A judge in Guilford County, North Carolina, ruled that the district and Durham Counties do not have to comply with a state law intended to take away tenure.
It’s not yet clear whether e the ruling applies statewide or only to the districts that opposed the law.
But for now, teachers view it as vindication of their claim that the law violates the state constitution.
Districts were supposed to offer $500 a year for the top 25% of their teachers if they abandoned due process rights.
“RALEIGH, N.C. — A Guilford County judge on Wednesday halted a requirement that North Carolina school districts offer a quarter of their teachers multi-year contracts as an enticement for them to give up their so-called “career status” protections.
“Special Superior Court Judge Richard Doughton issued an injunction that allows Guilford County Schools to evade the requirement, which lawmakers passed last year as part of the state budget.
“Durham Public Schools last month joined a lawsuit filed by the Guilford County school district, and more than a quarter of the 115 school districts statewide have expressed opposition to contract requirement.
“Under career status, commonly referred to as tenure, veteran teachers are given extra due process rights, including the right to a hearing if they are disciplined or fired.
“Lawmakers asked school districts to identify the top 25 percent of their teachers and offer them new four-year contracts with $500 annual salary increases. In exchange, those teachers would lose their tenure rights. The provision aims to move North Carolina to a performance-based system for paying teachers instead of one based on longevity.
“A spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, who initially crafted the tenure elimination proposal, said legislative leaders plan to seek an appeal of Doughton’s injunction.
“It is hard to fathom why a single judge and a small group of government bureaucrats would try to deny top-performing teachers from receiving a well-deserved pay raise,” Amy Auth said in an email. “We will appeal this legal roadblock and continue to fight for pay increases for our best teachers.”
Because if low pay and the legislsture’s attacks on teachers, North Carolina has experienced unprecedented resignations among veteran teachers. The legislature, for example, abolished the respected five-year NC Teaching Fellows program while allotting $5 million to TFA.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, my district said “we don’t like it, but we’ll follow it.” So who knows where that leaves us.
What teacher would be stupid enough to take $500 for their due process rights? The only way I see teachers taking it, is if they are leaned into taking it by their superiors.
That is a very good question. It also seems odd that a law that gives teachers the option to voluntarily amend their vested contractual rights for a $500 payment would offend due process absent some other kind of coercion. I’ll be interested to see the decision, or at least the briefing on the preliminary injunction.
Everyone loses it in 2018. It was supposed to be $500 compounded for four years (so a $5,000 gain to give the tenure up four years early). The ALEC types who like it think teachers will so badly want to be identified as “top 25%” that they would be blinded by the competitive spirit!!! I heard Phil Berger say good teachers should love it. But of course, most see through it. A survey in our district indicated some would take it if offered, but the majority balked at it (as well they should).
Not sure where the lawsuit against stripping everyone of tenure in 2018 stands right now, but NCAE has filed one.
Amazing how clueless Phil Berger’s spokeswoman Amy Auth is when it comes to what teachers want. She acts like it’s the judge keeping $ from teachers instead of realizing its the teachers who asked for this because we don’t like having to give away something to receive a minimal bonus. Coming from a Teacher of the Year who adamantly denied the bonus!
Totally agree with you on that.
She earned her communications degree from UNC Chapel Hill, if I’m not mistaken–so she has certainly benefitted from more liberal perks in our state, but does not see that, clearly. She strikes me as a grit type.
I liked it better when grit was just a funny line from “My Cousin Vinny” and something on which I take lots of butter and pepper.
I wouldn’t describe it as clueless. As Joanna Best pointed it out, she’s UNC Chapel Hill educated. I would put this in the category of despicably manipulative. She knows what she’s doing.
When I first read that, I felt slimy. But the political genius behind it can’t be ignored. It’s great rhetorical ammo for their base.
Joe V. is right on. Took the words right out of my mouth. Her salary trumps her ability to do what’s right.
On the other hand, the salaries of teachers display there sacrifice and willingness to tough it out for the kids while dealing with these ridiculous policies handed down now from two governors in a row (with the second of the two far worse).
What is shocking to me is that there are districts that are actually fighting this law. Seems to me that districts are looking to to “get education on the cheap”. If the districts can con teachers by paying them 500 bucks for a few years and then fire them at will, the districts would save a lot of money down the line. Good to hear that some districts actually have the best interest of their teachers in mind. Due process is AMERICAN. People, (including teachers) should be considered innocent of until proven guilty.
It’s English, actually. But so is English, and that’s never stopped us from speaking American.
It wouldn’t save them money because they need teachers. There is also a practical aspect to these decisions. Despite the panic, the reality of a state not needing anyone but new college grads to teach is a bit extreme. Think Ronald Reagan threatening to fire all airline workers. Never would have happened. But they cowered at the threat. No cowering! They are not going to fire all teachers to save money. That is silly. Let’s keep our heads.
St. Ronnie fired 11,345 air traffic controllers out of about 13,000. What they do is “fire” all the teachers who then “reapply” for their former jobs at lower pay and less benefit.
Reagan did fire all the union air traffic controllers who were participating in an illegal strike. That’s what should have been done.
Ronald Reagan was a racist, union-busting, ignorant puppet who traded arms with our enemies and sold cocaine to finance his illegal wars while he was running a Just So No campaign. He used to give speeches about how Social Security was a Communist plot. A completely clueless man whose practices in office should have led to him being tried as a criminal.
I read that members of Congress did discuss impeachment but they felt it would destroy the country after Nixon.
A profoundly ignorant, racist, homophobic, paranoid and a complete tool who wasn’t president but played one on TV while suffering from advanced senile dementia.
In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut wanted to show that the wife of his character Billy Pilgrim was a complete wacko, and so he put a Ronald Reagan for President bumper sticker on her car. He thought that just about as extreme a possibility that he could come up with because Regan was an extremist. And then, just a few years later, the wacko’s candidate was, in fact, president.
Oh, and while president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, he collaborated with Joe McCarthy’s paranoid witch hunt and ruined the careers of many innocent people. So he was a great enemy of freedom of expression and individual liberty as well.
Ronald Ray-gun changed the mind set of this country with two very despicable phrases/ideas.
“trickle-down economics”
and
“government is not the solution, its the problem”
We haven’t been the same since.
Many of the negative economic indicators (especially wage/income inequality) began under Reagan, the worse president this country has ever endured.
ALL public employees have this right, which has been lost on not just the public in general but on teachers particularly. That’s because both don’t even know that teachers have never had “tenure.” It’s merely civil service protections to discourage favoritism and cronyism. They exist for public employees because a job with a government agency is considered a property right, and employees cannot be denied that property right by the government without “due process.” Never mind the hearings are more often than not jokes; it’s the fact public employees have to be given that option to have one if they are disciplined or “dismissed.”
Singling teachers out has been founded on the lie of “tenure” as in college and university professorships (in both public and private colleges and universities) as a lifetime job awarded by a committee of peers. K-12 teachers have never had this because they don’t have “academic freedom.” It was a deliberate conflating, and teachers too often bought into the lie. That is, of course, until they found themselves targeted by a principal whose job is almost ironclad.
Again, not all public employees have property interests in their jobs. And not all public employees who do have property interests in their jobs have the same due process rights.
Flerp – I don’t care about other public employees. They are not in the same boat I am. I have spent around 75K on MANY education degrees enabling me to be certified to be a teacher. Other public employees spent “$0” dollars to be enabled to do their job.
I have a significant investment in the property of my teaching license, and I deserve the right to defend myself against arbitrary and capricious discipline and/or termination processes.
Teaching is not like other professions where once you are fired, and a license pulled, you can go get another job. Without the property of a teaching license, I am nothing in the education field (in terms of being a teacher).
What also amazes me is that now they will spend tax payer money to appeal this and the voucher decision levied last month. If they were concerned with the betterment of NC instead of their own agendas they would think twice before wasting tax payer money to advance their agendas.
I figure everything this General Assbly is doing/has done based on their ALEC agenda will get undone. So yes, not only is it a waste of resources, it is a waste of time.
I agree, it seems as though ALEC cookie cutter laws are the CCSS for state legislators.
The plaintiff’s complaint is in this link: http://www.carolinamercury.com/2013/12/ncae-files-lawsuit-challenging-repeal-of-teacher-tenure/
I doubt the judge granted this injunction based on the “$500 in exchange for your soul” issue. I would think the injunction is based on the more problematic part of the law, which is that it prospectively revokes the existing career status of teachers who have already earned it, putting them on one-year contracts starting in 2018. *That* would certainly seem to be unconstitutional. The $500 offer just applies to the four years between now and 2018: i.e., “Your career status will be gone in four years. In the meantime, would you like to have career status or this sweaty wad of money?”
Exactly. Good, you did your research. 🙂
Looking stuff up is the only thing I’m good at. 🙂
Actually, apparently I’m not even good at the one thing I’m good at. I was looking at the NCAE complaint, not the complaint in this case.
after I typed “exactly,” I thought that same thing. Two different issues, but related to the same thing.
I am just eager to hear if the judge ruling in this applies to the entire state, or only those counties who bothered to join the suit.
That is certainly unconstitutional.
This proposal is more than ridiculous. So the “powers” want teachers to work against each other. No way.
That was the intent.
For competition and market values.
They call this a deserved pay raise.
Really! $500 a year.
For a 10 month school year, that’s $50 a month.
Let’s look at this another way: 40 weeks in an average school year means a raise of $12.50 a week and according to studies, the average teacher works 56 hours a week.
Next, let’s spread that $12.50 over that average 56 hours = That’s a 0.22 cent an hour raise. I wonder what the tax rate is in North Carolina.
And the teachers are expected to give up their legal due process rights for that!?!
I think a teacher would have to a hooked on crack to go for that deal.
The tax rate is 6%. They take another 6% as a pension contribution.
That means the $500 is really $440 annually and even less hourly
Has anyone seen this article about doctors?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/14/how-being-a-doctor-became-the-most-miserable-profession.html
A teacher could easily write the same kind of article about the mess going on in education with the “reform” movement. However, I don’t think teachers wouldn’t get much sympathy, especially from the very same people who will be quick to jump to the doctors’ defense. Unfortunately, when it comes to teachers, the response will typically be “shut up or find another job.”
Talk about double standards…
No one thinks it will happen to them. Health care spending exceeds education. Where do the doctors think the hedge funds and plutocrats will turn next for the double digit returns after education is Walmartized?
I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and watch Wall Street privatize American healthcare!
Please correct the first part of the blog. Wake county is not involved in the lawsuit…they chickened out.
I corrected the error. It was Guilford and Durham. Fixed.
We must all fight on line and elsewhere to preserve tenure and public education. Tenure protects teachers against arbitrary punishment when teachers advocate for children and best practices. Tenure is nothing more than a right to a hearing. It is never a way to guarantee employment.
The fight against this corporate reform in public education has forged bonds – cyber and real – that I’ve never dreamed of or thought to be important. But they’re here, and they’re real.
At this point, I’m in the mood for a good old fashioned, take-it-outside fight. I’m looking to put on the boxer gloves and fight the injustices our state and federal governments and private sector have launched upon education in an increasingly successful attempt to remove it as a public trust. We know by now about the devastating consequences to children, society, and democracy if this attack continues to progress.
It’s astonishing how both major political parties in Washington have mostly turned against teachers and mindlessly jumped onto the teacher/principal bashing bandwagon. It’s shocking how politicians and billionaires use “fulfilling disadvantaged children’s civil rights” as their narrative when in fact, their tax policies and dire absence of collectivist thinking are so much the genesis of poverty.
It’s equally astonishing how our national unions, for the most part, have been sneaking around cutting deals behind closed doors, thereby compromising our profession. These same unions avoid robust, militant opposition and confrontation, and they are notorious for not listening to their constituents or running themselves as petition based organizations.
I am pro-union all the way, but only when unions behave like unions. The AFT, for example, has not bothered to consider that its invitation to the “reform dinner table” never mentioned that we teachers were on the menu.
How revolting.
Therefore, while profiteers are reforming education, we stand to reform our own unions and reinvent ourselves to promote, facilitate, and sustain equity and excellence in education. By taking action to reinvent, renew, and reinvigorate our unions, we will be so much more successful at fighting back against these “reformers” who know little to nothing about cognition and pedagogy.
I think Karen Lewis’s leadership is one decent example of what unions ought to be and still can be. The CTU did not get everything they intended in their negotiations, but the strike, under Ms. Lewis’s stewardship and a 98% “yes” referendum vote from teachers, made a seminal, strong, symbolic, and yet hardcore pragmatic statement.
Ms. Lewis’s leadership, while still being challenged by even more “militant” union activists, is an example of what democracy within a union, consensus, and solidarity can achieve. Chicago’s public schools’ plight is far from over, but one can’t get to the top of the ladder without climbing the lower rungs. The CTU is also an example of how we’ll want unions on our side in the fight against privatization.
I think MORE (the Movement of Rank and File Educators, a caucus within the United Federation of Teachers in New York City) is another such shining beacon of reinvention.
Could it be that large scale leaders like Dennis Roekel and Randi Weingarten are beginning to wake up and smell the inequity, the privatization, the narrowing of curriculum, and the attack upon labor? We will be handed a full, robust answer, but we won’t get it for quite some time.
But let there be little doubt that we are all waiting and watching, antennae up, ears perked, radar on, and union dues paid.
At the same time, we teachers across the nation are also faced with the responsibility – one that arises out of social justice – of dramatically increasing our communication to the general public that this “reform” movement largely ignores student and family poverty, the statistical flaws of standardized testing, the obsessive emphasis of testing at the expense of crowding out other critical civic knowledge and social intelligence that children must acquire, the “starve-the-beast” financing of schools with tax dollars disproportionately funneled into our defense budget, a system of taxation that acutely favors very wealthy individuals and organizations, the bailing out of corporations when they fail and chose to be corrupt, and the virtual absence of local educators’ and parents’ voices in educational policy making.
And all these plutocrats can do is pick on tenure through the Vergara case!
How we impart this to the public should open up a wide and intense dialogue nationally.
Do we do it as private citizens outside the scope of our employment? Do we do it at PTA meetings, town hall meetings, school board meetings? Do we educate our very own students in developmentally appropriate ways about this reform? These are the challenging yet empowering questions we all need to discuss and forge answers and actions to.
If this ugliness goes away, it won’t be anytime soon, nor will it be without a focused fight. Preserving education as public trust and making it equitable for children of all socio-economic backgrounds is critical to our democracy, and it won’t be the case if we let it become privatized or have its landscape and noble, solid purposes be altered by for-profit interests . . . . .
Tenure protects our free speech rights and our capacity to advocate. No tenure equals no justice for teachers, children, and familes . . . . . . . .
I think that the only way we may end this is if some retired special forces sniper volunteered. That leaves me out. I was just a field radio operator who fought in Vietnam. The United States has been in so many wars, there must be someone qualified and angry enough to step up to bat.
Lloyd, I share your outrage, but please let’s not suggest violence to solve problems. Ghandi achieved so many dreams without it. Still, the imagery of what you are suggesting is reflective of so many people who are angry at the injustices and disconnect . . . . .
Indoctrinate the students, eh, Robert, in “developmentally appropriate” ways. I love it. You “red” teachers always betray yourselves when you start talking. It won’t was with the general public. You speak as if “poverty” could be ended and you knew how to do it. You speak as if “poverty” were the sole cause of poor school performance, when it is merely a correlate.
Tenure is not necessary for good education. I worked 42 years in private education with never more than a one year contract, and in the last 5 years, it was a fire at will contract. Granted, my administration was relatively uncorrupt, which may be an anomaly in education.
Why, why, why?
“Tenure is not necessary for good education.”
No doubt that that statement can be true.
But then again those k-12 commie pinko faggot reds don’t have “tenure”, never have had it and never will at least in this oligarchical plutocratic climate. Some K-12 teachers have “due process” rights, which as some here have pointed out can be a sham process to begin with but is better than nothing.
Folks, quit using the edudeformers’ language! It’s due process rights not the supposed vaunted tenure.
Amen, Duane!… DUE PROCESS is what is missing!
… and the only reason THAT it does not exist in the lower ed workplace, is simply that the legal representatives for teachers lLOOKED THE OTHER WAYin order to secure contractual items ( benefits) that would make them look good come election time..
Thus, ergo sum, because the LEGAL REP FOR AN AMERICAN WHO WAS A TEACHER, IS the UNION there is not a shred of accountability for what a principal or administrator can do to a teacher short of murder… Look at the story of Lorna Stremcha, whose principal set her up to be assaulted (she proved it in Federal court… because the union never represented her…Took her life saving to do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfNxj-
Everywhere, the PROCESS was enabled by the TOTAL absence of the union in ENFORCING the CONTRACT’S very specific grievance process, based on THE CONSTITUTIONAL rights of due process. It is ongoing in NYC or Francesco Portelos would not have to endure this:
http://protectportelos.org/does-workplace-bullying-continues-my-33-hrs-behind-bars/
The past is the past. We need the unions, and Diane knows this, BUT the present leadership needs to be reminded that WE ARE THE UNION and THEY WORK FOR US!
Without a union ( as the poor charter school hires are discovering)… there IS no law but those created by top-down mandates.
I want the new mantra for teachers WHEN DEALING WITH THE UNION to be DUE PROCESS IS OUR RIGHT…enforce it!
Harlan,
Why have you not run for a political office? You’d be perfect.
I hope my tax dollars that continue to pay for your social security is keeping you (relativey) out of poverty . . . . . If I could give more to imrpove your quality of life to some extent, I would . . . .
If I weren’t so damn old and sick, I would run. But you’re confusing the issues again, Red Rob. If I had understood the reality of Social Security when I was young I would have saved more so I could be independent of it. But, like so many others over the years I didn’t question government policy and got sucked into the seductions of transfer of wealth from my children and grandchildren to me. That’s really, really, really wrong. Even more of that is happening under the ACA: young people are being taxed to pay the medical bills of old farts like me. It’s really, really, really unfair and unjust, but that’s the way socialist regimes work: take from the young and productive and give it to the old, elite voters. Pay the old folks off with their grandchildren’s money. Force the young ones into involuntary servitude so the old folks can live it up. Meanwhile the public schools assist by scrupulously keeping the young folks ignorant.
Do you know the history of Social Security and why it’s in trouble?
I do, and I know that SS works and would have continued to be solvent and work for centuries, but the only reason the feds are running into trouble making the payments has nothing to do with SS but Congress, because Congress spent all the money from SS tax as it came in so the well has always been dry from day one, and SS payments are made from the general fund as taxes are collected and when there isn’t enough tax, the feds borrow with IOUs that add to the federal national debt.
Social Security was never a government giveaway. From the start, it was funded by a tax that employees and employers paid into as trust fund, and if the Congress had kept their corrupt and greedy hands off of the SS money, there’s be enough to keep the trust fund going for years and it would never have run dry.
Why do you think the American people own more than 60% of the U.S. federal national debt? As Congress spent the SS tax money, they wrote IOUs to the American people. Trillions of dollars worth.
The biggest mistake was when SS was created and the tax that funded it fed directly into the general fund. It should have flowed into a trust fund that kept it out of the hands of Congress because Congress approves the annual budget. Presidents only submit a budget to Congress for its approval and Congress often revises the budget up or down for each budget item before sending it back to the President for his signature.
And if you think private sector pension plans would have been safer, let me sell you some real estate on the sun. There are many examples of pension plans gone broke because corporations raided them and spent the money to stay in business and pay CEOs their fat bonuses and salaries, and when those companies finally went bankrupt there was no money left to fund those programs either.
As for the already failed 401k plans where I lost more than $50,000 over the years due to corporate bankruptcies, they have already been declared dead and they haven’t delivered the promises that sold them.
All 401k plans did was funnel billions—possibly trillions—into the pockets of billionaires who somehow never go broke.
“Last night’s “Frontline” show on PBS did Americans a great service. It showed the folly of the 401(k) structure, which has been a problem for decades.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2013/04/24/why-401ks-have-failed/
“The report from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning public policy think-tank, illustrates how the shift from pensions to individual savings accounts has affected retirees. The authors find that it is the wealthiest workers who are benefiting the most because they can actually contribute enough to make 401(k) plans work for retirement.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-401k-retirement-plans-failing-most-workers/
If Company Goes Bankrupt, Don’t Count on Your Pension
In the end, the choice Congress makes will be a decision between funding Social Security or Wars, and we all know who’s behind funding wars and that answer isn’t most working Americans who won’t have anything to fall back on when they are too old to work any longer. Then their only retirement fund will be their children if they have any.
Harlan is channeling his inner Joe McCarthy, he is engaging in red baiting, smearing, demonizing, swifboating and slandering people.
Oh, Joe. You are merely attacking the messenger of truth, not denying the truth of the message. I doubt that you will, or can deny the fundamental cultural orientation of our otherwise wonderful public school teachers is collectivist rather than individualist.
McCarthy was surely a creep. I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings on the first TV set in our family which my grandmother bought specifically for them. BUT he was right about the infiltration of the US government by communists, Alger Hiss most prominently.
Not that his being essentially correct in his main premise justifies his methods.
But it won’t do just to fling out the word “McCarthyite.” The real question is what is the fundamental mind set of the great majority of the public school teachers. And THAT you know as well as I do. It is fundamentally a political metaphysics of class struggle. To say so is not to tell an untruth, but what’s puzzling is the embarrassment over it, though I do intend by mentioning it to criticize it.
Fess up proudly. Raise your fist in the air. Acknowledge your lineage from Lenin.
Everyone knows that this struggle to preserve public education is part of the larger political and cultural struggle in this country between capitalism and tyrannical socialism. No shame in wanting to be part of the tyranny. Be honest, Joe. Celebrate May Day. Don’t pretend, at least. You have the President on your side, a large part of Congress, and the Democrat party. But don’t pretend to be traditional American.
If you win you win. Elections count. But there is push back from regular, conservative, constitutionalist Americans. We are TRYING to take back the country from you. We can still be friends here, on this blog, but it would help if you would acknowledge your actual social principals.
Progressivism (i.e. statism) has been working to grab the country since Woodrow Wilson, and might be thought to have succeeded by getting President Obama elected, but surprisingly enough, he hasn’t served the ideology well, especially in education. But he has served the ideology quite well when it comes to economic policy where environmentalism trumps prosperity (Keystone pipeline turn down), borrowing trumps prudence (national debt), and corruption trumps the actual welfare of people in the ACA.
I’m hoping, of course, that the abuses of power by the current regime will stimulate a backlash among voters, even low information voters, that a second coming of Reagan in Ted Cruz will give the country a chance to right itself in the water (it’s listing to the left) and so not sink.
The really BIG question is whether it’s possible to have a public education system any longer that is NOT socialist in orientation. The tea party mindset is not likely to supplant the socialist mindset in the public schools very soon, but unless it does, the public education system we loved so much in the 30’s through the 50’s will continue to take hits from the regular parents who derive their income from business.
In being so anti-business, the public school mind set, is first of all in denial because ALL of it’s revenue comes from private sector business activity, and second verges on ingratitude by seeming to bite the hand the feeds it.
The test case in global warming. By being so unscientific while claiming to be scientific, the public schools have destroyed their credibility with the rest of the society that knows better (although it’s not only public school teachers who espouse the lie).
So let’s stick to debate about the realities of the issues rather than being content to just throw around stigmatizations of the messenger.
@ Harlan: ” You have the President on your side, a large part of Congress, and the Democrat party.”
Oh Harlan, your ignorance of current events matches your ignorance of history.
Obama will go down as one of the biggest privatizing presidents ever, from schools and jails to Obamacare.
President Obama is not on our side. Read the RttT requirements.
Lloyd,
You’re educating Harlan about SS? Educating HIM to some extent about the virtues of collectivist thinking in order to benefit and sustain human rights and justice?
You really have too much time on your hands, Lloyd.
You’d have more success selling condominiums on the sun, solar flare-ups and all . . . . . .
I wonder how much of market there’d be for condos on the sun. I could sell them with a guaranteed panoramic view of solar flares. And I’d include a free one-way ticket to any fake Ed reformers.
HU,
I guess we should start calling RR, RRR, Robert the Red Rendo-ha ha!
Why not “red nose reindeer”?
Harlan can be cast as Santa.
Forget “Santa”.
Make that “the Grinch who stole progressivism” . . .
I like that, Duane. Red Robert. R^2. Or the second coming of Gus Hall.
Harlan calls people reds, commies or whatever but gets offended when he is exposed as a McCarthyite who uses the same tactics as McCarthy. In other words, Harlan is a demagogue living in his own cramped far right wing nut world.
If I am a red under Harlan’s radar, then so be it. I would be proud to be red.
But actually, Harlan, I am neither communist nor socialist. . . . I am first and foremost a humanist.
Although if one wanted to label me a Western European Socialist Style Democrat, I will not put up too much of an argument.
As for Harlan: Harlan, you can be such a . . . . a . . . . well, such a Harlan.
Harlan is well intending and honest. There does not seem to be a corrupt bone in his body, and his spirit seems pure and open.
There is also hardly one cell of critical thought in his cerebrum.
One day, when I grow up to be bigger and stronger, I don’t want to be like Harlan.
Yet, Harlan has taught me among some of the most valuable lessons, one being that wisdom obviously does not always come as a guarantee with age . . . .
Due-ane,
Thank you! I needed a laugh.
Of course, who’d have thought you’d be ganging up with our mutual friend Harlan to bestow a new nickname upon moi . . . . .
🙂
Joe,
Don’t you attack our beloved Harlan.
Insults and ad hominem attacks are not the thing you should be doing.
That’s strictly my privilege . . . . . .
Finders Keepers. . . . I had him first.
🙂
Joe,
I was kidding . . . . .
Harlan,
I was not kidding.
Not true. Teachers don’t have “tenure.” Many states don’t even call it that. Their rights are no different from other civil service workers. ALL have the right to a hearing, which is all this is. It isn’t a lifetime job or job security. It amounts to merely one more step in the discipline/dismissal process, and public employees aren’t required to go through it. They are required to have it as an option. It has nothing to do with free speech rights, which K-12 teachers don’t have or that they give grades. It stems from the concept of a public sector job is a property right.
I am really surprised K-12 teachers still peddle the fiction they have “academic freedom” in some lame attempt to align themselves with college and university professors in both public and private colleges and universities. After all, private school teachers don’t have “tenure” rights, and for good reason. It’s because they work for private employers. There’s no property right involved.
“After all, private school teachers don’t have “tenure” rights, and for good reason. It’s because they work for private employers. There’s no property right involved.”
Not correct. Private school teachers can have “tenure” rights through contract. The key difference is that they don’t have due process rights under the Constitution. And the reason for that isn’t because private employers cannot confer property rights. It’s because the Constitution does not prohibit private employers from depriving employees of their property rights.
Sorry, don’t expect me to sell my soul for $500 a year. If you want me to sell out, at least pay me for the privilege. Don’t think I can be bought so cheaply.
It’s like the woman who refuses a man’s offer of $500 to sleep with him. He then asks, would you do it for a million? When she says yes, he replies. – okay, you agree, now we just need to find an acceptable amount.
So 500 bucks to give up your rights? Why do they want teachers to give up rights so badly? What an insult. I feel the tide is starting to turn.
Most NC teachers have “Declined to Sign”. Forty-two school districts representing more than half the school children in NC have resolutions against this proposal and many teachers have signed on petition refusing. The deadline is June 30.
http://www.ncae.org/school-board-resolutions/
The oligarchs who run the crony capitalist banana republic that the United States has become will not be satisfied until they have ABSOLUTE authority, in their SOLE DISCRETION, to make whatever decisions they wish to make concerning the lives of others, with no checks whatsoever on the absoluteness of that power.
They have already eliminated in most places the fundamental human right to strike, and they have already demanded and received, in most places, a eunuch’s shadow of tenure that isn’t tenure at all but is just due process, but ANY PROCESS OTHER THAN THE WHIM OF THE OLIGARCH is too much for these people.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Want to fire that teacher because he or she is making too much? Want to that teacher to replace him or her with your mistress or with the the idiot son or daughter of your wife’s cousin or your golfing buddy?
Well, the oligarchs are fighting for the right to be able to do that. And in many places, they have already won that right.
This is an intelligence test. Anyone who is stupid enough to sign onto this offer probably should not be in a classroom.
Holy Cow! Seriously?
Personally, it is ‘hard to fathom’ how due process could disappear from any workplace in America. The Constitution demands it as a tenant of democracy. In the schools where slander is the tool, teachers are victimized. Now that the tenured practitioners are gone, the novice gets to practice for a few years, and then the ‘slander ‘ begins, and out they go.
We should not need 52 laws to protect tenure… we need to enforce the ONE law that guarantees the right to face accusers, see evidence, in a timely manner, and to ensure that evidence is not tampered with. In NYC they empty the employment folders of excellent teachers, so that no evidence of excellence remains when they insert the slanderous ‘documentation’. This is ‘sinister intimidation” (to quote redqueeminla) and is criminal under the laws we have.
precisely
Due process for CRIMINAL offenses. Not due process for employment. The public school teachers thinks they are priests and should be tried in a church court. The reformation put an end to that.
And if the “priests” don’t shape up, tenure will be out.
Tenure is NOT due process as defined in the constitution. NO ONE has a “right” to any particular job.
We DO all have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Don’t you all realize how ignorant you sound to confuse due process in criminal matters with tenure hearings, which are special protections for teachers, unlike anywhere else in the economy.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Police and other public employees have the same rights to a hearing as teachers. It is not unique to teaching, and K-12 teachers do NOT have “tenure.” If that were true, why don’t private school teachers have it? Because they aren’t government, that’s why. “Tenure” only exists for college and university professors in BOTH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE colleges and universities to preserve something called “academic freedom.”
Case law states the opposite, you fool, and supports my contention of a property right. See, Harlan, I have been through the process, and I know FAR more than you about it. It is a civil service protection designed to prevent cronyism. In fact, teachers can be removed very, very easily, and few avail themselves to hearings.
The very first course I took in education mentions public school teaching is a property right. They don’t have a right to a job, but they have a right to keep it as a property right once they get post-probationary status. That’s because they work for a government agency.
Do you know, Harlan, anything about administrative law? Administrative law covers the discipline and termination process for public sector employees.
I concede my ignorance of administrative law, a third branch, I suppose. That public school teachers have a property right in their jobs is true news to me. Clearly, I have much to learn in this area. Thank you for correcting me.
Harlan, the idea is that the an employee’s interest in keeping his job is a kind of property right, of which the government may not deprive the employee without due process. So the hook in the Constitution are the concepts of “due process” and “property,” as in: “[n]o person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The property right itself doesn’t come from the Constitution. The Constitution just protects the right to due process. The property right has to come from some independent source, such as state or local statutes, or a written employment contract, or an implied contract, etc.
I see no reason why the Constitution would prevent states from revoking “tenure” or “due process” or whatever you want to call it for *future* state employees.
Harlan, you apparently, alongside the Republican legislators in this state, like the way police and fire personnel vote. They have the same due process rights teachers do, but you say nothing about them.
Look at the Governor in Michigan stripping tenure from teachers, but continuing it for police and fire personnel. Completely partisan, and it makes me sick.
Well, if that’s the case, any administrator, including politicians and state superintendents, deserves their tenure protection stripped for good. No back-handed legal due process for any of these pro-privatization deformers allowed, period.
And while we’re at it, if teachers are going to lose the due process that comes with so-called tenure, then let’s strip the President’s ability to stay in office for a period of four years before the next election. Let’s do it like the do in the UK and other parliamentary governments and when a President losses their mandate from the people, out they go and we have a new election.
But let’s keep the balance of power between Congress, The Supreme Court and the White House—just make it easier to get rid of a president who oversteps his power.
Let’s add a “motion of no confidence” and then we can get rid of Congress and the President in one swoop.
For instance, parliamentary and presidential systems also differ in their abilities to remove the chief executive from power. In a parliamentary system, it is much easier for the legislature to remove the prime minister. Even a disagreement in policy or a lack of effective leadership could be enough reason for this to happen. A president is more difficult to remove from his or her position, and it usually is possible only in extreme cases, such as when the leader is accused of a serious crime.
In addition, we keep the four year limit between elections but have the option to get rid of a President at any time like they do in the UK as they do when the PM becomes unpopular for any reason.
The first thing we need to do is quit calling post-probationary status “tenure” because it is not a lifetime job as in post-secondary education. People get confused by the deliberate misuse of the word. K-12 teachers have no special protections from other public employees. They all have the option to go through a kangaroo hearing, just one more step in the discipline/dismissal process, IF they opt for it, which few do. Most take severance packages which educrats call “settlements,” but are similar to what millions of private sector workers get when they lose their jobs. School districts prefer this because teachers give up the right not just to an “expensive” hearing but also to an expensive civil suit.
new paper out of Pioneer Institute :
Common Core’s Validation
A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House
A Pioneer Institute White Paper
by Ze’ev Wurman
A tiny but significant error in your intro, Diane: The injunction applies only to Guilford and Durham schools, not Wake County. Raleigh, where the AP story comes from, is indeed in Wake, but the Wake school system isn’t a party in the lawsuit. The written order hasn’t yet been released, but according to a story I read this morning, NCAE is hoping the written order will apply to the entire state. We’ll see.
Thanks, teacher in NC. Fixed the error. Durham, not Wake County.
You have probably heard by now that NC is trying to pull out of the Common Core standards now…www.wral.com