The New Republic

I was crossing my fingers hoping "Making the Grade" wasn't another terrible excuse for liberal education policy. Shall we also get rid of teachers' unions in general and issue no-bid contracts for exams and electronic materials? Where is the argument? There are honest arguments one could make if one wanted to lay out the case against tenure in good faith. But those arguments have to be made in anticipation of the strongest counter-arguments. How long does it actually take to fire a teacher? How many teachers do admins actually want to remove at any one time? What do the other teachers think about the teacher-to-be-fired? Besides the occasionally indefensible stances that any teachers' union takes, I'm not too upset with the notion that teachers need to work several years before their jobs are protected. And I'm not upset with the history of tenure, which seems to be borne out of the idea that school and local politics should not endanger the job of a teacher. It's not like it's impossible to remove teachers. And it's not like such a difficult job doesn't self-select well before tenure. If I'm going to be underpaid as a professional, am going to the job that I do badly, and am going to have to do a minimum of 9 hours of work/prep a day, the relative protections of tenure five years and 600 insolent or indolent teenagers later will not keep me on the job. If there's a process to remove bad teachers or make their lives miserable and allow them to self-deport, then it should be used, especially if those people are unwilling to do the work to become better teachers. You'd almost think that our biggest educational problem was the fact that teachers tend to be unionized and have some job protections, rather than the fact that more and more children are growing up in poverty, deprived of basic things like food, loving parents, and a home environment that stresses education.

- chaitless

March 15, 2012 at 10:16pm

To be clear, I'm not a teacher but I try to follow this stuff with a clear mind and know that there's not much that many teachers can do to try to force kids to care about education without assistance from the children themselves and their parents. I really don't want to move to the New York Knicks public school model where if the irascible and generally unaccountable Dolans think that students aren't getting their value added deserts at any point, then they ought to just fire the teacher like he or she were some cancerous sports GM--as if switching in a different (and likely novice) teacher would all of a sudden inspire every student in the classroom to close the achievement gap.

- chaitless

March 15, 2012 at 10:26pm

"The Virginia measure was not perfect: It allowed teachers to be fired for any reason, which seems unwarranted." If one believes that, then one is for some kind of tenure. Tenure simply constitutes due process rights so that teachers can only be fired for cause. It prevents teaching from becoming a patronage position. Tenure is not a bulletproof vest that allows teachers to do (or not do) whatever they want. Frankly, school districts tend not to fire teachers because they don't want to spend the time and money it takes to make a case against teachers, and reforming that process is hard because evaluating effectiveness is not easy. In short, once you agree that teaching should not be a patronage slot, you're in the weeds.

- propjoe

March 20, 2012 at 1:38am

Three points: My understanding is that K-12 "tenure" is not the same as university college tenure. The article doesn't explore this but assumes that it is. I don't believe they are the same things. In other words, K-12 tenure involves more procedural protections for senior teachers but the level of job protection for teachers is not the same as it is for professors (in keeping with the rationale presented in the article). Second, let me echo what has already been said. I don't think the problem of our schools is that we have too many senior experienced teachers. Third, Job protection has always been a way to hire teachers on the cheap. It is non-monetary compensation. If we take away this compensation (along with reduced pensions and health care coverage) who do we think is going to go into the profession? If you want to get rid of job protection for teachers, fine. But you'd better figure out how to pay them more.

- poldpf

March 20, 2012 at 4:33am

How are grades K-12 not "idea factories" as well? As a college professor I am judged by my ability to publish my research but this is not the only (and perhaps not even the primary) way in which I am charged to "produce ideas," that is in the classroom - and it is precisely this laboratory that profs and teachers share. Indeed I would argue that while the intellectual production K-12 teachers are involved in is not as esteemed it is no less subject to "ideological retribution." K-12's don't face such retribution from parents? Is that what TNR is claiming? You acknowledge that a fair amount of the Republican party spews contempt for public education yet you assert all the same that these teacher's have no reason to worry. Have you thought this position through at all? If you want to take away tenure than you would have to radically increase the salary for these teachers. Who would want the job otherwise? Why not just make tenure better, especially when you have no practical alternative?

- NR851651

March 20, 2012 at 4:37am

Just why do you think the Virginia Republicans want to be able to fire teachers "for any reason"? Could it possibly be related to their faith-based antipathy to public education generally ? Virginia is the center of gravity for the "home school movement" and even has a private college (founded and presided over by a prominent state Republican politician) that was designed specifically for home schooled kids and is off limits for any faculty aspirants who think outside the Evangelical box. Could it be a weapon to be used against teachers cheeky enough to teach evolution or global warming in this state, whose Republican attorney general is pursuing a lawsuit against a state university science professor for endorsing research that seems to support the notion that our climate is changing? Could it simply be a part of the Republican governor's not-too-well-veiled effort to establish an Evangelical version of Sharia law in this declining haven for free speech and religious freedom? The Republicans now have the state house under their complete sway and can do whatever they choose. It sounds to me as if your editors may be "far too beholden" to the fashionable liberal notion that all we need to do to perfect out K-12 education is gut the unions and fire "incompetent" teachers. Far more interesting to me is the identity of those who want to do the firing and why.

- johnIngle

March 20, 2012 at 8:54am

Just why do you think the Virginia Republicans want to be able to fire teachers "for any reason"? Could it possibly be related to their faith-based antipathy to public education generally ? Virginia is the center of gravity for the "home school movement" and even has a private college (founded and presided over by a prominent state Republican politician) that was designed specifically for home schooled kids and is off limits for any faculty aspirants who think outside the Evangelical box. Could it be a weapon to be used against teachers cheeky enough to teach evolution or global warming in this state, whose Republican attorney general is pursuing a lawsuit against a state university science professor for endorsing research that seems to support the notion that our climate is changing? Could it simply be a part of the Republican governor's not-too-well-veiled effort to establish an Evangelical version of Sharia law in this declining haven for free speech and religious freedom? The Republicans now have the state house under their complete sway and can do whatever they choose. It sounds to me as if your editors may be "far too beholden" to the fashionable liberal notion that all we need to do to perfect out K-12 education is gut the unions and fire "incompetent" teachers. Far more interesting to me is the identity of those who want to do the firing and why.

- johnIngle

March 20, 2012 at 8:55am

Just why do you think the Virginia Republicans want to be able to fire teachers "for any reason"? Could it possibly be related to their faith-based antipathy to public education generally ? Virginia is the center of gravity for the "home school movement" and even has a private college (founded and presided over by a prominent state Republican politician) that was designed specifically for home schooled kids and is off limits for any faculty aspirants who think outside the Evangelical box. Could it be a weapon to be used against teachers cheeky enough to teach evolution or global warming in this state, whose Republican attorney general is pursuing a lawsuit against a state university science professor for endorsing research that seems to support the notion that our climate is changing? Could it simply be a part of the Republican governor's not-too-well-veiled effort to establish an Evangelical version of Sharia law in this declining haven for free speech and religious freedom? The Republicans now have the state house under their complete sway and can do whatever they choose. It sounds to me as if your editors may be "far too beholden" to the fashionable liberal notion that all we need to do to perfect out K-12 education is gut the unions and fire "incompetent" teachers. Far more interesting to me is the identity of those who want to do the firing and why.

- johnIngle

March 20, 2012 at 8:55am

This is ideology, not reality. If the authors had any practical knowledge of K-12 education whatsoever, they'd see the issue. School A hires Teacher 1 at 40,000. For every year that Teacher 1 stays on at School A, he becomes more expensive, and thus the incentive to fire him keeps getting greater. Finally, it gets to a point where Teacher 1 makes enough to support a family (God forbid), but now many years later he costs as much as Teachers 2 and 3 (out of college) combined. Obviously, the school will fire Teacher 1 and hire either 2, 3, or 2 and 3. Play out this situation on a large scale and you now have a profession that cannot sustain careers. Combine this with the fact that teachers get BETTER, not worse, as they progress in their careers, and the public education you claim to care about will be gutted and destroyed. TNR should "get out of the education business" themselves until they are willing to think it through just a little more. And yes, they ARE idea factories.

- brm2102

March 20, 2012 at 8:57am

Teaching is an unusual sort of job. It's a commodity position - elementary teachers are largely interchangeable one for another, for example, and even secondary positions don't really differ from school to school much. And, it's largely a solo job - 5 average and a couple of outstanding professionals can't cover up the performance of a couple of lousy performers, 'cause they're not in the room with them day to day. I understand why those facts make teachers feel vulnerable, and so I understand why the unions insist so vehemently on tenure conditions in contracts. But for all that, tenure is the wrong answer. A school superintendent should be free to assemble a team - which will often mean moving some folks out - for performance and results, without having to demonstrate gross incompetence to get a poor performer, or just plain tired teacher off the staff. High performing organizations demand performance and consistent results, and schools should not be insulated from that. Yeah that probably means paying more. Fine, raise my taxes and pay for results. And the practical result of tenure, or the combination of tenure and supers not held accountable for results, is that lousy teachers live on forever. Entire swaths of students in our local school got at random a simply crappy math education because they basically lost a year if they drew the unlucky card of having Mr. so-and-so for 9th or 10th grade math. Over 15 years, not a single female student came through a couple years of him still interested in and engaged in math, and damned few male students did. Except for the very brightest, they didn't even come through competent. Yet he was a tolerable volleyball coach, and not bad enough that anybody wanted to go through the enormous headaches of proving him genuinely incompetent, and so on he went. Now, tenure is a secondary cause here, because the superintendent ought to have had his own ass on the line in a way that incented him to remove crappy teachers, volleyball be damned. And our vaunted system of local control means the folks on the school board went to church and golfed with so-and-so, and so didn't put the wind up the super's blouse to remove him. But is nevertheless not an insignificant contributor. It ought to be abolished, right along with the cozy relationship between school board and superintendent that quashes accountability.

- IowaBeauty

March 20, 2012 at 9:39am

I'd like to pick up on a point made by poldpf above about "non-monetary compensation." Teachers' unions won tenure rights, via collective bargaining, in lieu of adequate pay raises. Local governments either couldn't, or didn't want to, offer teachers a living wage, so instead they offered strong tenure provisions, much like other public employees were offered decent pension plans in lieu of adequate pay raises. As a result, public school teachers find themselves today in a situation where they are paid like crap for doing arguably the single most important job in our society, but at least they have job security, which is especially important in this dismal post-Bush economy. In that context, I find it suspicious, and also revealing, that local and state governments now want to pull the rug out from under the hard-won benefit of teacher tenure WITHOUT offering anything equally significant in return. I am not an education professional, just an interested party sympathetic to the travails of the 99%, but I suspect that if local authorities offered significant across-the-board raises to teachers -- enough to constitute a living wage for all teachers -- in exchange for giving up tenure protections and unsustainable pension plans, the rank and file would happily agree to that trade-off. But that isn't going to happen. There is no money to pay teachers what they deserve, and that is precisely why local and state governments are now going after tenure and pension benefits. The day of reckoning is fast approaching for the economic house of cards that local and state governments built through their penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions to offer back-loaded benefits like tenure and pension instead of fair and equitable raises and a living wage. After refusing to pay teachers a salary commensurate with their acknowledged role in our society, politicians and the idealogues behind them now seek to dismantle teacher tenure. Regardless of the merits of the argument, it's terribly unfair. As brm2102 rightly points out, who the heck is going to want to teach if the pay is still crap and now you can be fired in mid-career by some political hack based on totally unreliable and arbitrary standards like standardized test scores? Because of the dismal wages, the teaching profession is already largely drawing its new recruits from the bottom third of our college population; do we really want to make the profession even less attractive? TNR needs to get its collective head out of its ivory tower ass. The problem does not reside with teachers; it is with a society that lavishes millions on actors, athletes and hedge fund managers while offering crumbs to its most important workers. Why not tax the bejesus out of the 1% and redistribute it directly to teacher salaries? Is that any less preposterous a solution to what ails us than unilaterally eliminating tenure?

- basile

March 20, 2012 at 10:17am

"Great public schools are the way a liberal, democratic, capitalist society makes good on the promise of providing genuine opportunities to all." Public schools are also the way that liberals brainwash young minds so that they believe that statism (as practiced by both the left and the right) is the only way to "run" a country. How about the idea of limited government enshrined in the Constitution that even the liberals taught us in the 1950's and 1960's? How about the liberty that our founding fathers fought and died for? Freedom works; government doesn't! Individual Freedom & Personal Responsibility Maximum Freedom, Minimum Government

- dalefogden

March 20, 2012 at 10:58am

Public school teaching is a civil service position. Tenure has problems, but like other civil service jobs, without some kind of merit hiring/tenure protection, the positions would be filled by political cronies, changing with the whims of the party in power. Of course, I have lately seen articles calling for the end of the civil service, and so, this is nothing new. Read up on the history of civil service in this country. Its abolition, or the abolition of job protection for teachers would lead to a true race for the bottom, with political corruption dominating the schools.

- asavoy

March 20, 2012 at 11:52am

This is one of the most astoundingly ignorant and unsubstantiated editorials I have ever read in the New Republic. Rather than going through a point by point rebuttal, I will confine myself to these. 1) Tenure in K-12 is not really analogous to tenure in universities. It is merely a guarantee of due process and just cause for dismissal. Tenured K-12 teachers can be dismissed for incompetence, insubordination, and immorality among other reasons. (Since when did ‘liberals’ stop believing in due process? Those that have should reconsider what the label themselves.) The difficulties in removing teachers stems more from the massive size of some school districts, which makes most administrative actions inefficient, as well as the unwillingness or inability of administrators to compile the appropriate documentation. Perhaps this should be called the ‘Save feckless management proposal.’ 2) Tenure was sought by teachers and their unions not only as recognition of the vested interest one develops in a job through satisfactory performance over time, but more importantly as a protection against nepotism. It is needed for that as well as for protection against political and religious zealots that can be found in almost every community. Only a naïve pundit would think that academic freedom isn’t an issue in the world of K-12. Have you already forgotten about the ‘intelligent design’ cases? 3) Arguably, tenure is needed even more today due to the financial stresses that face all public school districts. The pressure to find reasons to replace higher paid, more experienced teachers with cheaper, inexperienced ones will continue to grow as public budgets are cut. I ask, why is it that so-called liberals are so unwilling to recognize the vested interest an employee develops in a job through the investment in their own education and continuing development, their time, foregone opportunities, and roots put down in a community? Why have they abandoned fundamental employee rights such as due process and just cause? If they think the evaluation process is too easy, fix it as so many states are in the process of doing. If they think tenure is granted too quickly, lengthen the timeline as some states have done. Finally, if they think the operation of due process procedures is too cumbersome, then expedite it as many unions have already agreed to do.

- hzwerling

March 20, 2012 at 12:12pm

Despite having lots of jobs, I was a teacher more than anything else. As with everything, difficult issues abound. For example: consider hypocrisy. If teachers grade students (and consider grading a valid activity), then grading of teachers is also valid. Consequences of incompetence. A couple of years ago, I had cataract surgery. The surgery was successful. I presume the surgeon was graded and evaluated; I would not like to be operated on by a person without proper training and evaluation. Even with anything as trivial and inconsequential as HTML formatting, there are consequences for incompetence — acres of italic formatting across TNR, usually my fault, though not always.

- skahn

March 20, 2012 at 12:56pm

I attended high school in the early 70's and, frankly, even with tenure, my teachers were under a lot of political pressure. It affected my American History classes especially, but also had a deleterious effect on the discussion in our English Literature classes, and might well have affected Biology and Earth Science as well, given the increasing political cloud over those subjects. I imagine the same would be true in the upper elementary grades as well. I don't know why the editors believe these issues only apply in college classrooms. If the editors would spend a year in a school and see for themselves what kind of incompetence and corruption the administrators impose on the school system, they might have greater sympathy for tenure, as the principal protection teachers have against such a perverse and dystopic environment. It is easy to persecute the teachers, rather than address the main problem, but this will not be productive. In any system I have ever been a part of, it is management, rather than the workers, who contribute most to the inneffectiveness and inefficiency of that system. I'm not suggesting teachers are not important. In fact, they are critically important. Ask yourself how to improve what they do, and you can come up with a slate of ideas that have nothing to do with tenure. In the first place, how about putting programs in place to help teachers increase their effectiveness, rather than just making it easier to fire people? Any idiot can fire someone. Frankly, it is a remedy only an idiot could love. Neil

- purcellneil@aol.com

March 20, 2012 at 1:13pm

Show me the "damage." Cite a study. Give an example. Where is the "damage"? Tenure promotes cohesion and stability within schools. Teacher turnover is a crippling problem at the "hard-to-staff" schools in inner cities.

- brm2102

March 20, 2012 at 1:29pm

Another disappointing TNR article on education policy. Yes, teacher "tenure" (due process) is too complex and slow-moving. But because of the civil service nature of teaching, that just means it ought to be reformed, not abandoned. I don't understand why TNR can't get education policy right.

- polcereal

March 20, 2012 at 2:31pm

The problem with defending the tenure provisions of teach contracts as "due process" is that it ignores the very real fact that that due process quickly becomes a shield against legitimate personnel change - and that's not true just of teachers, it's true throughout the civil service. I have never had a private sector employee tell me "I'm just keeping my head down; if I don't break any rules, they can't fire me and I'll be out of here on pension in not too many years." I've heard variants of that from more civil servants than I care to count, including some of my own relations. It shouldn't be necessary for someone to be incompetent or immoral to be let go or moved on. No longer being the right person for a job with changing expectations is a good enough reason to hire someone else. Failure to actually improve one's abilities isn't incompetence, but it's ground for being replaced in any meritocratic workplace.

- IowaBeauty

March 20, 2012 at 3:53pm

"The Virginia measure was not perfect: It allowed teachers to be fired for any reason, which seems unwarranted." Am I alone in thinking this statement the best piece of unintentional comic writing we've seen in TNR in a long time?

- ironyroad

March 20, 2012 at 4:36pm

Ironyroad, you are not alone in that thought. Although not as rich, recently I was in a conversation with someone who told me that he had been an air traffic controller for much of his life (first, in the military, on board aircraft carriers, then as a civilian). As one of the many habits that drive my wife crazy, I frequently ask impolitic questions; in this case, were you doing that line of work when Reagan fired the controllers? He admitted that he had, and then explained that he had crossed the picket lines and kept working. Not in the conversation, but I suppose if someone has been guiding planes on and off carriers for much of his life, he develops strong nerves and a strong stomach.

- skahn

March 20, 2012 at 5:45pm

Wish Blackton would chime in on this, but I wonder how many teachers (i.e., good teachers) the editors know, let alone talk to. There's this sexist undercurrent to editorials like this that good teachers are just a bunch of women and/or "people who love kids" who will enter the profession no matter what. Which is stupid - if highly intelligent people want corporate america "employment at will" they can get paid a crapload more in corporate america, "merit pay" or not. Editors: why don't you focus your attention to research that shows what really can help kids learn (to the extent non-family and socioeconomic factors can): universal preschool and kindergarten, smaller class size in the early grades, and making sure entry level teachers have strong academic backgrounds.

- Lymon1

March 20, 2012 at 6:04pm

Chaitless, hzwerling, Neil, nice comments. Without the protections tenure provides, schools become subject to the tyranny of the administrator as Neil notes. Emphasizing Neils comments, due to the political pressures he mentions, administrators are often the weakest employees in a school district, and fall prey to those politics. A long time retired educator acquaintance describes just these conditions, when he started teaching at the beginning of the Kennedy administration. Schools were run by autocratic administrators that counted on a complaint, non-curious public, and that essentially treated women employees as chattel. My acquaintance, being a non-Jewish, white male, benefited greatly from this privileged good 'ol boys club and said so (and teaching in a supposed enlightened state north of the Mason-Dixon line). He, and the friend that he started teaching with, who was part of the discussion, never talked specifically about Catholics, Lutherans, or Scots, Irish or Germans. But even at their late retirement date, they both knew of, and specifically mentioned the Jews on the staff. To believe that conditions today have improved to the point that these protections are unnecessary is pollyannish, anti-middle class, anti-poor and anti-student in general. And look at where the legislation was proposed, Virginia. Seriously editors, if this is the model of progressive thinking TNR is always touting, then progressive is old Dixie. To try to separate the mindset of the Virginia legislature on abortion, from this kind of thinking on education is intellectual malpractice in it's fullest. IowaBeauty, you are correct about allowing superintendents to assemble a team of educators to their liking. It's just that it's not going to be what you expect. It never will be. I'm quite familiar with two schools where just this has happened. Both schools were made in the image of the administration. Both staffs were compliant in all ways to the administration. Both schools relied heavily on testing to reflect the schools standing. Staff taught to the tests in both schools and had no where near the in-service training their tenure protected counterparts were able to receive. Staff that was not on good personal relationship (part of the club) with the administration were let go. There was no innovation or innovative methods, just make sure the test scores are held up. If you think like our naive (or dishonest) hosts, that this should be the state of education, you can have it.

- jet

March 20, 2012 at 8:17pm

jet, Thank you. Neil

- purcellneil@aol.com

March 20, 2012 at 9:12pm

The editors reveal themselves to be hopeless elitists who have no idea what a school is. Neil

- purcellneil@aol.com

March 20, 2012 at 9:13pm

Human activity is always struggle. When it is our side of the struggle, we are the "good guys," and those we criticize should give way (in this case, be fired). When someone is on the other side of the struggle, and wants us to give way, we should have tenure and be protected. When I began teaching in the Seattle School District, many years ago, black people were just starting to rise up and criticize the (mostly white) establishment, and wanted to start moving people out who were not receptive to "black studies," "black power," and the like. Some of the objections were clearly defensive and racist, but some of the demands and proposals, don't necessarily stand up that well in hindsight, either. To some extent, "black English" and "ebonics" hasn't held up very well. On the other hand, in the usual bend, absorb, and assimilate style of American culture, America has been "blackified" just as it has been Irish-ized, Yiddish-ized, Hispanicized, etc. Even so, I would argue that the whole tenure argument, like every other argument depends a bit on where your bread is buttered and who is buttering.

- skahn

March 20, 2012 at 10:37pm

Agreed again Neil. I think it's telling that past comments supporting TNR's position came primarily from our far right regulars such as Mr_Rationale, and seattlengineer to name a couple. This isn't centrism, it's water-carrying for Republicans. It could be that the editors see the writing on the wall for Obama this fall, expecting gas prices to be part of a double whammy once they slow the economy down, costing him the election. And this is their attempt at wanting to be part of the conservative conversation.

- jet

March 21, 2012 at 12:32am

jet - Administrators will assemble a team based on their performance only if the administrators themselves are held responsible for the school's performance. They are not in most cases now - they are treated like permanent employees who can't fail, just like the teachers. I dislike tenure primarily because I know what security does to job performance. We can argue all we want about how teachers need and deserve protection, but in a long journey across the non-profit, public and private sectors, I've become utterly convinced that for the average person, motivation comes from knowing that what you do affects your future. There are always people in any group for whom this isn't necessary - they perform and outperform simply because the job motivates them, but that's almost always a minority, and it's a diminishing group as cohorts of professionals age. And, I've been taught this in large part by people who had union protected job security in the public sector. That includes, as I've indicated in earlier posts, teachers that were held over for years past their usefulness to students, if in fact they every were worth a damn. I don't know anything about big urban districts and job markets, but I can tell you that out in the area where I live, crappy teachers are a problem, and tenure makes them more of one.

- IowaBeauty

March 21, 2012 at 3:01pm

I think civil service protections might have been a sufficient and reasonable alternative to tenure -- might have been except for the unrelenting war against the civil service in general, and teachers in particular, that is being waged today by Republicans and other elitists who aren't at all concerned about public school kids. When this pissing match is over, there'll be fewer teachers and only those who cannot make a move into an alternative career will be left behind. The disgruntled and hapless remainder will do what they can for the children of those who cannot afford the de facto segregation of private and parochial schooling, while the elites enjoy the tax break and TNR editors wonder what happened.

- purcellneil@aol.com

March 21, 2012 at 4:23pm

iowa, you may know school administrators that have protected contracts, but all of the administrators I've known (many) have administrative 'fire on the spot' contracts. If they don't perform, they can be released immediately. That even includes dismissal any time during the school year. This includes superintendents, principals, vice principals and other administrative staff.

- jet

March 21, 2012 at 8:27pm

I won't repeat the solid points made above by all except IowaBeauty. Will just add that what we're seeing today is just the latest round of attacks on teachers and their unions, attacks going on for the past century. In the 1916-1923 period, the reason for getting rid of teachers focused on loyalty. Thinks calmed down a bit, but not much, before revving up again big time in the early 1940s, and in the late '40s through the early 1960s. The attacks then were blatantly political, going after the Communist Party and Teachers Union (TU -- not today's UFT in NY and the national AFT), even though none were shown to carry their views into their classrooms, and many affected were not even members. You can learn about these investigations at www.dreamersandfighters.com Today the attacks are premised on something called "competence," supposedly measured by massively flawed tests. But make no mistake, TNR, as you look at the right-wing driven agendas endangering education today. (Left-wing too, but that's another issue in the current context.) Politics is just hiding behind the "competence" issue, and your blatant, sheer ignorance of what happens in real classrooms is damaging and just plain wrong. Tenure is and alwyas has been essential.

- LISAH

March 21, 2012 at 9:03pm

And speaking of those highly regarded administrators, right on cue, from Slate and the San Antonia Express-News: "Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery issued what he called a “non-Kumbaya” order Monday to district Superintendent James Stansberry and high school band director Keith Riley after they allegedly made comments considered disparaging by the agnostic family that sued the district over school prayer." The ruling: "Last month, the district reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in which it agreed that administrators and other employees will not pray with students, elicit prayer, proselytize or display religious artifacts in the classroom (except jewelry). The deal also includes a clause in which the district agreed that its employees will not disparage the plaintiffs. Here's the class act of an administrator, Stansberry, commenting on the ruling "Shortly after the deal was announced, the order said, Stansberry gave a televised interview in which he called the lawsuit a “witch hunt” and mistakenly said the plaintiffs “wanted our teachers to stop wearing crosses.” I stand corrected, administrator's should be able to assemble their own team of high performing faculty and staff. Not giving teachers tenure would sure fix this guy's attitude. There's still hope that the local school board will deliver a harsh reprimand, or maybe even fire Stansberry. I'm sure they'll 'get right on that'. The full story: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/religion/article/School-officials-ordered-to-apologize-in-prayer-3418389.php

- jet

March 22, 2012 at 12:52am

Wow, sorry for the bold everywhere. Fail tag.

- jet

March 22, 2012 at 12:52am

Apropos of the commenters who noted the importance of due process, job security, teaching experience: the new study referenced in this Edweek posting examines the effects of high teacher turnover. Notable is the finding that test scores for students of "effective" teachers also drop when "less effective" teachers leave. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2012/03/when_teachers_leave_schools_ov.html

- lsisneros

March 23, 2012 at 2:36pm