Pedro Noguera went to the lions’ den, the Wall Street Journal, to explain why the corporate reformers’ crusade to eliminate teacher tenure is wrong-headed (the article is unfortunately behind a paywall). The WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is a bastion of anti-teacher, anti-public education thinking, whose writers consistently support vouchers, Teach for America, and anything else that disrupts public education and the teaching profession.
Noguera, a professor at New York University, writes:
“Ideally, tenure helps low-income schools to attract—and retain—good teachers. I’ve studied urban schools for many years, and it’s clear that disparities in teacher quality contribute to unequal academic outcomes among poor students. Students in districts with large minority populations are much more likely to be taught by new, inexperienced teachers who have only a bachelor’s degree and are often not certified in the subjects they teach. These teachers often earn considerably less than their counterparts in white, affluent districts, and frequently work under adverse conditions. Tenure has no bearing on how school districts chose to staff their schools.
“Schools in high-poverty communities are also typically underfunded, as revenues from local property taxes tend to be meager. That makes it difficult for low-income schools to find and keep top teachers. Educators may not be motivated solely, or even primarily, by salary, but it still influences decisions. A highly sought-after teacher would be unlikely to take a job in Oakland that pays $55,000 over a position in nearby Portola Valley that pays $90,000. So we have to make teaching in high-poverty schools more attractive.
“That’s what tenure does. In recent years, tenure has given teachers the job security that allows them to report cheating and call attention to the deplorable conditions in low-income schools. The conditions in the Los Angeles Unified School District are particularly troubling. Some classrooms in the system are among the most overcrowded in the country. Budget cuts have eliminated hundreds of librarians in some of the poorest schools, a loss that “has handicapped” students, as L.A.’s Roy Romer Middle School Principal Cristina Serrano told the L.A. Times in February.”
We should be doing everything possible to recruit and retain the best teachers, as other nations do, he writes. “This is what nations that outperform the U.S. in education—Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland—have done. Not only are teachers in these countries unionized with tenure, but teaching is a high-status occupation. We should be enhancing the profession, not undermining it.”
Thank you, Pedro, for writing such good sense and publishing it exactly where it needs to be read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Professor Noguera’s comments tell the story. How does this wealthy man from California become a spokesperson for education?
My thanks to Professor Noguera for his willingness to address this issue.
The learning and teaching conditions in many of these hyper segregated, underfunded, Title 1 schools are no match for the best teachers.
The obstacles and constraints in these systems are impossible to overcome on a large scale, especially over many years of time.
How would teacher tenure lead to a teacher choosing the $55,000 teaching in Oakland with tenure over a $90,000 teaching job with tenure? The only way that tenure would influence where a teacher teaches is if 1) tenure is granted in some jurisdictions and not others or 2) forcing the new jurisdiction to refuse tenure to any teacher that moves from a less well paying district to a better paying district.
Am I missing something?
Once again, most teachers aren’t in it for the money. Believe it or not, regardless of salary, there are a lot of teachers who want to serve in disadvantaged areas. But it’s a tough job with threats from all sides. One has to know that after one has proven him/herself, that that administration will have his/her back. Provided they have some reasonable assurance of job security, many teachers will choose to teach in tough areas regardless of salary. But without reasonable protection, who in their right mind would teach in the toughest schools, again, regardless of salary?
All jobs are a bundle of characteristics that include salary and tenure. If you think Professor Noguera was wrong when he stated “A highly sought-after teacher would be unlikely to take a job in Oakland that pays $55,000 over a position in nearby Portola Valley that pays $90,000. So we have to make teaching in high-poverty schools more attractive”, your dispute is with Professor Noguera.
My point is a simple one: if both jurisdictions offer the highly sought-after teacher tenure, tenure is not a reason to choose one over the other so it will not lead to more highly sought-after teachers in Oakland.
I think that what you (and I for that matter) are missing is having read the complete article. The post here is several sections of a longer article. The author may well not explicitly connect tenure with a potential decision to take a job at lower paying district. It may just appear that way because of the sections chosen for this blog post. I don’t subscribe to WSJ, so I am unable to read the full article.
PJL,
That may be the case. I depended on the excerpts as well as I don’t subscribe to the WSJ. The first sentence of the excerpt does say that tenure helps low income schools attract and retain good teachers. I don’t see any support for that position in the extracted sections.
The point, TE, is that without due process rights, no one in their right mind would work in a low-income district no matter how much they wanted to – it’s professional suicide.
If you have the same due process rights in a low paying district and a high paying district the sought-after teacher will not use due process rights as a reason to choose the low paying district over the high paying district. I do agree that the teacher that is not sought-after who is going to choose between a $55,000 salary in Oakland teaching and a $55,000 salary in the private sector might well choose teaching in Oakland over the private sector job.
Are you being intentionally obtuse, TE? We’re talking about people who *want* to teach in Oakland. Perhaps they like the challenge, or maybe they feel called to help those less fortunate, or maybe they just connect better with poor, inner city kids than spoiled suburban kids. Whatever. But without tenure, regardless of whether or not the affluent districts have it, they’ll probably feel that they can’t, professionally speaking, work in those districts because the kids are likely to score lower on tests, which they’ll be blamed for which will make their job insecure. It’s doubtful that anyone who wants to work with nice, cooperative affluent kids with involved parents* is going to be pulled into working in the inner city just because of tenure. But it is very likely that someone who wants to work in the inner city would be scared off by a lack of tenure.
If you could, just once, think like a human being rather than an economist, you would understand that.
* Yes, I know not all affluent suburban like that, but that’s the stereotype.
Dienne,
You may speak about whomever you like, but Professor Noguera was SPECIFICALLY writing about a sought-after teacher choosing between $55,000 for teaching in Oakland and $90,000 for teaching in Portola Valley. He SPECIFICALLY wrote that low levels of resources made it very difficult for “for low-income schools to find and keep top teachers”, and as a result, “Students in districts with large minority populations are much more likely to be taught by new, inexperienced teachers who have only a bachelor’s degree and are often not certified in the subjects they teach”.
As I said, tenure would matter to a teacher deciding between teaching in Oakland and working in the private sector which seems to be your concern. Professor Noguera’s concern is that the accomplished teacher in Oakland will be hired away by Portola Valley. For the teacher making that decision, tenure would not seem to be relevant.
Where did I say anything about the private sector?
Bah, you refuse to listen, I’m done with you. Good day.
Generally speaking folks are deciding between teaching in the public schools and doing something else with their lives. I don’t believe you choose to teach for example. Are you in some other part of the public sector?
TE – What you say is very logical. I think Dienne’s point is that teachers contemplating teaching in “bad” schools would be more concerned about job security since they would be afraid of being unfairly blamed for the poor performance of their pupils. So tenure in a “bad” school might have more value to them than tenure in a “good” school where they expect their pupils will probably do pretty good and so their job will be fairly secure even without tenure.
Am I missing something?
Perhaps.
Look at it this way.
In general, kids at wealthy, well off schools do well on the high stakes, standardized tests that teachers are now judged on.
In general, low income districts have more struggling students, ESOL students, etc. who will not do as well on the endless, ever more wordy, increasingly tricky high stakes tests.
Job protections may be more important to/ necessary for the teachers with targets on their backs from the get go as compared to teachers who are working with other populations.
Yes there are exceptions to these generalities.
But in my experience, recent policies are making serving low income students a sure fire way to get a poor rating and thus fired.
What your saying here is that tenure is more important if you are teaching in Oakland than if you are teaching in Portola Valley and might mitigate some of the risks of teaching there. That is a reasonable point. If we really want to use the tenure system to push sought-after teachers out of Portola Valley and in to Oakland where they are needed, we should reduce tenure rights in Portola Valley and increase them in Oakland.
I am in 100% agreement with you Ang.
I certainly agree that Ang has a point here, that teaching in a wealthy district may be less risky for a teacher professionally than teaching in a poor district. If the difference between the two districts is very great, teachers in wealthy districts will not lose very much if tenure is not granted in wealthy districts and poor districts would be able to attract better teachers because of the increased job security relative to the wealthy districts.
Not all challenging districts have such pay scale discrepencies.
The NYC system has an exceptionally good pay scale, with only 8 years to max. Remove tenure and many will go elsewhere.
New York does indeed have a very good pay scale, but in addition to what many would consider to be superior working conditions, most middle- to upper-class surrounding suburbs offer a substantial pay bump to boot: http://www.uft.org/news-stories/brain-drain-0
It is very unlikely, to say the least, that NYC will ever be able to pay teachers as much as Bronxville or Garden City. It also should be said that there are plenty of motivated, highly-qualified people, especially younger people, who shudder at the thought of teaching in the same place for 30 years. I had hoped that the new UFT contract would offer a defined contribution plan option to attract those sorts of people, not to mention older people who would consider teaching as a second career. Alas . . .
Does anyone know if $90,000 is the starting salary over at Portola Valley? Hell, it took me over 20 years to make that salary. Places that offer higher salaries usually don’t have that many openings. But those teachers need due process just as much as any one making less. And, we all know that those schools have few if any openings, and when they do, it’s “who you know”. And of course tenure isn’t the only issue driving teachers to better paying school districts. They also offer more support and supplies and benefits.
Anyone wanting to become a teacher doesn’t do it to become rich, but they do expect to make a salary that they (and their family) can live on. IMHO due process rights here in NYC were weakened under the ’05 contract when our right to grieve letters in our file was taking away. Also, when the Rubber Room was established, due process went out the door because many of these teachers some who were excellent teachers were never told the charges against them, and many had to wait years for any type of adjudication. They were put there because it gave principals the power to set up phony charges because the teachers was an outspoken critic.
I also thank Professor Noguera for speaking the truth in the hyena’s den of the WSJ. There is so much negative press against tenure in the mainstream media that it’s mind numbing. The biggest paper in NJ recently had an editorial that was not only anti-tenure but also anti-seniority and anti LIFO and in a very snarky and sarcastic way. It’ refreshing to hear a voice of dissent from the reformista billionaires boys club script which demonizes tenure and teacher rights 24/7.
In business, bonuses only work if you start with a workplace that is competitive, adversarial. The reason they work is a group of employees in the same positions or same level feel they are doing a disproportionate share of the work (other workers are less committed than they are, less skilled, etc.) so a bonus system is a recognition of their disproportionate value.
That’s why it’s a lousy idea for a workplace that values cooperative work and collaboration, or where that is the aspirational goal, like ed reformers claim they want in school. The two things are contradictory.
It’s funny, because I’ve also never agreed with the proposition that employees will take MORE risk with LESS security, and that’s the ed reformer assumption. They insist they want employees to “innovate”, yet they always attack security. That’s dumb too. People have to feel a certain measure of security before they’ll take risk.
I don’t even think their “private sector” ideas are at all coherent. They don’t hang together. That’s not even reaching the question of whether we should be turning the public sector into the private sector, which I don’t know why anyone would want to do.
I think the reason the ideas don’t hang together or make any sense is POLITICAL. They need a certain political coalition, so they cobbled together a bunch of contradictory policy and often self-defeating policy and pushed it out. It satisfies all the factions within ed reform, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and it probably won’t work very well.
Chiara: spot on!
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Without making you responsible for my words, I would put it this way: what about INCENTIVES and DISINCENTIVES—many of the most important and necessary ones not being monetary—do free market fundamentalists not understand?
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Sometimes I too am baffled at the incoherence of the charterite/voucher/privatization crowd. I increasingly think of that as not so much abandoning logic, facts and ethics when they make their case, as not even knowing what logic, facts and ethics are in the first place.
A deeply troubling but critical example. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (participants in Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964) we need to remember what the real civil rights movement was like. The self-proclaimed members of the “new civil rights movement of our time”— the BBC and numerous hedge fund managers and their educrat enablers and edubully enforcers—haven’t even an atom of the courage, moral character and decency of those three young men who died much too early.
Let us not confuse the dignity and selflessness of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner with the sneer, jeer and smear of the self-aggrandizing $tudent $ucce$$ crowd.
If I seem over the top, so be it. To the owner of this blog and all those for a “better education for all,” a reminder that the things most dear may cost dearly:
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” [Frederick Douglass]
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This article appeared this morning in The Los Angeles Times. I think it’s a good addition to this conversation.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/political-connections/why-the-vergara-decision-isn-t-enough-20140618
How is it a good addition? It pays lip service to the role of social and economic factors and continues to blame most of the problem on bad teachers. Huh?
From your article: “California law allowed teachers to obtain tenure after only one and a half years at work, which one witness likened to requiring a marriage decision after one and a half dates.”
How did we get from “allowed” to “requiring”? Was there a requirement that California teachers be granted tenure after 18 months, or was that just an option? Sometimes you know fairly soon how things are going to roll. Sometimes you need more time.
BTW, my husband and I had barely one and a half dates before getting married. It’s been nine and a half years now. Guess you wouldn’t have allowed us that short of a time frame, eh?
If that teacher vetting system is a one and a half date marriage, then TFA is a mail order bride that doesn’t match the picture.
“And in California, Education Trust’s studies have found that “sizable percentages” of students taught by the highest-rated teachers don’t improve their academic performance.”
Scientifically rebuking common wisdom, and proving the old adage,
you can lead a kid to a good teacher, but you can’t make-em learn.
I think it goes back to the capture of politicians by the finance industry. How anyone could come out of the last crash and decide every sector needs to be more like Wall Street is beyond me, but that’s what DC apparently concluded, after much study and many experts.
I know. I don’t get it either.
How’s the bonus system working out in the VA? Fabulous, huh? HUGE success! 🙂
Let’s replicate that in public schools! Scale it up! 🙂
@arneduncan Opportunity matters. Our nation’s HS graduation rate is 80%, the highest ever
This is off-topic but if one of you edu-experts would help me out I’d appreciate it.
Does this stat include “credit recovery” programs and GED programs? I’m curious because Ohio’s credit recovery programs are finally getting some scrutiny and oversight (by media, not lawmakers, but I’ll take “scrutiny and oversight” where I find it).
I read the article through my library. Diane hit the substance. Basically he is saying that if you want to attract and retain good teachers, we might want to follow the lead of other nations who have made teaching a high status profession instead of destroying it. While Nogales agrees that California has some work to do and is doing on the tenure system, taking away due process rights certainly is one example of how not to strengthen the profession.
Makes sense.
I think that one of the reasons that low SES schools function, is that they are sustained by the reservoir of goodwill of good teachers who could go where the grass is greener, but choose to be and stay at those schools. Taking away job securitiy may be the catalyst to lose all that goodwill.
TC: a critical addition to this thread.
Thank you for your comment.
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Way much cheaper and economic to leave tenure intact than feed reformers, TFA-turned superintendents, and charter masters moulding for gorilla cookies that cost over millions of dollars every year.
I agree that tenure should absolutely be available for teachers. However, tenure as it exists now (K-12). I taught high school for many years in California and now teach in higher education. If K-12 tenure were structured like it is in higher education, schools would attract retain higher quality teachers. As it exists now, CA teachers earn tenure if they show up consistently for two school years (18 months). Tenure needs to be reformed.
I think I can add a bit of light to the subject.
As far as the tenure in the ‘high poverty communities”, teachers want to teach in those districts. As a teacher from East St. Louis, Illinois, I can say with certainty that you don’t do it for the money. Speaking specifically to teachingeconomist, the theories that you are espousing are the very ideas that spawned the Teach For America (or as I like to call them, ‘Teach For A little while’) ‘movement’.
People historically, didn’t go into teaching for the money, or as a good number of today’s teachers do, to run a charter school, for the money. They do so, all at the expense of those very same ‘high poverty communities’. They entered the field to make a difference.
I have issued this challenge all over the internet. I would be willing to stack any 10 teachers from a ‘high poverty school district’ (I will volunteer, myself.) against teachers from any district in the country. I believe that they will come out as no less than equal, and more than likely, superior to their counterparts, professionally.
Teaching is like any other profession (I’ll say that again, Profession).
There is no preponderance of poor teachers in ‘high poverty communities’. Actuallym, the converse is the case. They are ‘high poverty communities’, with the requisite pitfalls and obstacles that that designation implies. Candidly speaking, the job is more difficult there. Add to that, the dearth of resources available and the seemingly innate lack of communication and those teachers do a great job.
If Teach For America has served no other purpose, they have shown that the teachers in the schools that are referenced are not the problem. There have been 30,000 Teach For America ‘members’ over the last 25 years, with no appreciable difference in the ‘high poverty schools’ where they operate. So, they are either wholly ineffective, or someone dropped the ball in assessing the problem.
Keith,
So when Professor Noguera states that
“I’ve studied urban schools for many years, and it’s clear that disparities in teacher quality contribute to unequal academic outcomes among poor students”
and
“Students in districts with large minority populations are much more likely to be taught by new, inexperienced teachers who have only a bachelor’s degree and are often not certified in the subjects they teach”
and
“Schools in high-poverty communities are also typically underfunded, as revenues from local property taxes tend to be meager. That makes it difficult for low-income schools to find and keep top teachers”
he was quite mistaken and has apparently wasted the many years he has studied urban school districts?
It seems your dispute is primarily with Professor Noguera.
UTLA needs to file a lawsuit against LAUSD administration. Since so many schools and the entire district is underperforming, it is therefore the fault of those in charge. Hopefully, Alex Caputo-Pearl will be the one to match wits with Mr. Broad, as John Deasy is just one of his flunkies. His notorious temper tantrums are proof that he is as witless as Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann.
With the new funding policy in California, the discrepancies between what you call “wealthy districts” and “poor districts” will largely disappear. All districts in California have been funded pretty much on the same basis for years.
Well teachingeconomist,
Actually, I would absolutely dispute the sources of his data. And, if you do even a cursory survey of the information, it actually contradicts itself.
What were the mechanisms that he used to assess “teacher quality”? Did he normalize environments? Were classroom sizes considered? Was poverty?
Where is the data that shows that minority students “are more likely to be taught by new and inexperienced teachers with only a bachelors degree”? And if that’s the case, why are we disputing tenure?
Also, if “schools in high poverty areas are underfunded”, due to “meager property values and it makes it hard to keep top teachers”, again I ask, “Why are we having this discussion about tenure? Furthermore, are property values the only source of revenue for schools? (I’ll answer that one for you. NO, they are not. Shouldn’t an economist know that?)
As a teachingeconomist, you have to learn to decipher, or at least read the information that you cite as reference. And also, read between the lines. The answers are right there.
I have been teaching in distressed school districts for the past 13+ years and in those districts, teachers are required to have a bachelors degree and there are continuing professional development requirements. Each state enforces those for certificate maintenance and renewal. Most teachers continue their education anyway, because they seek constant improvement and there are salary incentives.
To put it plainly, I have no dispute.
Just as I have no dispute with your monetizing the motives for people teaching in a wealthy school district versus districts in high poverty areas. You see, tenure is the same across the state, which is the reason it had to be attacked at the state level in California. That will have to be the case in all of the states.
Labeling yourself a teaching economist does not make you privy to the rationales and motivations that guide a person to choose a school district. Contrary to a “teaching economists opinion”, it’s not always, no, it’s rarely a matter of dollars and sense. At least for those teaching in your, “high poverty areas”. Consider this, no one will ever get rich teaching in one of those schools. Consequently, attempting to justify monetary reasons for choosing the districts is ludicrous.
Finally, I would submit that you absolutely choose to teach. I don’t mean in a “Teach For America, climb over the backs of poor and minority kids to get a six-figure gig two years out of college kind of way”, I mean in a “genuine, I think I can do some good in this situation” motivation.
Keith,
It does seem that your dispute is with Professor Noguera. I am sure he would like to hear from you. His email address at NYU is pedro.noguera@nyu.edu .
No, I don’t have a dispute. I am just doing what anyone who is purportedly prepared to take data seriously, should do. I am evaluating the validity of that data.
How can you make assessments and conclusions on information that is suspect from the inception?
Surely, a “teachingeconomist” has made that deduction before relying on the data to make conclusions. Right?
While I do appreciate what Professor Noguera has done as far as “sticking up” for teachers, I do not understand the whole issue of teacher tenure. As a teacher myself, the only thing that tenure has done for me is that when I achieved it, I didn’t get a layoff notice at the end of the school year in preparation for budget season. Many of you have talked about due process rights, but that is a union issue, no? We should work on keeping our unions in tact so that our rights will be protected.