Teacher Tenure--a problem?

Teacher tenure has become a hot button issue in our local newspaper blogs and in the Los Angeles Times which has been running a series of hit pieces targeting public education and school teachers.

Of course all California classroom teachers understand that there is NO TEACHER TENURE IN CALIFORNIA. See the California Education Code on line at:

You will find no mention of tenure. K-12 teachers in California can become permanent with due process rights but no K-12 teacher has tenure. Permanent teachers only have the right to a hearing before they are fired (non re elected) and to have evidence presented at that hearing against them. Probationary teachers have NO RIGHTS. They can be fired for no reason other than a principal's whim.

Before collective bargaining no teachers had safe jobs. No teacher had any right to a hearing or to hear evidence of why they were being fired. There were no standards of misconduct that would result in firing. At that time wearing the wrong clothing could be a firing offense for a teacher.

Both my in-laws were California public school teachers as was my father. All three had tales of horror from the time before collective bargaining and required procedures with evidence needed for firing a teacher.

When my father in law was a very young teacher, in his first or second year; he taught at a small high school--under one thousand students. At that high school he met and grew to know an older English teacher who he had a lot of respect for. She had been at the school for over twenty years and her students and former students loved her.

In my father in laws final year at the high school, the principal at the school decided to let that English teacher go at the end of the year because the principal's nephew had just graduated from teaching college and needed a job. His nephew wanted to be an English teacher (credentials then were general secondary and a teacher could teach any class they felt comfortable in).

The principal made no secret of why he let her go nor did he need to. At the time teacher's had no rights to a fair hearing or an agreed upon set of violation that a teacher could be fired for. My father in law decided, he did not want to stay at a school run by such a man and he left for a nearby district. Easier for him to do then the older English teacher, as he was young and had no family or home in the town.

The principal suffered no consequences from the firing of the English teacher other than having a young music teacher (my father in law) leave. Those kind of arbitrary and unfair hiring and firing practices were the rule not the exception before due process and collective bargaining.

At that time it was common for women teachers to be paid less than men teachers who were teaching the same subjects. The reason given was that men had to support families and for women salaries were for pocket change or frivolous unneeded spending.

It was also common for principal's to decide the salary of every teacher at the school and use criteria like this teacher had three children that one was single so the one with children was paid more.

Husbands and wives could not be hired to teach in the same school district because that was double dipping.

Teachers were only hire if they agreed to live and shop in the small towns where the school was located, so that the town's money stayed in the town.

At my father first job, hewas required to come to the school at the whim of the school board to set up chairs and tables for meetings of various community groups on the weekends or after school, whenever any community group wanted to use the school. He was expected to stay for the entire meeting and take down and put away the tables and chairs afterwards. All for no extra pay beyond his teacher's salary.

He vividly remembers a Saturday evening when a prominent local men's club decided they wanted a dinner at the school. My father had to go there before eating at home to set up, stay for the dinner and speeches and then take down the tables and chairs (from approximately 4 PM until 9PM). He was hungry the whole time he was there. He remembers looking longlily at the food, telling the guy in charge that he had not eaten and was hungry. But he was given no food and no chance to go get food anywhere else. All as part of his duties as teacher in that community and all for his standard teacher pay and no more. The idea in those days was the community paid a teacher's salary, therefore, his time belonged to the community whether that time was during the school day or not.

Want a more recent example? The son of some good (thirty plus) year friends of ours obtained a job as a probationary teacher at a middle school three years ago. The principal asked him to also coach several sports. His first year he agreed to every request. He felt too intimidated to say no as a new hire.

In his second year in January, his principal came to him and asked him to be the coach for the THIRD time in THAT year. He declined saying he just did not think he could coach again and do the kind of job he wanted to do as a teacher.

He was let go at the end of the year (non-re-elected). He can not prove that it was his refusal to coach the third sport in one year because under current California Educational Code no reason for non re-election need be given to probationary teachers. However, he felt the principal's positive attitude and comments toward him ended as soon as he refused to coach that third sport. This year he is a substitute teacher. He and his wife had planned last year that when he was re-rehired as permanent, they would try for their first child. He wasn't re-hired so there is no child on the way and our friends grandparenting days have been delayed. So many consequences for putting teaching first over coaching a third sport in one year.

There is now a major movement among our statewide ANTI friends here in California to allow school districts to fire experienced and better paid older teachers before younger teachers when budgets are reduced by this recession. There will likely be massive reductions in staff in virtually every district in the state if 1A through 1F fail. Read the one sided hatchet job by the LA Times here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story

Here is an article send to me by a supporter of PRO-public education. (I will not publish her name unless she gives me permission). The article is in an American Federation of Teachers publication.



http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2009/notebook.htm
American Educator - Spring 2009 - Notebook

Dispelling Myths about Teacher "Tenure"
Education Historian Diane Ravitch on Teachers' Unions

Since February 2007, two leading figures in education, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, have been debating public education-its strengths, weaknesses, improvement strategies, and more-in a blog called Bridging Differences. (A complete archive is available by clicking here) The following is excerpted with permission from Diane Ravitch's post on February 3, 2009.

RECENTLY, AN OLD FRIEND who is a businessman and philanthropist sent me a copy of a speech that he gave at Channel 13's Celebration of Teaching and Learning. For many years, he and his family have very generously supported a school for gifted children in one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. The main conclusion of his speech was that the obstacle to educating all children well is the union, because the principal cannot hire and fire and assign teachers as he or she wants. He asked me what I thought of his ideas.

I responded that I was puzzled. The unions don't seem to cause low performance in the wealthy suburban districts that surround our city. They don't seem to be a problem for the nations that regularly register high scores on international tests. If getting rid of the unions were the solution to the problem of low performance, then why, I asked him, do the southern states-where unions are weak or nonexistent-continue to perform worse than states with strong unions? And how can we explain the strong union presence in Massachusetts, which is the nation's highest performing state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? I suggested that low performance must be caused by something else other than teachers' unions. I have not yet received a reply, so I suppose he is thinking about it.

It actually doesn't seem to be all that hard to get rid of incompetent teachers. It appears that 40 percent of all those who enter teaching are gone within five years, according to research that I have seen. In every district, to my knowledge, teachers do not gain due process rights for three years (in some places, it takes five). During those three to five years, their supervisors have plenty of time and opportunity to evaluate them and tell them to leave teaching.

Then, when they have passed the three- or five-year mark, they have due process rights. They cannot be terminated without cause and due process. Although that is usually referred to as tenure, it really is not tenure. In higher education, tenure is an iron-clad guarantee of lifetime employment except for very egregious causes. Teachers do not have that. They have the right to due process. Many administrators would like to fire teachers without due process. I can't blame teachers for wanting protection from arbitrary administrators, especially now, when there are quite a few high-profile superintendents who like to grab headlines by threatening to fire teachers.

The right to form and join a union is one of the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23). I made several trips to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold War and met many teachers who were eager to belong to a union that would protect their interests. The state did not want unions or tolerated only faux-unions.

I read recently that membership in unions is now under 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote in the Los Angeles Times not long ago that the unions helped our nation build a solid middle class. Now, in these difficult times, we may again see a turn to unionism, and for all the predictable reasons, having to do with protection from arbitrary and capricious management to economic security to the demand to have a voice in decisions about the workplace.

Here is another attack on experienced tenured teachers in today's LATimes:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers13-2009may13,0,3359575.story

From the Los Angeles Times
School board members acknowledge swifter firings are needed
Four L.A. Unified board members say state laws need to be changed to get rid of underperforming teachers. Support for such efforts has increased in the wake of a Times investigation.
By Jason Song

May 13, 2009

A majority of Los Angeles school board members said Tuesday that they believe state laws governing teacher discipline need to be revised to allow more swift and effective removal of substandard teachers and other employees, although they acknowledged that changes appear unlikely this year.

In a recent series of articles detailing the lengthy and arduous process of dismissing tenured teachers and other educators in California, The Times found that firing a permanent teacher can often take years of paperwork and hearings. Such instructors can appeal their dismissals to specially convened state boards, which have overturned firings more than a third of the time.