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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.
While in rare cases job security is a problematic issue due to incompetence (or worse, in extreme cases), stripping away job security typically creates even more, worse problems in the long term with an even faster race-to-the-bottom. If this succeeds, they could find themselves, instead, fighting against the school board hiring cheap, less-competent or less-experienced teachers because they can get rid of the expensive, experienced ones quickly and easily.
Also, teachers are, in most places, unionized (the article doesn't seem to mention if California teachers are or not). Go against the union in such a drastic manner and you may find yourself with a widespread strike on your hands.
Sorry, did I read that correctly?
Tenure? In state-funded primary and secondary schools? In a country as brutally meritocratic as the US?
Tenure is meant to promote academic freedom and allow brilliant scientists with a proven track record to express potentially unpopular idea.
It's not meant as lifelong guaranteed employment for people who can't cut it in the real world.
Any idea that seniority should come ahead of ability is fucking bullshit anywhere, but especially when educating our youth. Japan does this, and it's a fucking basketcase. We are better than that.
if when you as parents fail to live up to your responsibilities the teacher can have your child permanently removed from class because they are there to teach and not babysit?
I thought tenure was a way to keep administrators from messing with academic freedom. Without it teachers would "follow the party line" and never research or teach anything controversial.
It's easy to talk of "bad teachers" and say that unions keep them employed. But the truth is that "bad teachers" are the minority. Unions keep more "good teachers" employed at a livable wage than "bad teachers".
It is normal that the minority get the spotlight, just as it is normal that the Chihuahua barks the loudest.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.
Great sound bit, lousy argument. Any cost no matter how small would be argued by the schools as some massive threat to their ability to operate. If our kids school division had to pay for new instruments for the music room, or new text books, or turn the heat on, they'd threaten cutting the number of teaching days to pay for it. The Chicago teachers union might well be gold plated... I'm not saying it isn't, but the fact that the school "cut teaching days" to pay for it doesn't tell us anything at all about anything at all.
As a direct consequence, this is one of the areas in the country with the lowest ratio of college grads.
Doubtful. Is there any demonstrated correlation between college grads and losing a few teaching days? The teaching year isn't uniform accross states, or developed countries... even local variations such as weather related school closures, snow days, power failures, flooding, not to mention teachers strikes etc also "deprive" kids of teaching days all the time.
Has anyone linked that to college grads? Or does it turn out that in fact a school year plus or minus a week or so makes very little difference whatsoever? I betting on the latter.
Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.
Interestingly, that seems to be completely made up.
In 2012 there were 170 teaching days for elementary school teachers. After the strike and contract negotiations there were 180 teaching days in 2013. High school teachers also had a 10 day increase. In both cases, the length of the work day also increased (see the same link as before).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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."
And that was an unprecedented show of government authority when it happened. It is highly highly unusual, and generally requires intervention from the highest level, such as when Reagan told the aircontrollers' union to fuck off
Since when have k-12 teachers been researchers?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
My experiences: each of my 3 kids encountered two completely ineffective/incompetent teachers in junior high and zero in elementary and high school (although we were aware of 1 in elementary that we fortunately did not have to deal with).
It wasn't that many but the level of incompetence was astounding and nothing could be done.
Except professors don't teach at high schools, which is what this seems to be about.
And probably more to the point, the bigger problem is no one can agree on what a bad teacher is to be measured by beyond anecdotes. But I strongly suspect its "shouldn't have given my child a bad grade!"
Uhh huh... Meanwhile in the real world there is a real teacher shortage. And a move like this sends what message? When my niece asked what do I think she should study I told her anything other than teacher. Why? Because they are under paid, over worked, glorified baby sitters having to wipe the asses of both the kids and the parents.
A little Googling indicates the prison guard union in CA gives twice as much to Democrats as Republicans, and spends much more than that on ballot initiatives.
I had a teacher who was a minotaur. We complained to the superintendant but he wouldn't do anything.
He would show up 20 minutes late, shit all over the floor, and complain about the humans who tresspass in his forest.
He wasn't even trying to do his job, but I guess competence or dedication of a teacher can never be questioned.
This is a true story. Its on the internet so you know its true.
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.
And goodness knows, if YOU can't have it, no one should. The same people who bitch about "the war on sucess" or cry about class warfare ruining the country will get in a line to gripe about the sweet pensions and benefits that public workers, teachers, or union auto workers get because it is unfair that they can't get the same thing.
Working hard is the secret to success until someone gets something you don't then the game is rigged and it is all unfair.
I thought everyone else on here would feel like me, and that's that school was a goddamn bad and nefarious joke after the 6th grade or so. I muscled through it because I've always understood that you have to play by the rules to an extent, you have to do a certain number of things to keep the system satisfied with you or you'll lose out in some major way or another. EG, had I not graduated, it might have been a lot harder to get into the school I'm now attending. Still, though, the fact that all these educators who were such fucking rank-and-file, stick-close-to-curriculum (party line, that is, in Mass.) bullshitters earned such a great living doing it... it really opened my eyes to exactly how fucked this world is. I think the goal of the education system should be to get kids to want to seek knowledge on their own. Any teacher who doesn't do that is failing. All of the teachers in my school career who did that? They were way before high school. High school is a bad joke, I'm sorry. Elementary school is where the most money should be spent, if you ask me. And I think there should be a lot - a lot - more technology instruction at that level. I think kids who show aptitude in technology and science should be given the tools, no matter their background, to continue to succeed in those fields -- if it interests them enough to fill out these forms and do these steps. Later it leads to internships? Imagine if they had something like that when we were going to school, 20-somethings. Think of where we'd be.
And adding to this, the 90% of the teachers that are competent and conscientious really would LOVE to have the remaining 10% shown to the door. They really would, as those 10% are a drag on the rest of the faculty.
The problem is the double-edged sword of tenure. Remove the tenure protections and yeah, you get to fire those 10%. But in the meantime you've put those good 90% in the position where they have no job security and get watch their already low salaries stagnate relative to the rest of the economy, and they also need to worry about being fired for personal politics. A lot of those 90% are going to throw in the towel and walk out the door at some point.
So who will be left teaching your kids? Any recently graduated kid with a bachelor's degree who can pass the mirror test. And they'll stick around just long enough to A) get fired for complete and gross incompetence or B) get some experience and quickly move on to something else far more rewarding and lucrative. Oh sure, you might get a handful of golden souls who really give a damn and can suck up these crappy conditions because they are already retired from another profession or have a spouse who is making good money, but these folks are one in a million.
Tenure is a flawed system for sure. Bad people will look good just long enough to get tenure, then they will drag their feet until retirement, not caring a whit about anything. But that same tenure is a huge perk that the good 90% enjoy and desperately need for them to do what they do for the pay that they get.
Full disclosure - I am a tenure-track college professor and a member of my state teacher's union.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
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When you factor in the cost of living in CA, $70k doesn't go all that far....
But I digress. Six years ago, starting pay for a *full-time* high school teacher in my former home county of Brevard, FL, was $22k, with another $3k/yr bonus for a "high demand" science/math teacher. Since then, benefits, class sizes, and general conditions have only grown worse. The teachers I know (and I know many) routinely put in 10+ hour days, plus more weekends than not.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
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.
Because none of those others who has to get a degree to become a professional have to deal with children. In addition I haven't heard of any CEO having his mother come to the board meeting and complaining that her boy isn't getting the job done because the board isn't helping him after work enough, while ignoring that little Steve Balmer has missed 10 days of work this quarter, and it still isn't his fault that people don't like Windows 8 UI designs.
Should there be some form of performance metric? Sure. It needs to be very carefully set up though, and the child's own performance needs to be a part of it as well as the parents. NO teacher is going to be able teach calculus to a kid who skips 2 days a week to babysit for his siblings because his parent(s) can't afford childcare. It also needs to be politics resistant, I don't want my kids teacher worried about their job because some new guy won an election. I want them worried about how to best teach the next chapter, and that is it.
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If you are against tenure, you are against the following: ... (3) due process, ...
(3) This story is in fact about due process at work. The people filing suit are against tenure and are using due process to fight it.
I really can't speak for California, but in the Northeast US ( Pensylvania and North ), Tenure == Due Process.
In my area, a new teacher ( 3years in some states, 5 in others) can be fired or "non-renewed" without a stated reason. In practice, new teachers are given good reviews mid-year and booted without comment or useful feedback. Such would-be teachers are almost unemployable after this, and the lack of feedback means that they can't work to address preceived flaws in case they do find a way to work again.
Experienced teachers can be dismissed for any legal reason. This is usually some combination of illegal activity (bank robbers can't be teachers usually), immoral behavior (porn stars are not encouraged to continue a teaching career), incompetence (yep, you can lose your job for incompetence), and insubordination (boss tells you to be on time, you aren't...). Of course, cause has to be documented. And except for the first two (illegal, immoral), a single incident is generally not sufficient grounds for action. This is good, a single parent complaint should not end a teacer's career.
The "problem" is that when ANYBODY is terminated for cause, their terminaion can be appealed in the state courts. This is not unique to teachers, but unions are in a good position financially to challenge these terminations, and so they do so nearly every time. Ex-employees of private firms generally cannot afford the legal fees to do this, and so generally don't challenge. The union provides the resources to access "due process".
The legal appeals process favors the district if the situation is well documented and if all of the rules were followed. The key to this is making sure that you have administrators with time to spend on process. A solid HR staff can help backstop this. Of course, the only thing that voters and unions agree on is that administration is a waste. And HR looks like more administration. Districts lose these cases a lot because administrators have other priorities and so don't do a great job with documentation or process.
In my current state, employees terminated for cause are not permitted to collect unemployment insurance. Private employers are more likely not to name a cause and accept the bump in their unemployment costs. This also tends to discourage lawsuits ( a bird in the hand...). School systems don't usually have this option with tenured (due process enabled) staff.
Big private companies tend to have the middle managment, HR types, and processes in place to cover themselves when they want to terminate for cause and contest unemployment. Small companies do not, but don't contest.
It's that simple.
By the time they get to college, this "tiny difference" adds up to more than one semester.
Not all tiny differences add up. My parents used to pull me out of school for a week most years for family vacations etc. Over the course of school from K-12 then I lost a full semester easy. Plus the flus, doctors appointments, deaths in the family, snow days, easily another couple months. I STILL maintain it didn't cost my education anything at all -- and that was me actively "missing" actual classroom time where the other students were still present, vs the school just not having school for that time.
This applies to everyone, including people from Chicago. If you consider that people "clock out" an hour early, then Chicago students (and teachers) also do, so the gap remains the same.
Again no. They don't mentally check out an "hour early"; they mentally check out after they've hit their concentration / absorption / knowledge retention limit, or whatever you'd like to call it; or completed their major tasks for the day. Extending or shortening the "day" by an hour makes no difference to how long you can concentrate. It just changes how much time you waste after your 'done'.
[...] you can discard that because it's a mere 0.13$ in his pockets every minute...
No I can't discard taht. Because that's 13 cents a minute every minute. Its a small value, but it accumulates in a very understable way. But not everything works like that. Learning is more "chunky"; in that you learn in chunks. When I took math, for example, I was good at it, I absorbed a typical "lesson" within the first 10-15 minutes of the class, and then got bored. Some of my classmates had a rougher time, and it took most of the lesson. Others just didn't grok it even with 45 minutes, and needed after school tutors etc.
But the point is the lesson is absorbed as a chunk. Adding 1 minute to each math class I ever took would have been several hours more "math class" in my life but with no benefit to me whatsoever. The teacher wouldn't present 1/60th of a new concept in that extra minute that would graually accumulate and be the equivalent of university Calculus I by the end of highschool. That's not how learning works, spending 1 extra minute each day doesn't give you an extra lesson learned after the end of each month.
Either the teacher has enough time to teach the concepts or they don't. Kids learn at different rates, so the average lesson is designed around most of the kids fully understanding it within the first half of the period; the last half is is for the slower kids, and for practice problems.
Adding a minute to each class would have accomplished essentially nothing. It doesn't accumulate benefit the way getting paid a few cents extra per minute does.
You've hit the nail on the head. There are some corporations (e.g. Pearson) that have been salivating over how much more money they could make from our educational system. The first step was to convince us that our current system was broken. The second step was to blame the teachers. The third step was to "convince" politicians (who have no educational background) that the business' solution of constant testing was the cure. They test in the beginning of the year and then they test at the end of the year and if the students don't do well enough, the teacher gets fired. No qualifiers such as said teacher's students are intelligent but don't do well on standardized tests. Or, since the test is very secret and not audited by a third party, that the test itself was flawed.
Of course, the corporations have a financial incentive for students to fail. Schools with failing students might buy more test prep books, sign up for teacher training sessions, administrator training sessions, or other goods/services the corporation provides. Schools with students doing well don't generate more corporate profits. In New York's first round of testing, only 31% of students passed.
Just to add insult to injury, New York has adopted a system called EngageNY which is essentially a script for the teacher to follow. It tells the teacher what to say, when, for how long, and in what manner. It literally is broken down into 10 minute segments instructing the teacher on just what to do during each. There is no leeway for teaching in a different manner that the teacher's students might understand better or for spending more/less time on subjects. Teachers are expected to teach according to the script. Of course, this makes teachers nothing but glorified actors who can be swapped out for other people at a moment's notice. (Think about every teacher who inspired you to learn and ask if that teacher was unconventional or sounded like they were robots reading a script.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.