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Teacher Tenure Laws Ruled Unconstitutional In California
An anonymous reader writes "Tenure laws one of the most controversial aspects of education reform, and now the tide seems to be turning against them. A California judge has handed down a ruling that such laws are unconstitutional, depriving students of an education by sometimes securing positions held by bad teachers. The judge said, "Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience." The plaintiff's case was that "California's current laws make it impossible to get rid of the system's numerous low-performing and incompetent teachers; that seniority rules requiring the newest teachers to be laid off first were harmful; and that granting tenure to teachers after only two years on the job was farcical, offering far too little time for a fair assessment of their skills." This is a precedent-setting case, and there will likely be many similar cases around the country as tenure is challenged with this new ammunition."
Tenure exists to ensure that professors can pursue unpopular lines of inquiry without being troubled by university politics. It makes no sense in primary or secondary education.
this is the best news to happen to k-12 education in a long time.
some background facts. primary school tenure was first designed as part of the progressive movement in the early 1900s. At the time a teaching position was a super sweet patronage position that a politician awarded his friends. teachers didn't actually do anything, and were replaced when the next pol came in. Nobody was learning!
one of the successes of the progressive movement was to make a professional class of primary school teachers who were insulated from political fortunes and were professionally schooled in the art of teaching. This was accomplished through employment contracts that made it really hard to fire teachers.
but the reasons that necessitated tenure are long gone, and all teachers are protected under the standard laws for hiring and firing, which cover us all. They also have a strong union that will ensure protections. So there's no need for special laws that give teachers more advantages than everybody else at the expense of their students.
Oh, it's a bad thing, depending on which way you look at it. For union busters this means you can finally sacrifice the weak and infirm on the altar of efficiency. For education activists this means teachers will be more concerned with their job security than ever before, creating a chilling effect in alternative curricula and teaching styles that would reach kids the system would otherwise fail.
In other words, the education system is about to get a whole lot more one-size-fits-all in California.
There are important reasons for tenure in K-12 education, especially in this era. K-12 schools (and in turn teachers) in many areas receive incredible pressure from parents. It used to be if a child got poor grades the teacher wasn't the one blamed. Now there are many parents who have spoiled brats who they believe can do no wrong.
That being said, tenure's protections should exist but should make teacher's positions far less invincible than they are in many areas now. There should be a process of discipline and removal for poor teachers. It should be as objective as possible so as to avoid undue parental pressure.
Otherwise it creates a perverse incentive for teachers to inflate grades of their students.
Uhhh most states have 'fire at will' laws that mean you can get rid of a person for any reason or no reason whatsoever.
The long history of public employment abuse definitely shows some sort protection is needed.
Goodbye Lousy Teacher's!
Goodbye Older, Higher-Paid Teachers!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
In every job I've ever held (IT and later engineering), I've seen employees abused by management. The employees ranged from bad to mediocre to great.
Unpaid OT (as non-exempt), unpaid on-call time 24/7/365, vacation blackouts with a use-it-or-lose-it policy, reprimands for not completing insane workloads and salary / promotion denial are some of the ways in which I have personally witnessed management abusing employees. Some of these things not only happened to myself, but the majority of my coworkers at 4 separate mid to large organizations.
You will not normally win a lawsuit against your employer with the current labor laws. They will get away with abuse after abuse until something changes.
These corporations thrive through abusing the working class. Stop defending this behavior.
My old professors who had retired from research were the best I had. The younger ones were all too focused on their research ("other job") to be an effective instructor. The older ones still taught because they loved to teach and it really showed in their classes.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
pretty sweet to be in a politically connected union and have no ambitions other than riding your current job into a fully-paid retirement at age 55.
This used to be called "middle class."
You're so far divorced from the way things used to be, that now it's some kind of offense for people to retire while they still have their health.
Books have been written on the destruction of the American pension system.
The "how" varies from decade to decade, but it's not a pretty story, no matter which period of time you want to look at.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The word "tenure" itself was based on an expectation that it would take ten years to get there.
It actually stems from the Latin word tenere meaning to hold, as in tenant, tenacity, etc. It's not etymologically related to the number ten.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Your example shows that if a knowledgable person takes a single student under their wing, the student might thrive. Now, imagine yourself in front of a classroom full of 30 students, most of whom are totally uninterested in your field. Do you have the same amount of time to commit to that one student who is really interested? You can't compare yourself to "bad" teachers, for you might be a bad teacher yourself under the same circumstances. Anyone can be a great teacher to one bright, really interested student.
The abuses go both ways.
No, the abuse is always top down. The more power, the more abuse. And why should we have to go to court for every damn thing? That's half the problem anyway, write crappy rules and let the courts "fix" it. Damn lawyers have more clout than anybody... well, after accountants..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I love hearing the terms "protected by US employment law". It sounds akin to "protected from flame thrower by first dousing one self with canister of petrol".
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Bear in mind, I'm advocating loose government control instead of strict and not complete lack of control.
1. Strict controls increase the administrative costs of having to comply with the rules and regulations. For every requirement dreamed of by bureaucrats, someone has to see to it that the requirement is met. This will unnecessarily inflate the budgets of schools, some of which are already operating on a shoestring.
2. Strict controls distract the teachers from doing what they should be doing- educating students. I'd rather the teachers concentrate on how to improve their students' understanding of their lessons rather than be fixated on whether or not they have fulfilled their quota of hours spent teaching, etc.
3. Strict controls in the form of standardized curricula, teaching methods and tests stifle creativity and innovation. If we accept that all humans are unique and different, why do we apply a one-size-fits-all approach to educating students? And if we search our memories of our most highly regarded teachers, it is often the case that said teacher went above and beyond the standard teaching methods to teach the students.
4. Strict controls disempower the teachers from exercising their discretion and choosing the most effective means to educate their students. There is obviously a big difference between how you would teach a class of students from a privileged background as compared to say students from a ghetto neighbourhood who may be distrustful of authority.
These are some points just off the top of my head. I will grant you that there are many horror stories of lazy teachers, corrupt school administrators etc in the education system, but the better approach would be to remove these people rather than introduce more rules and regulations to try and control their behaviour.
Of course, now the best teachers will flock to the poorest schools since they no longer have job security. It's about time! I refuse to work for any Wall Street firm which gives year-end bonuses. How can you attract the best and brightest by making the job more attractive? That's insane.
While I can at some level understand refusing dropouts, refusing GED graduates is stupid. The GED is basically the outer 'catch' block of the primary school system, and without it, there's no legitimate way to get a diploma if you have unusual circumstances. The fact that some kids use it to 'escape' primary school should tell you that there's either a problem with primary schooling, or that the GED process isn't sufficiently strong - but in both cases, the solution to the problem is NOT to make the GED worthless.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Tenure is a mixed bag. Yes, it can protect bad teachers, but it also...
1) Protects experienced senior teachers. You might not think this is important, but guess what? Older, experienced teachers are generally more expensive and have more political influence. Hip new administrator comes in, wants to to change things up, slim down the budget. Get rid of the older teachers first beacuse the younger are cheaper and easier to control.
2) Protects good teachers. You know the ones that actually teach and care about education, and don't just give A's to everyone for showing up and sitting at their desk. Actual teaching and enforcing academic standards tends to upset certain kinds of parents. Administrators don't like vocal and upset parents.
3) Protects teachers that push against the administration. Not teaching to the test, enriching the curriculum, doing what might be considered risky things by some ( lab experiments, field trips, etc). Administration often doesn't want this, because it creates headaches for them, but teachers want it because it enhances the education of their students.
4) In areas with strong influence by outside political groups, protects teachers that teach controversial subjects. Science vs. creationism is one example, but certainly not the only one. History, economics, literature, art...all of these can have controversial topics. Of course, we don't really teach these anymore, but that is a different topic.
Whether or not tenure exists and how it is granted is really missing the point. If you want to improve the quality of teachers, we need to be looking at the evaluation systems that are in place, whether they exist, and why they may or may not be working. Most teachers simply are never evaluated ever, or they are evaluated in completely useless ways. Address that, and then maybe we can deal more easily with underperforming teachers, adjusting the tenure rules as necessary but keeping its major benefits.
Teacher tenure, at least when I had family members who were teachers, was not the same as university tenure where you can't be fired. There was always a chance to be fired if you screwed up. Early stages of tenure meant you didn't have to renegotiate your contract every year or wait until just before the school year starts to find out if you still have your job (at which point it's too late to find a teaching job at another school or district).
You narrative that children are getting cheated out of an education because of tenure is a complete myth.
Right. Judge Treu either misunderstood and misquoted, or deliberately lied, about the teachers' expert testimony.
Treu wrote that the teachers' expert, David Berliner, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are "grossly ineffective." Berliner actually said that no more than 1-3% gave him "cause for concern."
The "economic study" Treu relied upon was one study -- a white paper that wasn't peer reviewed.
http://www.eiaonline.com/inter...
Judge Rules in Favor of Vergara Thanks to David Berliner?!
Mike Antonucci - Jun 10, 14
Despite his efforts, it might have been better for the defendants if Dr. Berliner had stayed home. Judge Treu’s decision contains this paragraph:
There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms. Dr. Berliner, an expert called by State Defendants, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are grossly ineffective.
David Berliner says:
June 10, 2014 at 15:56
You and the judge misquote me. I said during deposition That I had never seen a “grossly ineffective” teacher. I said I estimated that the number of poor teachers I’d like to get rid probably is no more than 1-3 percent. The questioning i got was about this statement in TCRECORD:
“There does seem to be a small percentage of teachers who show consistency no matter what classroom and school compositions they deal with. Those few teachers who have strong and consistent positive effects on student outcomes, we should learn from and reward. And, those few teachers who have strong negative effects on student outcomes need to be helped or removed from classrooms. But the fundamental message from the research is that the percentage of such year-to-year, class-to-class, and school-to-school effective and ineffective teachers appears to be much smaller than is thought to be the case. When the class is the unit of analysis, and student growth is the measure we use to judge teacher effectiveness, what we find is a great deal of adequacy, competency, and adeptness by teachers in response to the complexity of the classroom. And, we see much less of the extraordinarily great and horribly bad teachers of political and media myth. The thousands of welfare queens that Ronald Reagan railed against and the thousands of disability cheats that have contemporary Republicans in such a snit may be like the thousands of terrible teachers in our public schools—more hype than it is reality.”
When asked what percent might actually show up as cause for concern regularly, I said no more than 1-3%. I said nothing about 1-3% being grossly inadequate.
Yes.
To clarify that, most of the charter schools routinely expel students who have any problems, either academic or behavioral.
It's the Pareto principle: 90% of the students are easy to teach; 10% of them are difficult. The difficult 10% cost the school as much as the easy 90%. That includes for example handicapped kids, or kids whose parents speak a foreign language, or kids who are having trouble with math, or English, or any other subject. And yes, there are some kids having disciplinary or behavioral problems.
The reason public schools are so expensive is that they have to take all students. The reason charter schools are cheaper is that they can pass the difficult kids on to the public schools.
Diane Ravitch, the historian of education, described all this in an article about Eva Moskowitz' charter schools. Moskowitz' students do very well on the tests, because if any of their students is having trouble, she expels them. And they go to the public schools.
Teachers should be aggressively recruited the same way Google
Oh god please no.
I want to be taught by someone who can teach, not someone who can solve stupid undergrad engineering puzzles.
My best school teachers were a geography grad who'd spent his previous working life as a Yorkshire miner (and geography was the least interesting subject he taught), one socially retarded biology PhD who lived with his mother but couldn't have had a better combination of discipline and enthusiasm, and one conservative ex-Cambridge tutor who stank of BO and pounded his fist on the desk at regular intervals with a passion that sometimes built up to throwing a chair across the room, but fuck me did he know and love his stuff and gave you infinite one-to-one time as needed. These are the sort of people who won't ace any stupid technical interview made by young upstarts for young upstarts, but start the game with a lot of knowledge and experience and spend decades perfecting the art of teaching.