Katharine Stevens argues that eroding tenure rights will help, not hurt, the effort to retain the best teachers. Even more than they want ironclad job security, good teachers want to be able to depend on their colleagues, especially the colleagues who had charge last year of this year's class.
While I agree, I will lay heavy odds that this will never fly. Too many bad teachers (and teacher unions) have a vested interest in keeping tenure. And frankly, how stupid is it to say that "we can't attract good people unless they're guaranteed employment?" Quite literally no other job seems to have problems doing so. What makes teachers so vulnerable to being fired that other industries don't have?
ReplyDeleteI don't see the point of tenure in primary or secondary school. The argument for tenure that makes sense to me is that it protects research professors who are doing and saying things that are out of order with general social mores. It's the Galileo law, if you like: even the ones who are real asses can't be fired for saying something that the public isn't ready to hear, should their research point that way.
ReplyDeleteBut that kind of cutting-edge research isn't being done in primary or secondary schools. Their job is not to research hidden truths, but to teach a curriculum that was agreed-upon in advance. Hopefully this agreement was reached via legitimate, local and democratic methods. Still, at this level we're not bucking the system, we're instilling a basic understanding of it in a new generation.
It's a union. A collection of ants lack the backbone of those who survive alone.
ReplyDeleteI live in an area where the state employee unions substantially pay for elections: California, San Diego, area.
ReplyDeleteWe have just come off of 5 budget cycles where pink slips were issued to all the new teachers, because the union insists these be handed out on a strict seniority basis. That means there is no option to push out low performers in favor of better performers with less time in service.
And some of these teachers are lazy and poorly suited to the subjects they teach.
Valerie