Shadow Organization Promotes Myths About Teachers, Tenure

A lot of news has been made recently by the labor-bashing group Center for Union "Facts" and their anti-education group "Teacher Union Facts".

They have been in the news recently promoting a contest to name the worst teacher in America. Nice.

Their website is full of disinformation about teacher tenure rights. See below.

Here's probably the worst example:

So why don’t districts try to terminate more of their poor performers? The sad answer is that teachers unions have made the process prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. In Illinois, Reeder found, it costs an average of $219,504 in legal fees alone to get a termination case past all the union-supported hurdles. Columbus, Ohio’s own teachers union president admitted to the Associated Press that firing a tenured teacher can cost as much as $50,000. In New York State, the average is $128,941 (Education Week reports that in New York City, the average is $163,142). A spokesman for Idaho school administrators told local press that districts have been known to spend “$100,000 or $200,000” in litigation costs just to get rid of a bad teacher.

I'm interested to know how teachers unions have made the process expensive and time consuming. Do unions set the rules for teacher dismissal, or do school boards and state legislatures? Do unions impose their contracts on helpless school boards, as though there is a gun to their heads? Of course not. Teachers and school boards agree on terms of their contracts. That's what negotiation is about.

How do teachers get tenure? Does the union force it on school boards?

Are administrators and school boards completely helpless in the face of unions' overwhelming power?

As I've said on this site many times, it's not the union's fault that bad teachers don't get dismissed. Or that they ever are granted tenure in the first place. Why blame the unions because their members don't get fired? Is it the unions' job to fire their members?

The liars at this site say, "everyone cares about public schools." Nothing could be further from the truth. These people, for example. Their operation refuses to release any information about their donors, and they don't accept comments on their blog. So not only are they liars, they're cowards too, afraid of any scrutiny or criticism.

This anti-education group is simply a front for right wing critics of the public education system, most like a combination of voucher proponents and right wingers who fear the political clout of the NEA. They're not reformers, they're political hacks out to make cheap points at teachers' expense.

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Email can be fun

Check out the hilarious email I received in regard to my "Top Ten Education Stories of 07" post (posted without corrections):

READ J. STOSSEL'S "STUPID IN AMERICAN". NO POSTING FOR ACHIEVEMENT "MIGHT MAKE SOMEONE FEEL BAD". BARF. WAMT ALL TEACHERS TO READ SCRIPT W/O CHANGES, ROBOTS COULD TEACH.
SIT THROUGH ANY EDUCATION CLASS & THROW UP. SCHOOLS NEED MORE COMPETITION. yEA FOR VOUCHERS, WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE WITH MONEY, NEVER PUT THEIR STUDENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL! I TAUGHT & HAVE ZERO RESPECT FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. "WANT EVERYONE TO BE ALL ALIKE. HO HO

Just for fun I looked for stories on Stossel's "Stupid in America". First of all, what a disgusting title. I found this:

Some say another stumbling block is that the public school system is a union-dominated monopoly. In Stossel's hometown of New York City, a teacher who sent sexual e-mails to his 16-year-old student was not fired because the union's rigid contract makes it very hard to fire any teacher, even dangerous ones. Only after six years of expensive litigation were they finally able to fire him. Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City's schools, tells Stossel, "I mean, we've had sex cases, acknowledged sex cases ... you can’t fire him." The teacher union has so many protections written into the contract to make sure principals don't fire unfairly, or play favorites, that principals rarely even try to jump through all these hoops to try to fire a bad teacher.

First of all, I don't believe this for a second. A teacher can't be fired for committing a crime? Yeah, right. Ok, then just have him arrested. He (or she) won't show up for work if he's in jail. This is the kind of ignorant comment that, when it goes unchallenged, gives teachers' unions a bad name.

By the way, if Klein's statement were true, I would ask him who signed the contract. I mean, a union contract has to be agreed to by management, too, right? If it's such a horrible contract, why did they sign it? That's a serious question. I mean, is Klein admitting he's a horrible negotiator?

Here's a graph from a recent Times story:

New York City has roughly 80,000 public school teachers, and once they receive tenure it is notoriously difficult to remove them, because of the union contract and state labor law, which guards the rights of tenured public employees with an elaborate process of hearings and appeals.

Only about 10 to 15 tenured teachers a year leave the system after being charged with incompetence. Other teachers are removed for outright misconduct.

What was that last line? Removed for misconduct? I thought Klein said it couldn't be done?

So, sorry to tell Sue, who wrote me the email, I won't be reading Stossel. Not interested. But thanks, as always for sharing.

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Tennessee Governor Seeks to End Tenure

The Tennessean has an op-ed today takes the unfortunate but familiar position that ending teacher tenure will improve student achievement. As usual, the opponents of tenure rely on a series of unsupported claims:

The easiest way to improve teacher quality is to scrap the teacher tenure system and install performance-based pay so great teachers can earn more.

The state's socialist-style system of teacher pay is based on job longevity and education, not ability. Good teachers often flee for more money in the private sector. Worse, bad teachers are left in place since they are overpaid for their work.


I would like to know why opponents of tenure so often equate tenure with poor teaching. I would also be more inclined to take the Tennessean seriously if they could answer some of the following questions:

1. What evidence is there that tenure keeps poor teachers in the classroom? Teacher quality is difficult to measure, and many teachers know that simply using student achievement as a measure of effective teaching is misleading. In many schools, students are highly motivated and will learn no matter what. Their achievement will continue to climb even when instruction is subpar according to local standards. Only a school administrator is in a position, through observation and evaluation, to accurately assess a teacher's performance, and its relationship to student achievement.

Now the anti-tenure people will argue that administrators are unable to address poor teaching when a tenured teacher is involved. But that simply isn't true. Even a tenured teacher has to listen to his or her boss, and follow directives that an administrator might put in place in order to improve instruction. There are a wide variety of tools that an administrator can use to improve teacher performance, not the least of which is simply putting pressure on teachers to change.

2. What are is the administrator's and board's responsibilities in granting tenure in the first place? Schools are not required to grant tenure. How about rooting out bad teachers on the front end, before they are granted tenure?


3. Is it socialist to pay people for their experience? Is the Tennessean suggesting that any industry that bases salary on experience is socialist?

4. What evidence is there that good teachers leave for the private sector? Frankly I think this is relatively rare. Of course, it depends on the economy. But in fact, the regular step increases that teachers receive encourage them to stay in the field--they know that even in the worst of times they are going to receive regular increases.

5. Along those same lines, do we really want education to compete with the private sector in terms of salary? If we're going to start basing education salaries on professionals in other fields, I'm all for it... but that doesns't sound like a wise use of taxpayer money to me. Currently many districts, in Ohio at least, are flooded with applicants every spring. There's simply no evidence to suggest that districts are desperate for teachers. In districts with high poverty, the issue is often not salary but working conditions. Teachers simply don't want to go to high poverty districts where it's hard to teach.

And tenure also is a working conditions issue. Many teachers see it as a protection from narrow minded parents and politically minded district bosses. Getting rid of it would make many good and conscientious teachers feel uneasy and nervous about their futures. It won't encourage good teaching. It will encourage political correctness and boot licking. That's not what learning is all about.

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Why Tenure Matters, Part II

In my previous post on tenure rights, I tried to show some scenarios that would result in arbitrary dismissal of experienced teachers. Maybe they weren't the best examples, but basically my point was that hey, it could happen. And I tried to explain that it is much more difficult for teachers to move around when they are experienced because of the higher cost of experienced teachers which most districts aren't willing to pay when hiring. So losing a job is essentially losing a career for experienced teachers. They aren't going to catch on somewhere else and get a fresh start.

In this post I want to explode some myths about tenure. And I also want to look at some common arguments against tenure, as exemplified in the article below that I cut and pasted from Education Week (see the link at my sidebar; registration required.)

Myth #1. Tenure protects bad teachers. Wrong. No one should get tenure who is a bad teacher. No one has to give a teacher tenure. A teacher up for tenure can be non-renewed pretty easily. I've done it personally. It's not fun, but legally it's not a big deal. If the teacher isn't worthy, don't grant them tenure.

I've seen marginal teachers get tenure and improve. You can't expect it, but it happens. It's rare, however, for a good teacher to suddenly become a bad one. The idea that good teachers, once they get tenure, begin coasting, is just a myth.

Myth #2. You only have three years to see a person in action and then you give them a lifetime contract. This myth is propogated by the article below. And the author is referring to contractual language that grants tenure after two or three years. But there's a catch. In most places you have to have a Master's degree to get tenure, and it's pretty tough to get a Master's degree within three years of graduating from undergrad when teaching full time. I realize more teachers now are entering the field with Master's degrees (I did that 16 years ago, and it was unheard of, and I was strongly counseled against it), but it's still fairly rare for a teacher to go for tenure just three years into her career. If I could find statistics on it, I would bet that the great majority of teachers with tenure earned it between 5 and 10 years into their careers.

Myth #3. Tenured teachers are untouchable. This is one of the most persistent myths, but in fact tenured teachers have to be incompetent. What's incompetent? Bad. A bad teacher is an incompetent one. It's just much harder to document and prove. You have to know how to build your case. Most administrators are unable or unwilling to go through the difficult process of terminating a bad teacher.

The corollary to this is that many administrators, even if they don't feel they can get rid of a marginal tenured teacher, are unable to work with the teacher or attempt to change her methods.

The fact is, administrators have a great deal of power over teachers, even if they are tenured. They can transfer them, they can give them duties, they have lots of sticks and carrots they can use to influence a teacher's performance.

A few more thoughts:

One important change to tenure law that would help everyone would be to eliminate the requirement that teachers either be granted tenure or non-renewed. There ought to be a third option granted by law. As an administrator, I should be have the option of saying, "I don't think you are ready for tenure, but I also don't want to non-renew you. I think you have potential. Here's a contract for two more years and we'll reevaluate your status at the end of that contract." Right now, that's not an option.

Keep in mind also that principals and administrators often have high turnover rates, while teachers tend to be more stable. Teachers set up shop in the community. Principals and other administrators often see schools as rungs of a ladder. The first 8 years I taught I worked for four different principals. Career teachers are often the ones who bring stability to a district. They often get a bad rap for resisting change, but the other side of that coin is that they provide the continuity that makes parents and kids feel comfortable and secure in a school. Being resistant to the flavor of the month in education is not necessarily a bad thing.

In a comment to Part I on this topic, Buckblog reminded me of a point that I wanted to make on this topic. He wrote, "I'd suggest there would be less criticism of tenure if the teachers and the unions did a better job of policing their own." This is a common argument against tenure, that somehow the teachers should get rid of their own bad teachers. Do people who make this argument really think that administrators should give up their managerial role of evaluating teachers? The role of "policing" teachers should really be left to the administrators. That said, there are many districts that have experimented with peer review programs, in which master teachers take an active role in developing improvement plans for inexperienced or problem teachers. In fact, the ability of teachers to "police their own" really depends on the law and a district's negotiated agreement--without an agreement with the state or a local district, teachers and unions have no power to "police" their ranks. They don't have the power to revoke licensure, hire and fire, or evaluate teachers. So how are they supposed to "police their own"?

Finally, the suggestion in the article below that contract status be based on student performance is a really, really bad idea. There is no way you can have an equitable system based on student performance. It just can't happen. I would challenge anyone to show me a way that kind of a system could work. (In fairness to the author below, he does say that tenure should not be eliminated, just modified, a position which, as I said before, I agree with, given the conditions I've talked about.)

I would say to those who want to reform tenure rights, make some modest adjustments to ensure continued effort from career teachers, and focus on bringing active, long-term professional development to schools. Most professionals would welcome those things. But to put career teachers at the mercy of principals and superintendents on a revolving door in and out of the district does nothing to promote fairness or improve teaching. All it does is give more power to certain administrators who under the current system lack the courage or skill to make the tough calls.

Education Week article on Tenure Rights:

School accountability and high-stakes testing have changed the face of public education. They will soon change teacher and administrator tenure as well. With two-thirds of the states granting lifetime tenure (and more than half of them doing so after only two or three years of employment), the process is in danger of becoming an anachronism. This is an age, after all, when failing test scores can keep students from graduating and cause schools to be closed.

Simply put, employing schools need significantly more time to evaluate their new teachers. We will never improve our schools if we ignore the most important factor in the education equation, namely, teacher effectiveness. We can pay teachers more money, we can demand more content mastery or graduate degrees of newly certified teachers, but it’s the ability of the classroom teacher to reach his or her students that counts most.

Tenure shouldn’t be eliminated for teachers or administrators, but the probationary period leading to tenure must be lengthened significantly. As a profession, education is finally acknowledging that student learning is influenced more by teacher qualities (experience, educational credentials, certifications, licensure scores) and, even more so, by teacher effectiveness than by class size, per-pupil expenditure, and appearances. The Education Trust examined the issue of “do teachers matter?” and reported that students who performed the worst on state tests had the same set of teachers over a several-year period. Not surprisingly, the students who performed the best had also had the same set of (often different) teachers. So what explains the difference? What makes an effective teacher?

Until very recently, teaching and learning were measured solely through the subjective lens of the observer. The teacher’s own perception of her classroom performance, the supervisor’s classroom observation of the teacher with his class, and the parent’s comments of satisfaction with the teacher were the sum of our assessment of a teacher’s effectiveness. Today, because of the No Child Left Behind law’s requirement of yearly testing in grades 3-8 in math and reading, as well as the pervasive dissemination of student test scores (by school, district, state, and nation), we are looking at more-objective data—test scores. If students aren’t passing, does it matter if their teachers appear to be “good in the classroom”?

Only in the past few years have we begun to review student test scores as an element in the tenure decision. If all the subjective factors (classroom management, questioning techniques, homework procedures) feel right and a teacher’s students perform miserably on the year-end test for two consecutive years, do we grant or deny tenure? What if students do well one year and poorly the next? Most people would say we need more evidence. It’s unfair, both to the new teacher and to the employing community that will have that teacher for the next 30 years, to make an irreversible decision on such limited information. But we now have concrete information; test scores can’t be dismissed in this era of school accountability.

It takes excellent mentoring, supervision by knowledgeable professionals, trial and error, familiarity with diverse populations of students, preparation and revision of countless lesson plans, and experience in activities such as devising strategies for integrating technology and analyzing student test results to identify learning gaps, among other factors, for a newly minted college graduate to become an effective teacher.

Gaining these capabilities involves more art than science, and thus takes time. The skills of an excellent teacher cannot be learned and perfected in real classrooms in a period of two or three years.

The story is the same for school leaders. Research shows us that a school can’t succeed without an effective principal. Yet it takes at least a year for a new principal to know the school’s staff, students, and parents and to begin to evaluate the instructional needs of the school community. To implement specific, programmatic changes takes at least two additional years; evaluating the success of those changes requires another two or three years. An administrator should not receive tenure based on the introduction of creative programs, but rather on their success.

Tenure shouldn’t be eliminated for teachers or administrators, but the probationary period leading to tenure must be lengthened significantly. The reason for tenure’s being an integral part of education law still holds, especially in this day of politically charged issues such as the evolution vs. creationism debate. Tenure assures the educator’s right to free speech and protects against capricious dismissals. But we will never truly improve our education system if public policy requires us to rush to judgment on a decision as profound as who should be with our community’s children for the next 30 years.

If students aren't passing, does it matter if their teachers appear to be 'good in the classroom'?By saying to all educators that student results count, that students’ success will be a significant element in deciding whether or not they receive tenure, and that educators must prove their effectiveness over a period of years before this unique recognition is granted, we will be making a critical statement about our political will to improve schools.

Political leaders may find opposition to this idea from teachers’ and administrators’ unions—just ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. But only when the best, and most effective, teachers are with our children will American education improve.

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Why Tenure Matters, Part I

I promised Pho a brief defense of tenure rights, and here is part I, to be followed by a fuller discussion in part II tomorrow.

I want to preface by saying that being in favor of tenure rights doesn't mean 1. that I believe in keeping bad teachers around, or 2. that there shouldn't be any modification of tenure rights at all (I suggest a modest proposal, and I mean that literally, not in Swiftean terms, in part II). I could imagine some reforms to tenure that I could live with. Specifically, I would like as an administrator to be able to document ongoing deficiencies in a tenured teacher that would lead to somke sort of process whereby the teacher would be required to document improvements in job performance. Procedurally, I'm not sure what that would look like off the top of my head, but having some mechanism to require improvement would be a good thing. Furthermore, tenured teachers should have to be evaluated. It's just too easy for administrators to get around observing tenured teachers. It's hard with all of the other responsibilities they have, but evaluating even the best, most successful teachers is important.

That said, envision the following scenarios.


1. A high school football coach wants to resign after five years on the job to spend more time with his family. His physical education teaching job needs to be vacated in order for the district to hire a new coach. Suddenly the administration decides they are unhappy with his teaching performance. They cite several weaknesses, which had never been documented before, in order to terminate him and bring in a new coach.

2. A high school government teacher gives students an assignment to critically examine corruption scandals involving the most recent Republican Congress. As the board has a Republican majority, they take offense to the assignment which they view as partisan in nature. When his contract comes up for a vote of the board, they vote not to renew the contract.

3. A union president is outspoken in support of the district superintendent, whom she views as a good instructional leader with the teachers' best interests at heart. However, a new board majority dislikes the superintendent, and buys out his contract. In the aftermath, the board directs the new administration to get rid of the union president.

My point, I guess, is that there are all kinds of ways that arbitrary and capricious dismissal can be made to appear justified on the surface. I realize that this is a kind of knee-jerk defense of tenure rights, but it's a genuine concern that experienced teachers with plenty of years invested in their careers could be let go unfairly.

And with the structure of teacher salaries, with much higher salaries paid to experienced teachers as part of every district's salary structure, a teacher losing their job after 10 or fifteen years might very well be unable to find another job in another district. Teachers need the protection of tenure rights, not just to protect their jobs, but their careers. A second or third year teacher who is let go can conceivably try again in a new district, with a new principal and a school that fits her talents and abilities more exactly. A termination for a teacher of 15 years (or possibly even 7 or 8), on the other hand, even if that teacher is allowed to resign on good terms rather than be fired or non-renewed, would effectively end their career in education because districts tend to only hire teachers with 3 or fewer years of experience. In other words, it's not realistic to expect that a teacher let go would be able to find another job. Career-wise, it's a death sentence. And in part, that's why they need the extra protection of tenure.

And as the scenarios above point out, there are all kinds of non-instructional reasons why teachers can get pushed out. The idea behind tenure is that over a period of time, a teacher proves her worth, so that she is no longer subjected to the whims of principals or the fads of the day.

I'll address some other tenure issues in part II tomorrow.

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