Public School students in court arguing that CA's tenure system is hurting their education.

Oh yeah, I was discussing this with a coworker recently. We work for LA Unified, but since we are at a charter school, we aren't unionized and don't have tenure, but we are affected by UTLA (the union) to some extent. I agree that it's tricky. Tenure means you can't get rid of sucky teachers. But tenure also means you can't get rid of decent veteran teachers and replace them with lower paid new teachers to save money.

Judging teacher performance is also really hard, and judging based on student performance is hurting the poorest students and the educators who want to teach them.

There's definitely an agenda here -- but that's not automatically a bad thing.

California's school system has becoming increasingly dysfunctional. It badly needs reform. But I don't thank there's any simple one solution that will accomplish it.

Tenure may be as contributing factor, but as is noted, it's a two edged sword. Eliminating it might end up being a solution worse than the problems it solves.

I have no answers.

Williebee said:

There are good arguments to be made (imo) on both sides of the discussion.

Tenure helps to promote academic freedom in a career field that doesn't get the respect or pay it deserves (again, imo.)

Alternately, tenure and unions do make it difficult to deal out the educators who... don't educate.

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The intent is a great one. But I don't agree that tenure promotes academic freedom. It promotes stagnation and dogmatic adherence to status quo. At least at primary and secondary schools. At university, where research is more prevalent and able to go in controversial directions, I agree.

I also agree, unreservedly, with the part in red above.

I don't know the fraction involved, but I would submit that tenure and an abusively protective union structure are part of the respect issue.

As a for example, I read last week on CNN about a grade school teacher in (I believe) Indiana who was caught viewing pornography on a school computer. He was fired, the arbitration process called for his reinstatement, and the courts refused appeal. It's confusing because, in fairness, part of why the arbitrator ruled that way is because there was evidence that the school (or district, I forget which) hadn't enforced this equally. There's a whole other discussion there. But is the answer to reinstate a teacher who exhibits lack of morals that clearly? The fact that the union-negotiated process doesn't call for review, but protects a clear bad actor, that's part of the problem.

rugcat said:

There's definitely an agenda here -- but that's not automatically a bad thing.

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Exactly.

rugcat said:

California's school system has becoming increasingly dysfunctional. It badly needs reform. But I don't thank there's any simple one solution that will accomplish it.

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You could probably substitute all 50 states as well as territories and DC, and still be correct.

rugcat said:

Tenure may be as contributing factor, but as is noted, it's a two edged sword. Eliminating it might end up being a solution worse than the problems it solves.

I have no answers.

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Tenure needs to stop being blind to malfeasance and unprofessional, even criminal, behavior. I don't want it gone. I just want it to stop being a wall, unable to provide any means of accountability. It's pretty damn close to that, if not actually so.

Isn't tenure just a way not to get fired without just cause? If you suck, it should be just cause.

Williebee said:

I would suggest it can promote both, though not in the same individuals.

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Sure. It *can*. Like I told rugcat, I don't think it needs to go away completely.

But it seems like it is way more to the negative at primary/secondary levels.

Losing tenure is a scary idea. Teaching is one of those long-haul professions--you don't get really good at it until you have 3 or 4 years in, because the cycle is so long. And there are years where the classes they get are tough--tough material, tough students or even tough parents. (I remember a friend moaning because she'd drawn the short straw one year and had to take the class with the kid with the notorious parent--the one with the occasional restraining order placed by the school).

And given the adversarial relationship right now between parents and teachers, it can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences. Speaking from the experience of friends who work in a school where the parents are powerful, moneyed and entitled, they've discovered that the math tests they gave five years ago can't even be given out as in-class assignments. Parents wanting happy kids and good grades, who honestly think that they are advocating for their child, demand meetings and plans and reports, and then don't follow up at home. It's gotten to the point where the teachers at this school have been progressively watering down what they teach to avoid the constant misery of having to explain and re-explain themselves to parents.

In such a he said--she said kind of environment, who's going to push the limits, or demand accountability, if it means they'll just be out of a job? Better to ease off on the tests a little, I've been told, and let next year's teachers worry about it.

I come from a family of teachers, but I'd never work in the public school system. This makes me sad, but it's a bad, bad time to be a teacher.

Charter schools, which lack tenure protection for their teachers, do not have better outcomes than regular public schools.

While there are variable data here, a review of these studies suggests that states without tenure protection for teachers do not have better outcomes for students, and may even have worse outcomes in some respects.

I really think teacher's unions have become a political football, because defanging teacher unions is an "easy fix" can be achieved in a climate of frugality. But I don't think there's a lot of evidence that weakening unions is going to improve education.

No system is perfect, but in my opinion a tenure system promotes a certain amount of openness, collaboration, trust and collegiality among teachers. In a tenure system, a teacher who comes up with a new approach to classroom management that improves outcomes can share it with his or her peers. In a system where teachers only get raises or contract renewals if they are better than their average peer, as per the "business model," it would be crazy to share something that will bring the rest up to your level and destroy your advantage come evaluation time.

I teach at a community college, and I don't have tenure (because I'm a part timer), but I can honestly say my tenured colleagues are hard working and conscientious people who are able to stand up for each other, their non tenure track colleagues, and for their students in ways they couldn't if they lacked this protection. There are times when I wish the administrators had tenure, actually, since their obsessive focus on numbers, the bottom line, and their own legacies (since these are the things they're evaluated on) often get in the way of teaching and learning.

I think the teacher's unions have brought this on themselves. Trade unions police their own as they reflect the union as a whole. If you are a crappy plumber or pipefitter you are sitting on the bench and a better tradesman is doing the job.

It seems the teachers union has decided to take the side of their members no matter how it makes the rest of the union look or if they are in the right.

I also believe schools should be more focused on teaching as opposed to filling seats. It is a big issue in the border states, kids that don't speak the language are in class, not learning, but keep there to fill a seat. They are moved along before their scores are counted in the school average.

It might also help to only allow a deduction for a child who is passing with a certain score (C), and good attendance. Also giving the school the right to boot shitbird kids would help. And no I really don't care what happens to the shitbirds, they disrupt class, and make it harder for the majority to learn. I say this as a former shitbird.

If you incentivize good and successful kids, you're making things far worse for schools with a high population of: homeless, migrant, hungry, poor, or troubled kids. These schools are already crappy in comparison with other schools. Kids who don't know where their next meal is coming from or where they're going to sleep that night tend to put less emphasis on schoolwork. Screw those lazy bums. Let's give them a shittier school.

redfalcon said:

I think the teacher's unions have brought this on themselves. Trade unions police their own as they reflect the union as a whole. If you are a crappy plumber or pipefitter you are sitting on the bench and a better tradesman is doing the job.

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If a plumber comes in and does a poor job, it's pretty obvious that it was his or her faulty work. Of course, that only works if all the pipes he or she is working with are standardized to a specific quality, and he or she has all the tools necessary to do the job. If every time he reached into the box, he didn't know whether the pipe was going to the right size (and he can't put it back!), the right material, or if it was going to have some hidden structural difference in it that would break two months down the road, how would you measure that? What if all we gave him to work with was a pair of pliers and some duct tape?

It's a nice idea, but would be a waste of money to try to implement, because there are too many variables. Each class, each combination of students and teachers, would need a different kind of evaluation each year, because the combinations change, and the kinds of issues both are dealing with will be different, and will create different stresses on the system. Everyone would have to decide what's a valuable thing--is it just numbers on the standardized tests? What about social growth? Anxiety issues? Violence at home? Learning disabilities? Giftedness? (Yes, giftedness. Gifted kids in a regular classroom often have terrible marks, because they just check out. It's boring.) Does making sure a child has at least one meal a day count as bonus marks? If the teacher has had to change grades or change subjects due to shifts in enrollment, do they get credit for that? How will you account for the kids that just need a bit more time to absorb everything than the school year allows?

Anything that doesn't take these, and other factors, into account, will create unnecessary fear. No one is at their best when they're afraid for their jobs, and they'll start spending some of their time and attention looking for a safe place to jump in case the worst happens. It becomes a counter-productive spiral and that kind of fear is contagious. We want to keep the best teachers--if we won't pay them, the least we can do is let them feel safe.

redfalcon said:

I also believe schools should be more focused on teaching as opposed to filling seats. It is a big issue in the border states, kids that don't speak the language are in class, not learning, but keep there to fill a seat. They are moved along before their scores are counted in the school average.

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I don't see what this has to do with the teacher's union.

And, for the record, the US is a nation of immigrants, there have always been children who come into the schools who don't speak English. They learn, and learn quickly, in school.

ELLs (English Language Learners) and kids with special needs take the state tests, and their scores are counted.