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California Students, Parents Sue Over Teacher Firing, Tenure Rules
The L.A. Times reports that a group of students and parents, fed up with what they see as overarching job security in California schools, are suing in the hopes of making harder for poor teachers to stay on the books. From the article:
"The lawsuit, filed by the nonprofit, advocacy group Students Matter, contends that these education laws are a violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee because they do not ensure that all students have access to an adequate education.
Vergara versus California, filed on behalf of nine students and their families, seeks to revamp a dismissal process that the plaintiffs say is too costly and time consuming, lengthen the time it takes for instructors to gain tenure and dismantle the 'last hired, first fired' policies that fail to consider teacher effectiveness.
The lawsuit aims to protect the rights of students, teachers and school districts against a "gross disparity" in educational opportunity, lawyers for the plaintiffs said." Perhaps related.
There is FAR more to union protection of teachers than featherbedding.
The people to blame for many school problems and whose effect is largely ignored in the current debate are school administrations.
Here's a classic written by a (now retired) terrific science teacher who fought the Rutherford, NJ, administration over how they tested students and won in court after a protracted struggle. Steve Masone greatly inspired many of his students, self included. He had the guts to take on a pretty toxic administration when he could have just coasted and sacrificed his students instead.
http://www.hammerofchalk.com/
The administrators concerned retired comfortably without consequences to their careers.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Tenure? In state-funded primary and secondary schools? In a country as brutally meritocratic as the US?
Well, let me tell you of a couple of situations in my hometown in which tenure saved teachers' job.
The first teacher in question taught history, and one of his elective courses was focused on radical protest movements from 1950-1975. The thing was that many conservative elements in town wanted the course to not exist, or at the very least state quite clearly that all the radical protest movements were because of spies from the USSR. They had the ear of the dyed-in-wool conservative mayor, who in this city's structure was also the chair of the school board. They tried several tactics to fire him, including trying to convince the union to accept some nice cash benefits if they allowed a provision in the contract to create a process for firing teachers that were presenting content "detrimental to the community" or similar nonsense. The teacher continued to teach until his retirement, which allowed students to learn about that period in US history in a way that neither their textbooks nor their parents were really showing them.
The second teacher in question was the advisor of the award-winning school paper. Said award-winning school paper did some investigative journalism and discovered some not-nice things about an assistant superintendent, which they duly published. The assistant superintendent reacted by driving to the school, barging into the paper office, and almost physically threatening the student editor who happened to be there at the time. The paper of course duly reported on this incident in their next issue, so the assistant superintendent went to the advisor and demanded that the advisor give the entire editorial board suspensions for insubordination or some-such. The advisor refused, so the assistant superintendent immediately tried to get him fired.
So yes, tenure can and does matter, even for primary and secondary teachers.
I am officially gone from
There is no teacher shortage.
When you hear that schools are having a difficult time getting teachers, that indicates that the school/district/state is an awful place to work.
It's not unusual for there to be five applicants for every science position. There could be 30 for an English position. It's even worse for primary education. The only place there might be a shortage is in Special Education.
There used to be a saying that went something like those who can will do, those who cannot will teach, those who cannot teach will coach and those who cannot coach will become politicians.
There is not a teacher shortage- there is an ability to pay teachers shortage. I know of plenty of teachers with state credentials who cannot find work because there either is not enough room in the schools or schools are pinching their budgets so tight that increasing class room size and decreasing teachers is a way to pay for it. These teachers have been on the substitution lists for years and actually hold other jobs waiting for an opening which is usually created by someone retiring unless a new school is built. Some of them have went into the charter/private schools arena in order to put their teaching credentials to use. It's probably no wonder why people claim the charter schools produce better students- they end up with not only picking and choosing the students but with the fresh and innovative new talent to teach them.
Is there any demonstrated correlation between college grads and losing a few teaching days?
10 calendar days per year less than the national average. 1 hour less per day than the national average. This adds up to Chicago students losing two full school years (or more) compared to the national average by the time they get to college.
I don't know if you really need a scientific study to make the demonstration that 2 years is a huge gap, but one thing is for sure: the odds that such study could be done by someone who went to school in Chicago are tiny - with a college graduation rate of 12%, which is 1/3 of the national average and even lower than Alaska.
lucm, indeed.