The D.C. public school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, wants to do away with tenure. Big article on her in today's New York Times. Tenure is like rent control. If you've got it you love it and if you don't it must be abolished.
I have mixed views on tenure. As a product of said D.C. public school system I can tell you I had some dumb teachers who didn't deserve a desk and a chair. I barely did myself, but then I wasn't being paid to be there. There was my biology teacher who literally could not speak English. I had a math teacher who more often than not was feeling no pain during class. I had a gym teacher who weighed 300 pounds. You get the idea.
And all were no doubt protected by tenure. There were some good teachers too. Wait. Yeah, there might have been a few. Of course a lot of us students were no prize either.
Anyway, I digress. Rhee basically wants to give teachers who surrender their tenure big raises (for a year and then they basically have to reapply for their job) or at least lose certain privileges that go with tenure. Naturally she's run into a stone wall with the teacher's union.
I get why someone who devotes their life to education wants certain protections. I also get that we now live in a world where fewer and fewer people have or make that commitment. Rhee got into education by doing Teach for America for two years. Hey that's a great program and noble and I wish I had the balls to quit and give it a shot.
But I'm not sure if using that sort of approach is the long-term model. Randi Weingarten, head of the NY UFT, said in the Times of Rhee, `Michelle does not view teaching as a career...she sees it as temporary, something a lot of newbies will work very hard at for a couple of years, and then if they leave, they leave, as opposed to professionals who get more seasoned.'
She has a point (and believe me, it pains me to say that).
There has to be some sort of middle ground. There is no arbitrary one size fits all solution and yet more often that not this what we go for in this country. Take three strikes you're out. That sounds great on paper, but in reality it treats every felony the same and overloads and already pressed penal system. Don't even get me started on the drug laws.
Automatic tenure is something that needs to be reexamined. Too many bad teachers are hanging in there and while having no bad teachers won't suddenly fix all the wrongs of the D.C. school system, it'd be a nice start.
But be careful that the cure isn't worse than the disease.
2 comments:
Ah yes, the 300 pound gym teacher. I recall her teaching the health segment of the class (no, that is not a joke). She rambled off some lecture about how to care for yourself with all the passion of a flight attendent reading instructions on the red eye for the gazillioneth time. She finished and then asked if anyone wanted to buy a box of candy- she was selling it for a niece, baby daddy, scam artist, whatever. The irony was not lost on most of us.
Schools are a function of the communities they serve. All of Rhee's cajoling, threats, bribes, and vain attempts to dispose of job security are not going to change all that.
Tenure is only a problem if the statutory and regulatory arrangement to remove poor performing teachers is impossible, from a practical standpoint, for management to use. Tenure coupled with a REASONABLE way to approach problems post-tenure is what works.
So-called automatic tenure is a failure of the people charged with watching the gate. Too often a person fills a seat for X number of years and then gets tenure b/c nobody was really paying attention. Is that the fault of the teacher? I think not. Sure, there are some who chose that particular school system b/c they wanted nobody watching over them, but for most, that is not the case. There are alot of diamond-in-the rough teachers out there who are simply not getting the resources that could make them into great teachers. (Wonder if Ms. Rhee wants to put her $ where her mouth is and provide inservice training and allocate other resources to assist those who really want to improve their skills? Very few people come to the profession as GREAT teachers -- they develop this over the years).
So, good luck with that!
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