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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.
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.
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
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.
Bear in mind, I'm advocating loose government control instead of strict and not complete lack of control.
When you say "loose government control", some people hear, "anarchy". Just like when you say, "lower taxes", they hear, "elimination of all taxation". No intermediate states are contemplated, or even considered possible.
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.