Responding to the extremist group Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, the Kansas state legislature enacted legislation that strips teachers of due process and expands “school choice” (aka privatization of public schools and their funding). In the future, teachers may be fired without a hearing.
The legislature used the pretext of a court ruling to equalize funding to enact proposals that align with the far-right ALEC organization.
Destroying due process is called “reform.” Teachers may be unjustly accused and fired without a hearing. They may be fired because they taught both sides of a controversial issue or expressed a controversial view. They may be fired because the principal doesn’t like the way they look or doesn’t like their race or religion. No reason is needed because there will be no hearing.
Without any right to a fair hearing, you can be sure that the word “evolution” will never be heard in many districts, nor any reference to global warming. Nor will many classics of American literature be taught. Books like “Huckleberry Finn,” “Invisible Man,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” are risky and controversial. Now is exactly when the children of Kansas and the U.S. should be reading “1984” and “Brave New World.”
“The bill is potentially a big victory for conservative Republicans because it gives them some educational reforms they have sought while putting more money into schools.
The reforms would:
• Foster school choice by allowing corporations to make tax-deductible contributions to scholarship funds so children with special needs or who come from low-income households could attend private school.
• Make it easier to fire teachers by eliminating their due-process rights.
• Relax teacher licensing when hiring instructors with professional experience in areas including math, science, finance and technical education.
“As the final bill was negotiated, lawmakers jettisoned an idea to block funding for Common Core academic standards.
“They also shed a plan that would have provided property tax relief for parents who home-school their children or send them to private schools. Lawmakers questioned whether the property tax break was constitutional and whether they knew its real cost.
“Urged on by conservative special interests such as Americans for Prosperity, Republican leaders pressed hard to eliminate due process rights for teachers.
“They say the proposal is intended to ensure that school administrators are free from regulations that would keep them from firing substandard teachers.
“If you talk to administrators, they want this,” said Sen. Julia Lynn, an Olathe Republican. “They want really good teachers to thrive. They don’t want to be in a position to protect those teachers who are under-performing.”
“State law had required administrators to document conduct and provide a hearing for teachers they want to fire after three years on the job.
“The bill means terminated teachers would no longer be able to request a hearing.”
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/06/4941974/kansas-lawmakers-pass-school-finance.html#storylink=cpy
Just making Kansas more Kansan than ever. Not for nothing is there a book called WHAT’S WRONG WITH KANSAS?
“They may be fired because the principal… doesn’t like their race or religion.”
There’s no reason to go overboard here. Your qualms about this bill aside, teachers in Kansas still have all the legal protections against federally-prohibitted discrimination that workers in the private sector have. The Kansas bill does not repeal the Civil Rights Act.
Jack Talbot, if there are no hearings, the administrator does not have to state a reason. She may fire a teacher for any reason, including those prohibited by federal law. That’s why hearings are necessary for due process.
Employees in the private sector do not have the benefit of hearings, either. So like I said, Kansas teachers are no worse off in that regard than anyone else.
Private sector employees are not public employees. Jack, don’t come over here if you don’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of why teachers have due process protections. ALL public employees have these because they are employed by various governments,and those jobs are considered property rights, rights that cannot be taken away without due process.
Police, fire, and other public employees have the IDENTICAL HEARINGS.
Kansas teachers must–MUST–fight this in court. It is illegal and unconstitutional.
Susan, are you under the impression that everyone who is employed by a government entity has a property interest in their job?
I can see a lot of expensive lawsuits. Does the federal government have the option of withholding federal funds because of this?
Jack, the HUGE difference is that without just cause protection, if I suspect I was canned because of my religion, the burden of proof is on me to show that was the case, which will be very difficult if the decision was made by a single individual or behind closed doors.
With just cause protection, the administration has to provide a reason to fire me, which will be very difficult for them if the only thing they have against me is that they don’t like my religious views.
As someone living in a state that made this same change a few years ago, I can assure you it dramatically changes the way hiring and firing decisions are made, and not for the reasons stated by the supporters of this bill.
I understand what you are saying, but again, this is the way it is for everyone else. I’m not arguing that this change is good; I’m only saying that it isn’t something strange or unheard of — quite the opposite, in fact. In most professions, this is called “normal.”
Jack – so why should we settle for what “everyone else” gets? Why shouldn’t “everyone else” get what teachers get? Why should anyone have to fear losing their livelihood for arbitrary reasons?
Dienne — That would be an interesting discussion, but it’s tangential to my point. I just think it’s helpful if we don’t resort to hyperbole. The truth is bad enough on its own.
Jack, “normal” people aren’t subject to as many variables as teachers are. Without due process protection, anything goes. For instance, any student can make up any story to get back at a teacher they don’t like….whether it’s for bad grades, the color of their skin, whatever. EVERY day kids try to get back at teachers (because they’re kids!). Imagine the playing field now that kids know that can get their teachers fired with the snap of their fingers. Imagine giving your all to a profession for 20 years and you’re out justlikethat! Great teachers outnumber bad teachers by a hundred to one. Stop drinking the KoolAid.
Actually they can get rid of you very, very easily. The hearings, which few teachers use, are just one more step in the termination process.
Jack, I have explained upthread why “due process” protections exist for ALL public employees. Government employees and private sector employees are not the same and are not treated the same under the law. What Kansas and other states have done is clearly illegal, but teachers are so I don’t know what they don’t even grasp the concept of due process. They really believed like you do that teachers have “lifetime employment” like private and public colleges and university professors. They don’t, and they never have. This disparate treatment of teachers must be challenged in the courts. Why should police officers, firefighters, and other public employees have a right to a hearing while teachers do not?
Do the people in private sector deal will a variety of children and teach subjects that may lead to controversy???
Jack,
“. . . this is the way it is for everyone else.”
As my mom used to say “So if everyone else is jumping off a cliff, you’re going to do it too?????”
They won’t admit that is why they are being fired. They will cook up some false reason. I have been fired for “teaching while white” in a mostly black school system where racial slurs were applied against me, even while the perpetrator had been known to admit I was a really good teacher. So it can be and is done. Don’t delude yourself.
Yes you have echoed my sentaments exactly. Diane you are assuming that all principals in Kansas are these evil tyrants that will do something so absurd as fire a teacher for what they look like? ridiculous! And to jump to conclusions like we won’t teach evolution or global warming? Also ridiculous! When you have to jump to exaggeration, and scare tactics you have lost credibility. The fact is there ARE teachers that need firing, because they are horrible at their job, and it is next to impossible to actually acomplish firing them. We will have to agree to disagree on this one, but I am with full force on common core! Keep up the fight.
Megan, if you think there are bad teachers who have tenure, who gave them tenure? They didn’t give it to themselves. You don’t burn down the whole barn to kill a few rats, do you? Yes, there are teachers who will be unjustly accused by children or parents and fired. And that’s wrong. Due process is not a crazy idea. It is something that comes down through Common Law and into our basic American sense of fairness. Do you think it is right to fire someone without a hearing? I don’t.
One important change that has had a large impact on tenure in post secondary institutions in the elimination of mandatory retirement. It is really asking a great deal of tenure committees to correctly forecast how effective a faculty member will be half a century after tenure was granted. This has lead to efforts for meaningful post tenure evaluation, though this is still in the early stages at my institution at least.
The absence of mandatory retirement has had a big impact on the academic job market, too.
It has indeed.
Many of the best professors that I have had were in their seventies. These were people who brought to the classroom a lifetime of scholarship. My education would have been much the poorer without them.
I’ve noticed something very interesting with regard to such people. Many of them, as they get older, become quite courageous. They become willing to say what their learning has brought them to think, whether this is popular or not. Perhaps that’s because they are no longer driven by the desire to build the resume and the reputation and so are not as subject to social sanction.
So, it would definitely serve the corporate-government alliance that has taken over U.S. education to get rid of these people, for they are not easily cowed.
Bob,
Let me give you a different perspective from the other side of the desk.
Having a significant percentage of the professoriate in their seventies and eighties produces a static institution. Graduate and undergraduate programs end up designed around the leading ideas in the field circa 1960. Hiring priorities and decisions are based on the problems that were exciting and motivating to scholars in the field have a century ago. Faculty who work for a more modern approach are marginalized or pushed out of a department.
It used to be that the power to shape the curriculum naturally shifted from one generation of scholars to another as the older generation retired. That no longer happens, and the transition of departmental leadership all to often turns into a conflict between those who have shaped the department policies and programs for a couple of decades and would like to continue to shape it four a couple more decades and those that look to catch up to where the discipline is today.
It seems to me that Max Planck’s view of scientific progress is more true today than it has ever been: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
I’m not sure it this is true in Kansas but in North Carolina teachers are required to work under a contract. Without due process rights, teachers don’t have to be fired at all. They simply don’t get offered a new contract. And no explanation needs to be given for not offering a new contract. It actually puts teachers in a worse position than private sector employees because they aren’t fired at all. So they can’t even sue under the Civil Rights Act because they are contract employee whose contract simply ended. They can, in fact, very easily be not offered a contract because of race or religion or any other reason, with no recourse. Additionally they cannot just leave a job, like private sector employees. The contract requires they give 30 days notice or lose their license for a year, making them unemployable.
Can anyone point me to a substantive difference between Americans for Prosperity and Democrats for Education Reform?
Americans For Prosperity and StudentsFirst?
Maybe some of these groups could merge, and we wouldn’t have to learn so many different names for groups that push identical policies 🙂
None for all intents and purposes.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I don’t doubt that its sometimes frustrating to try to fire an ineffective teacher and as a former principal I’ve been in that position where I wished it were easier. But at the end of the day if I couldn’t get into a classroom and document the ineffective practices or inappropriate actions to support my recommendation in a hearing then that was ineffectiveness on my part. Administrators may “want this” for teachers but likely won’t feel the same when its applied to them.
It’s not “frustrating” but laughably easy to get rid of teachers. Most are harassed into resigning. Principals have ironclad power against teachers, with no accountability for their actions. Talk to a few teachers who have been illegally “dismissed” because a moron principal decided to be vindictive or cover his or her backside. I know this system backwards and frontwards.
Quite correct susannunes!
As one with twelve years experience and due process rights who left (resigned to take a lower paying position in another district) due to administrator harassment I can second how “painfully laughably” it is to get rid of any teacher.
Susannunes, I fully agree with you. This war on the public servant has just begun. I personally feel that nobody in the USA should get a teaching degree in college. Although my proposal would take about 15-20 years to really see the negative impact, eventually the people who seem to believe that all school teachers are bad will realize that the system they fought to eliminate was in fact a very good system.
If nobody pursues a career in teaching after leaving high school, eventually the educated and competent teachers will become extinct. I think that would teach the kochsuckers a valuable lesson.
Wow..I hope that this is challenged in court all the way to the Supreme Court. You can not continually disrespect someone and then expect them to work like a dog for minimal pay.
I predict in the next 10 years there will not only be a teacher shortage, it will be severe.
“continually disrespect someone and then expect them to work like a dog for minimal pay.”
That’s the American education system, where our politicians play school, and everyone’s a trained expert because they went to school.
I wonder how many of these “trained experts” actually went to public schools, not private?
They went to the the bathroom so that means they’re …. too.
No, there are plenty of unemployed college graduates who will work for peanuts. In the future, teaching may not pay more than Starbucks, but at least there’s a shred more prestige to it.
What teachers are going through now is what happened to factory workers, bank tellers, journalists and many others: it’s the same pattern; the same undermining of workers’ power. Americans need to rally behind left-of-center politicians to reverse this erosion of workers’ dignity, pay and rights.
Agreed.
Two problems with what you wrote, Ponderosa, about supporting left-of-center politicians:
1) Tea partiers are just as likely to agree with many of your concerns about teachers and education as progressives, and
2) Many of the perpetrators of this stuff ARE left-of-center politicians and officials.
As has been commented on many times here, these issues really don’t fit neatly into the traditional left-right political paradigms.
“Many of the perpetrators of this stuff ARE left-of-center politicians and officials.”
Here, let me fix that for you: “Many of the perpetrators of this stuff RUN UNDER THE BANNER OF AND PRETEND TO BE left-of-center politicians and officials.”
Dienne — Given that we’re talking about politicians who have impeccable liberal credentials in other policy areas, you can’t simply toss them off as “pretend progressives.” That’s like someone claiming that Marco Rubio is only a pretend conservative based on his immigration heterodoxy.
“Impeccable liberal credentials in other areas”
Such as what? Obama’s war and national security state record? His economic policies? What about Rahm’s policies – what about those are “impeccably liberal”? Arne Duncan? Being “impeccably liberal” is about a lot more than favoring gay marriage (which Obama, BTW, came to after many Republicans) and supporting abortion rights.
Some people need to talk to a few teachers who have been through the sham hearing process, which is better than nothing for teachers, to understand what few rights they really have. People are talking about things they really have little knowledge about. Teachers have always been fired–school districts don’t call it fired. They have a whole arsenal of ways to get rid of teachers, and they are heavily supported by the legal system. They “non-renew,” force resignations or early retirements, force teachers to resign in lieu of dismissal, and the very rare hearings which few teachers ever prevail because the districts are free to rig them.
One of the goals of Ed Deform is to “teacher proof” the delivery of education to the children of the proles–to make it over as ed tech to be done independently, with low-level “aides” assisting to make sure that the machines are up and running. Thus the Ed Deform mantra that “class size doesn’t matter.” Thus the Ed Deform push for “flipped learning.” Take the model from the intro college class with 1 teacher and 300 or 400 students, add ed tech, and multiply that across the country. Dramatically reduce cost, because the cost of education is almost entirely in salaries and benefits. Dramatically increase the money available to purchase ed tech software and database systems. Big win for the educational publishers and their new high-tech partners. Big loss for kids.
This is the philistine technocratic vision. And by supporting the Common Coring of the United States, the teachers’ unions are collaborating in this attack on their own members and on the whole process of humane teaching, learning, scholarship, and research.
Why do teachers and their bosses keep taking it???
Because they have a love of teaching and working with students. It is an part of them that they just can’t get away from.
In some states the formation of unions is forbidden. Texas where I live, is a right to work states…meaning unions are forbidden. We currently have the right to due process.
I see the Kansas case and the case in California both being lumped together and heading to the Supreme Court because even criminals have the right to due process.
Fear of being blackballed, which is very, very real in the teaching profession. It is difficult if not impossible to get another teaching job once forced out. Most teachers have done nothing wrong to get sacked.
drext727 I have predicted this for the last few years…when NCLB began. Just this week I was also thinking about how many new teachers come from a family of teachers. This, I predict, will rapidly decline. Enrollment into colleges of education have already declined.
Due process bites the dust! If Cuomo gets re-elected (very nauseous), he’ll probably try to push the same thing.
I can’t believe that KS administrators “really wanted this…” or that there were “… regulations that would keep (administrators) from firing substandard teachers”… Did any administrative organizations in KS testify on this misbegotten legislation? Did the School Board Association weigh in?
No one was given the chance to respond because this part of the bill was added on at the last minute and did not have the chance to go through hearings or for any groups to provide input. That, too, is part of the frustration of what happened this weekend in Kansas.
This isn’t Kansas, anymore. He’ll, it’s not America.
Well said, Peter.
This means nothing. It IS the real America and it IS the real Kansas, which most of the bloggers here don’t understand, and the steps they took in Kansas were steps in the right direction, just not far enough because they didn’t drop the CCSS too.
These people are interested in privatizing the schools and not in improving education. When you look at it that way, everything makes sense.
What kind of society exists after the government goes after teachers…looks to indoctrinate its students…tells parents to be quiet, that the government knows what is best for their children?…
Kansas state legislature…please go back and review your “traditional” history textbooks…twentieth century communism and fascism. You will not be impressed by what you find…
Learn from the mistakes made by those before us. If you were to be graded as students yourselves, based on the decisions you have recently made, you would be judged as failures. Your harm to society is not merely increased, but will spread exponentially like a plague.
You will be remembered for your actions. You have sworn allegiance to protect and defend our nation and the Constitution. Stand up for America, be among its saviors and do what is right, for the American people, and in the name of our great Republic.
Blather
Twit.j
I think this more protects privilege, power, and money than it does the republic…it seems like that is what passes for patriotism these days.
In Idaho we faced the same kinds of laws when our not so super supt. Tom Luna surprised all Idahoans with his Luna Laws. We worked our tails off, got the requisite signatures, and Idahoans overturned the laws. If you didn’t have an in-state grassroots movement from huge numbers of Kansans, chances of these laws standing are pretty low. Go get ’em!
The oligarchs will not be happy until they have absolute authority to make, on a whim, whatever decisions they wish to make concerning the lives of others.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Kansas just handed out absolute power. Does the principal want to fire you and give your job to his girlfriend? to his golfing buddy’s idiot son?
Why not. It’s now legal in Kansas.
It should be fought in the courts. Other public employees have the same due process rights.
How exactly are we as a nation anticipating that our students will be globally competitive? In our efforts to ” reform” education by pumping corporate money into the system ,
seeking to destroy the quality of faculty by replacing them with poorly prepared, ” McTeachers”, we are destined to destroy the very essence of US education. I for one fear for the next generation of children.
What has happen to America? It looks like the future is dead!
Teaching as a profession just gets worse and worse. I would never want my children or grandchildren to become teachers. The pay is not worth the stress, disrespect, and downright vilification of teachers. We are made to feel that if we only worked harder, we could eradicate poverty. I am so sick of it all. T Clark, I also fear for our children.
The pay is also not worth the pay.😛
This is going into the book titled “What’s the Matter With Kansas Part II(2014).”
Well, who’s gonna be the author?
Never mind.
I just came up with the title:
“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? PART II: THE DEFORMATION FOR ALL”
I believe the Koch kids are behind the North Carolina debacle of loss of due process. One wonders if they had some traumatic public school experiences in their youth.
I remember back in 1999 there was a wave of protests that erupted in Argentina (and elsewhere) and much punditry which that decried this. At the time I kept telling those who would listen- “Don’t think that is unique to Argentina- that very same thing is heading right for us.” That “thing” was and is privatization. What occurred in Argentina in 1999 was the result of a decade or more of intense privatization and what is now commonly referred to as “globalization.”
Now if anyone thinks what just happened in Kansas is not going to happen in some form or another in whatever state you reside in you are beyond naive. This is not something limited to Kansas or those “evil Republicans” (the Democrats happen to be more effective at this evil with Obama Inc. pulling off one scurrilous act after the other at a pace that Nixon or Bush would blush at) and to think so is just as delusional as believing in the Hopey-Changey illusion many fell for in 2008 and 2012.
Things will only change when people begin to take direct control of their lives. Heading off to the ballot box will not alter any of this. And it’s not a matter of if this beast will or will not come to your locale…..
Whatever you want to call it, its here.
First, they don’t care what you and I say. Its moot. Words have no bearing on what they do. They already control what the MSM says and have already struck fear into enough people that the “wrong” things aren’t spoken by the masses.
They make war at will. They print money at will. A few corporations control the banks, medicine, media and food. They also operate with no oversight, poisoning people, the economy and the environment–at will. You and me- our childred, are simply a means to make money off. Warm bodies to simply run products through–trinkets for our amusement, processed and factory-farmed/frankenfoods to keep us alive, and media to see that we are kept both violent and fearful. We are not human to them in any moral sense. We are human petri dishes for them for exploitation.
Our political process offers no control over them, no choice of an alternative. If someone makes it through, they are rendered ineffective–or in some cases, disposed of. No one represents the majority. Worse, they operate on a global scale, directing their operations electronically–from the highest ground possible:space. They operate with deadly force and ambivalence towards the people afflicted by their greed of money and insane lust for power.
If its not fascism, or a new strain of it, exactly what is it, then? We probably need a new description/term at this point, anyway.
And we’re out of time–completely.
That truck that hit you did so on purpose. The headlights were on. The driver’s eyes were open and not averted. The truck swerved towards you, not away.
This is all very important to understand because the truck is coming back very soon.
I guess it also means that teachers will be a little more careful about stating with assurance that global warming is settled science. Is that necessarily bad?
I’m in favor of public education whole heartedly (but not exclusively), but ‘due process’ has protected so much non-sense in the past that I, for one, have to see what the Kansas legislature did as a step forward (or backward, if you like), in restoring reality and common sense to the national cadre of public school teachers.
Sorry. But you KNOW that’s true.
Too bad they didn’t defund the CCSS though.
I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
It’s a pretty neat trick. The state Supreme Court ruled that the economic disparities between rich and poor schools was a violation of the Constitution. If the legislature wouldn’t fix this, the court would step in. So, the nefarious powers opposed to public schools turned a setback into an opportunity and added amendments to strip public school teachers of job protections. I’m beginning to think “House of Cards” is a documentary.
It is a documentary.
Many years back, a Republican Senator from New Hampshire retired. He gave a press conference to announce this. At that conference, he said that he never sees a bill, anymore, that does not have 1,500 riders on it and that if you look at any of these, some legislator’s buddies are benefiting. He said that this is not a process in which a person of any integrity can participate. He was a U.S. Senator. He was talking about the United States Senate.
First of all, I am not sure that the group “Americans for Prosperity” is truly an extremist group. When I think extremist, I think Hezbollah, KKK, or the Nazi Party. Secondly, it is too hard to get rid of truly terrible teachers. Maybe this legislation goes too far the other way but there needs to be some middle ground. Finally, I am sick of the elites demonizing someone of a different view point. The Koch brothers have done nothing wrong or illegal to my knowledge. Their only “crime” is supporting an opposing view point. Frankly, Ms. Ravitch you just lost a lot of credibility with me.
Dana, I am no fan of the Koch brothers. Nor of other billionaires who use their vast wealth to take away the pensions and job security of people who work for less than their secretaries. Please explain why the Koch brothers feel it is important to remove due process rights from teachers in Kansas, so that teachers can be fired for any reason or no reason at all? What is their interest?
“The Koch brothers have done nothing wrong or illegal to my knowledge. Their only “crime” is supporting an opposing view point.”
Well when you determine what legal is because you make the laws– as those policy-makers of whom the Koch brothers have bought do–it still does not mean the laws are sound.
“Frankly, Ms. Ravitch you just lost a lot of credibility with me.”
I’m sure this loss of credibility with you will not keep her, nor most of us who are tired of the plutocracy by the hands of the privileged and ignorant, up at night.
Re-elect a new school board, fire the administrators, fire the teachers. Public education will never be improved until parents are made accountable. Send them a report card when their kid gets theirs, if you can find out who the parents are. 40 years teaching high school, Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Tenure is NOT automatically given. Nor is it the privilege that guarantees teachers permanent job in school. They are still subject to evaluation by school districts. Tenure does not defend teachers from 1) credible evidence of poor teaching performance in classroom; 2) little or no indication of improvement despite professional assistance for substantial amount of period; or 3) unprofessional/inappropriate conducts with students. And please don’t say tenure system prevents schools from firing bad teachers like some proponents in Veraga Case, especially when you see billionaires funneling a zombie candidate for a gorilla cookie elsewhere in the nation. It is superintendent’s job to make fair and appropriate evaluation to teachers regardless of seniority or age. If some teachers are obviously ‘bad’ in terms of class instruction and professionalism, schools are supposed to take action on a timely manner—not like keeping it under hat for several years until someone tips it off to local media. Stripping the essential democratic process to allow school authority to fire teachers and staff under whatever reason sounds nothing more than an excuse for covering up poor management and bad decision-making for undermining school productivity.
A “gorilla cookie”?
Diane, you are obviously a Democrat and have a crush on Harry Reid. This is the 21st century, go ahead and come on in.
Jeff, I am an independent. I have never met Harry Reid. I do admire Elizabeth Warren. I admire people who understand the dangers of privatization.
as a husband of a teacher in Kansas she has at least 2 evaluations a school year.she will go in early or stay late to help student.use money out of our pocket to do what is needed for class room supplies.so don’t tell me they are like the private sector when it comes to due process.there rights need to be protected. Governor Sam Brownback needs to veto this bill
Glad I don’t teach in Kansas. How scary. If you need to know why we need due process check out the Santa Monica, CA teacher punched in the face by a student. The district was going to blame it on him until parents and the community got involved.
I wish Kansas luck in finding teachers. No quality teacher will teach under those conditions.
I think that’s the point, they don’t care about having quality teachers.
Reblogged this on rjknudsen and commented:
Don’t let this happen to you – organize and fight for justice!
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal and commented:
OMG! This is so ridiculous and stupid.