,
AY AY AY, quit using the edudeformers’ language. I know of no K-12 teacher who has “tenure”. Some have due process rights but all can be let go of if needed and the teacher can’t do squat.
Tenure = edudeformer bullshit talking point.
Thank you. We really need to stop using the word “tenure” when discussing due process rights of public school teachers. We do NOT have tenure. We have continuing contracts, career status contracts. Yes, career status teachers can be fired. There must be strong documentation, but a career status can be fired. Often what happens is forced resignation and/or a promise of a “glowing” recommendation to go to another district.
Señor Swacker: ya has dado en el blanco/you’ve hit the bullseye!
It is a misleading, harmful and distracting euphemism [ok, lie] to label “the right to due process” as “tenure.”
It’s like calling genuine learning “achievement” and “performance” and the like—it’s straight out of the psychometric lexicon.
I can attest from experience that due process is essential to both teachers and students—hard to be an advocate for your students when you’re fearful of losing your job to incompetent and vengeful administrators who want compliance and silence from staff and students and parents.
I have a novel idea: for the truly dreadful teaching staff who refuse to improve, why don’t administrators do their jobs? Oh, I forgot: that means expending time and energy at their workplace, something that too many educrats thought ended once they left the classroom and settled into their comfy chairs in their “don’t bother me I’m busy doing anything but work” offices.
*Note: it woud be remiss of me not to acknowledge the hard-working and effective administrators who feel a calling to support teachers and students.*
😎
It’s not so much “tenure” they want to go after. It’s whatever they can do to ditch the more expensive teachers and hire the cheap ones – over and over.
Poor teachers should never be protected, but experience matters.
What constitutes a “poor” teacher from a “good” one, and who determines that?
Of course the principal, who generally was a poor teacher who had connections to get out of the classroom.
Teachers are not the problem in public education.
I was actually told by one of Vanderbilt’s Peabody students: “You can tell” when I asked that very question.
I also overheard an undergraduate girl discuss her passion for a “education consultant track”.
Apparently, Vanderbilt’s integrity rests on show me the money. What happened to a teacher college preparing principals and teachers. Instead, they work for the World Bank to privatize third world education systems.
SOMEONE REALLY NEEDS TO LOOK AT THE GREEDY OPPORTUNISM OF THE VANDERBILT PEABODY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION’S PROGRAMS.
Who would train undergraduates to be education consultants? I looked at the Peabody website but I could find no such track. If you can find a page on their website with that info, please post it here.
ALL public school districts, like all public institutions, are governed by administrative law. ALL public employees who are post-probationary have the right to a hearing before being disciplined or fired. Just because few teachers go through the hearings and almost always lose doesn’t mean teachers aren’t terminated from employment. That is always district or reformist spin to claim few teachers are “dismissed,” when the bureaucratic term for “dismissal” ONLY applies to teachers who bother to go through the sham tribunals called administrative hearings.
The ONLY thing teachers have are civil service protections, which can be gamed by districts. They do NOT have “lifetime” employment enjoyed by postsecondary college and university professors, both public and private, after a long, long probationary period.
Before spewing off about teacher “protections,” how about talking to teachers and former teachers who have actually experienced these sham tribunals where school district attorneys and administrators cannot be criminally prosecuted for breaking the law? There are a few of us around who intimately know the process and know how this and the civil system are heavily rigged against teachers.
Teachers are the very lowest caste in this country. They have NO protections from administrators who want to get rid of them. Almost all targeted teachers are railroaded into early retirement, forced resignations, resignations in lieu of dismissals, or quitting instead of going through the administrative proceedings. School district administrators are unique in the economy in that they have unlimited power to destroy careers with little consequence.
Even if a teacher wins the crapshoot and actually gets reinstated, he or she will have a target on his or her back for the remainder of his or her career.
It’s not clear from the original post whether the person actually went through a sham tribunal. The fact is districts can and do game hearings without consequence, and that is more common than a “fair process” that supposedly the OP went through. Administrators will throw you under the bus if their careers are in any way threatened by their negligence, incompetence, or vindictiveness.
I was not allowed witnesses, my association’s executive director was actually bribed with a district job working under the same administrator in HR who had orchestrated my “investigation” and ouster instead of being a witness for me, false documents were put in my file, the district’s witnesses lied under oath, evidence in my favor was destroyed, the district’s attorney hurled every bit of filth at me in hopes something would stick, the arbitrator was known to break the law, could and did break the law since his “award” couldn’t be appealed, and so on down the line. They ALL colluded, and I was basically hung out to dry while these administrators who should have been fired are allowed to continue to have taxpayer-financed employment.
You have NO protections as a teacher. Don’t ever kid yourself that you do.
That’s an obvious problem. Until it gets to court (by which time reputations are probably permantly damaged) it’s a bit sticky about the right to confront accusers.
I suppose in our system, it’s then up to the teacher to sue in court for wrongful termination? Kinda after the horse has left the barn, admittedly…
It depends upon the adminstrators doing a good job, I guess. While I’m not in favor of teachers unions, there obviously needs to be some protections in place to deal with spurious accusations, or just vendettas.
Dunno, where possible metrics should be used, IMHO.
Does anyone know if union membership typically includes malpractice insurance coverage?
Not included in NC’s association dues. We don’t have a union in NC even tough we are an affiliate of NEA.
My experience showed that even teachers with tenure can be “reassigned” even if they have proven their excellence. School boards have the power and use it – at least in our school corporation they did. This was true of coaches who were excellent, had winning records. Ignorance or just plain vendetta.
What role do you see **elected** school boards as having, if not having an effect on staffing? Why is that off-limits to elected officials?
A winning coach might not be number one priority…
I remember taking a couple academic classes with “reassigned” coaches in high school. Ugh. They were nice people but not subject matter experts in their assigned courses and should have been kept in PE.
The oligarchs will not be satisfied until they can make with impunity, on their sole authority, on their sole whim, any decision whatsoever that they wish to make about the lives of others.
This is about centralized, unquestioned, unilateral command and control. Full stop.
Tenure is also needed in education so that a teacher does not feel he/she has to tow the party line. Tenure frees the teacher to show students all sides even sides that may be unpopular with the powers that be. without tenure a teacher is not free to expose students to a full range of ideas and principles. this is why tenure is so essential to the teaching profession. A teacher at a charter school said to me why does a teacher need tenure any more than a carpenter does. When I mentioned that carpenters don’t engage in the free folw of ideas she was stumped.
well said, jfraad!
“…carpenters don’t engage in the free flow of ideas…” perfect.
It seems as though every time I’m thinking or talking about something lately, Diane Ravitch posts the same exact sentiments. All teachers everywhere should stand and applaud Ms. Ravitch for keeping us informed about all of these things that we need to know. We must thank her from the bottom of our hearts for having the courage to stand up for certified teachers in public education before the profession is destroyed beyond repair and hurts the children we diligently work to teach and protect.
You realize that teachers give up their tenure no matter how many years they have served when they become administrators. Who protects them when falsely accused?
Teachers also give up their tenure when they move to a new school distict within a state or when they cross state lines, or when they move to a new specialty area. I have colleagues who have switched specialty area…in one case from Special Education to ESL…not only do they go through the probationary process all over again, but also they lose their “seniority” status.
I enjoyed all of the comments. While we pass the time discussing how “American” due process is, Diane, your friend Steve Zimmer, Board member of the L.A. Unified School district is ignoring this very important right. Senior teachers are being railroaded through dismissal with Zimmer’s active support. I myself have been cleared by law enforcement. This was ignored by Mr. Zimmer and with the addition of serious charges such as “rolling up a carpet,” I am in the process of dismissal. THERE IS NO DUE PROCESS AND IF YOU FEEL THIS IS OKAY THEN DO NOTHING. THERE CURRENTLY IS NO PROTECTION OF DUE PROCESS IN THE LAUSD. PLEASE HELP.
Speaking from 30+ years as a labor attorney representing management and govt, never unions or employees, it’s extremely irritating to listen to those who allege that “tenure” rules as prevent school systems from discharging poorly-performing teachers.
I represented management for a unionized employer that employed many white-collar/professional employees. These employees were covered by union contracts requiring just cause for discharge — essentially the same protection afforded by teacher tenure laws. These union contracts did not prevent the employer from discharging poorly-performing employees. To the extent that the union contracts did prevent the employer from discharging employees, it was the well-performing employees who were protected from what might have been dumb discharges by managers who sometimes wanted to discharge the well-performing employees for irrational or even evil reasons.
When a manager had an employee who was performing poorly (either do to incompetence or, more usually, laziness/misconduct), the manager imposed either multiple short performance-review periods (for incompetence) or progressive discipline (for laziness/misconduct). Often, the poorly-performing employee responded by quitting or by engaging in blatant misconduct obviously justifying discharge. Sometimes, the employee improved. Otherwise, the manager discharged the employee. In all cases, the manager kept the union in the loop from the get-go. If the employee was discharged, the union usually filed a grievance but did not invoke arbitration; the union knew that management had a well-documented case supporting discharge, the union stewards knew the employee was performing poorly, and the union knew that the members would not be happy if the union wasted the members’ dues on a losing arbitration. If the union did arbitrate, management usually won the arbitration. None of this is rocket science, just decent management. (And, as management’s labor attorney, I sometimes relied on the possibility of an arbitrator overturning a weak discharge in convincing managers to back off from plans to discipline/discharge well-performing employees for irrational or evil reasons.)
Admittedly, it is sometimes difficult for principals to document poor performance by teachers. The problem, however, is not tenure but rather inadequate management. Often/usually principals do not have enough time in the day to actually supervise the teachers. And, principals rarely have any training/experience in managing/supervising employees. Eliminating tenure would make it easier for over-worked/untrained/inexperienced principals to discharge poorly-performing teachers. But it would also make it easier for those principals to discharge well-performing teachers and my personal experience suggests that many of the discharges facilitated by eliminating tenure would be of well-performing teachers.
The answer to the poorly-performing-teacher problem is not to eliminate tenure. Rather, the answer is to add another administrator or two to management in the schools, to train principals/asst principals re how to supervise employees (particularly re how to impose progressive discipline for laziness/misconduct rather than relying on observations/evaluations that are really designed to address incompetence rather than laziness/misconduct), and to implement “peer-review” systems similar to that used for over 10 years in Montgomery County, MD (that are do not rely so much on peer review but rather achieve excellent results by providing an independent reviewing teacher who provides first-line hands-on supervision to teachers who are suspected of performing poorly.
Yes!
As a unionized teacher and a former business manager, I could not agree more.
Inadequate (and sometimes incompetent) supervision is a much bigger problem than due process rights.
It is THE problem. Teachers across the country are now being unfairly evaluated by test scores largely because of the reluctance or inability of principals to manage/supervise. I don’t buy the lack of time argument only because supervision of teachers prior to granting tenure should be their number one priority. They vet resumes, the interview many, then they get three years to determine if a teacher is lazy, disorganized to the point of poor performance, or simply unable to communicate with children. I have worked for at least a dozen different principals and have found most to be either non-supportive, non-confrontational when necessary, or they have been far too confrontational when unnecessary. Principals walk a fine line between supervising/managing/correcting/supporting and needing the much needed cooperation of teachers. Overall, being an excellent manager, like being an excellent teacher, probably requires a very complex and nuanced skill set. Otherwise wed see a lot more of both.
Lovely ideas but the truth on the ground is that principals follow guidelines that do not require justifications. In my case I was accused of incompetence because I did not follow the steps in a formal lesson even though the assistant principal dropped in unannounced on a non-formal lesson time of the day – story time in Kindergarten. My questions for clarification from her have been ignored to this day. I asked when do you expect to see this step in a context such as this.
“PERFORMING POORLY,” in the classroom CANNOT BE DEFINED BY MEANS USED IN BUSINESS SUCH AS OUTPUT. Other areas such as interpersonal relationships can be claimed without ANY SUPPORTING EVIDENCE. Example: Principal (P) “The first grade teachers are complaining that your children are not well prepared.” Me (M) “Which teachers?” P. “I can’t tell you that.” M “Which children?” P. “I can’t tell you that.” M. “In what way did I not prepare them?” P. (no answer) M. “Of the three first grade teachers, which complained?” P. “I can’t tell you that.” M. “Are mine the only students not prepared?” P. “I can’t tell you that.” You get the gist of the conversation.
This might be funny if it were not part of the case against me in the process of my dismissal from the L.A. Unified School district after almost three decades of service. OUR BOARD OF EDUCATION WHICH INCLUDES TWO ATTORNEYS, ONE OF WHICH IS A DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY IGNORES DUE PROCESS IN ORDER TO GET RID OF SENIOR TEACHERS.
CHECK OUT UNJUSTLY JAILED LAUSD TEACHERS ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE INFORMATION.
The decision to deny tenure or dismiss a teacher can, in many cases involve a huge gray cloud of opinion. Many teachers that students and parents complain about conduct themselves with marginal degrees of competency. They may seem lazy; but exactly what degree of laziness warrants dismissal or denial of tenure? They may seem disorganized and inefficient; but what degree of disorganization or inefficiency warrants dismissal or denial of tenure? Very delicate questions in most cases.
I was teaching in Missouri before tenure and after tenure. I think I therefor have a more adequate view than most. I was a teacher leader and heard complaints about unfair dismissals. Teachers were told privately that they did not reflect community values because a hemline didn’t reach the middle of the kneecap, a teacher wasn’t in church on Sunday morning or was in the wrong church. These reports were too numerous not to be validated.
Great teachers will avoid districts without tenure (due process) because they sometimes challenge community values as well as reflect them.
They do not want to be subjected to an arbitrary dismissal for treading on what someone believes is sensitive ground. It should be noted that the absence of due process protects bad administrators. I made all these points in testimony in support of a tenure bill committee hearing. The measure did not pass that session but did in a subsequent session. Now some temporary ancestors want us to return to the days when hemlines and church attendance are a part of a teacher’s evaluation.
Interesting to note that there were some instances in which a teacher was given a superior performance evaluation just a week or ten days before being fired.