Teacher tenure in Virginia -- not quite bullet proof, but almost.
by Les Schreiber
Governor Bob has joined a large number of politicians calling for reforms in K through 12 education by placing all teachers on one-year contracts, thus eliminating tenure. Under the current system in Virginia, after a monitored period of three years, teachers are given a continuing contract making it more difficult for them to be terminated. It is possible to fire a tenured teacher, but there are bureaucratic impediments. However, the Virginia system is not as rigidly protective of teachers as the system in states such as Illinois and New York.
Tenure is a term usually associated with university faculties. It is a protection given to faculty to write and discuss controversial and unpopular ideas without fear of retribution from an administration. It does have some applicability to secondary school teachers.
As a former A.P. Government teacher, I know controversial topics are part of the curriculum. The three most important Supreme Court decisions involving abortion are discussed as part of the course. Global warming and evolution are considered in both science and government classes. No matter how much care is taken to present controversial issues in a neutral manner, some parents will complain to principals that the teacher is trying to promote his or her political agenda. Will the principal be able to stand up to this type of pressure knowing the political leanings of many voters in Virginia?
I taught a course in A.P. Comparative Government. The course was an examination of the internal politics of the U.K., France. Russia, China, and Mexico. These are topics not usually extensively covered in the local Richmond media. At a “back-to-school” night, I was asked by a parent what suggestion I might have to make his child to become more conversant with these topics. I replied that the New York Times and the Washington Post might be good sources to follow the politics of these countries. In response, one parent piped up, claiming that I was a “liberal New York Jew” who was trying to pollute his son’s mind. To my mind, this parent did not pursue his anti-semitic agenda but it did raise the issue of academic freedom to me and reinforced my opinion that teaching school was not worth the hassle.
Teachers are often not appropriately supplied with the materials that they need to perform their jobs. For example, the Advanced Placement organization sometimes changes the curriculum several years before these modifications are reflected in the test. I was informed the year before a curriculum change was to be included in the test, replacing France with Iran, but that the school would not supply new texts because the date of the change in curriculum was not congruent with the school’s text adoption policy. In effect, I was to teach the course without a text for 20% of the material. The school employed an administrator with the title Director of Curriculum whose job should have been to be aware of such changes and to be certain that appropriate materials were available for classroom. Competence tests should be required for administrators, too. I went ahead and puchased some books and materials on my own.
Personalties and politics are brutal in schools. Inter and intra-departmental politics can border on the destructive. In 2006, two colleagues and myself who taught A.P. Comparative and United States Government were able to post the best test scores in the United States. In the “real world,” top producers would be encouraged to keep up the good work and be strongly supported. In Eduland, one of those former colleagues is no longer able to teach the course in which he or she excelled because of a personality conflict with a supervisor.
If tenure is abolished the rules for evaluation must be clear and unbiased. Charlotte Davidson is an economist who became interested in education. Her work has been praised by both teachers and administrators, and according to the New York Times, a recent study at the University of Chicago gave her system a rave review. Her work attempts to rid the evaluation system of bias. Check it out at the Danielsgroup.org website.
Standardized testing will be part of any new evaluation system for teachers. Most proposals are similar to that introduced by Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. when she was Schools’ Chief. All students who take a course are tested at the beginning and end of the year on the same material. Over a period of 3 years, this plan assumes that it is possible to determine which teachers provide the greatest Value Added. The best are given a bonus and the worst are terminated. This system is very similar to that Jack Welsh employed when he was C.E.O. of General Electric. Although there may be problems with testing, it is one way around personality conflicts and bias.
Everyone wants higher performing schools and teachers. One of the best ways to achieve this is to be sure each student is in class each day. There should be no leaving for Model United Nations trips, track meets, Battle of the Brains Tournaments, or any other such extra-curricular rubbish. I would suggest as part of legislation to abolish tenure that any absence from class (excepting personal reasons) in any school, for any reason, must be approved by a vote of 100% of the faculty of that school. Extracurriculars are the biggest negative externality in education. I can not imagine any successful private-sector enterprise that would allow such a barrier to the productivity of its employees.
Increasing student achievement by holding teachers accountable is a worthy goal. It is just not as simple as it might appear.
the people who support the one-year contract do not understand how K-3 education works.
Kids in the early elementary grades have multiple teachers who “team-teach”, especially the at-risk kids.
No one teacher has the critical skills for all the reading, writing and math deficits that various kids can have.
The approach is to test the kids with tolls like PALs which identifies their specific deficits. Then those kids are sent to specialists who are specially trained to help those kids with those deficits.
The teachers have to work together in close collaboration to achieve good results.
What this will do – is force each teacher to protect their own job by not mentoring and not giving help that later, could be used against him/her in a downsizing scenario or worse a principal with an agenda.
you have to have a way to properly evaluate kids before you can have this kind of a system.
What this will do is undermine and set back nascent efforts to improve elementary education.
the dunderheads have struck again!
Is there are third way? I think that there needs to be some level of assurance that a teacher doing a good job, as measured by test scores, parent comments, principal evaluations, etc., should be relatively secure in his/her job. At the same time, teachers who don’t generate these results should be moved out of teaching easily. I think there needs to be room for coaching, etc., but at some point, poor quality teachers need to leave the system.
From what I’ve observed from my two kids’ years in the Fairfax County Schools, its fairly easy to remove newer teachers who don’t match up. But it’s extremely difficult to remove experienced teachers who just don’t care anymore. My son had such a teacher in 6th grade. As far as I know, he is still teaching.
I totally agree there needs to be a way to measure and in the situation I described – the kids are assessed on a fairly continuous basis to determine where they are on the grade level – keeping in mind that some kids come into the grade – behind grade level.
the trouble in many school systems is that the toughest, hardest-to-teach kids are given to the newest teachers.
I think / know there is such a thing as a bad teacher but we better be clear what we are doing here. It’s one thing to say someone is a poor Latin teacher, it’s quite another to say they are a poor 2nd grade reading specialist.
I’m not saying it’s an impossible task but the simple-minded approach that A teacher is totally responsible for keeping everyone in a 2nd grade elementary class – on grade – for reading, writing and math – no matter the individual child’s circumstances is playing with fire – especially for at-risk kids.
and I just continue to remind – you can have a child with a good IQ, not so good parental circumstances who CAN learn but he will not learn the same way that a kid with good parental support will learn.
Yes.. you can abandon that child and say “tough luck you got bad parents” but 12 years later – you and I are going to be paying entitlements for that grown-up kid … for the rest of their lives.
K-6 education is serious business these and we have too many folks running around with simplistic ideas about “good” and “bad” teachers and how to “fix” the system.
We also need to distinguish between a 10th grade coach that teaches personal hygiene and an 11th grade teacher who teaches Calculus and what courses are mandatory academic and what courses are “electives”.
reading, writing and math in early elementary in my book is by far the most important of school.
I just think the whole idea that our education system is failing – is due to “bad” teachers is just flat out dumb.
this idea of going after the bad teachers is just pitchfork and torch politics.
If you want to deal with the problems in Va – the FIRST THING to RECOGNIZE is that our SOLs LIE. They say that 2/3 of the kids are “proficient” when NAEP says 1/3 are proficient. Imagine now that 70% of our kids are graduating with less than a fully proficient education –
… and the reason why is because we have “bad” teachers.
it’s downright comical.
“I just think the whole idea that our education system is failing – is due to “bad” teachers is just flat out dumb.”.
I think people who make that argument will struggle more and more over time. America is losing patience with its educational system at all levels. The notion of granting “tenure” to teachers and professors seems more like an old school union work rule than an enlightened “pay for performance” approach. The use of lifetime pensions which accrue only after decades of work also seems like something from the 1950s.
Meanwhile, our education system is observably failing and all teachers seem to be able to say is, “It’s not us.” often accompanied by, “Spend more money.”.
Teachers and doctors are both losing credibility. Both are at the center of critical institutions which are failing and failing fast. Neither group has a credible answer to the problems at hand. Both groups seem to worship the status quo. Both groups have a long standing belief that they police themselves.
Patience is running thin with both medicine and education in America. Obama, for better or worse, has a vision for a new way in American medicine. The medical community, as far as I can tell, hates the plan. Education is next. The teachers better stop stonewalling about how its never their fault. They better find a plan they can endorse rather than just being perpetually defensive. They are the next group that will be put under the microscope.
I don’t disagree that our education system is failing but the blame game response to it is illicit and off target.
You cannot blame teachers when all the schools in a large school system fail to graduate more than 30% of the kids with “proficiency” in reading, writing and math.
the problem is much larger than that and blaming teachers alone is just plain dumb.
You know what brought this to the fore? NCLB. A simple law that required transparency and accountability and you know what the reaction has been?
to kill NCLB and to claim that we are just as good as Europe and Asia but the way we test does not show it.
When 70% of the kids in a school with 100 teachers fail basic proficiency – are you saying that a majority of the teachers are “bad”?
this is the kind of idiocy that surrounds this issue these days.
and how exactly would you “judge” a Latin Teacher anyhow?
By the number of kids who “pass” ? So the teacher just passes them all?
Who do you blame when a 6th grader cannot read and write? Every teacher the kid had between first and sixth?
this is how dumb this conversation is. We’ve got folks who don’t have a clue deciding to do something that has no relation to the actual problems.
The very first thing the “blame the teachers” contingent of dunderheads should ask – is what percent of European and Asian teachers are classified as “bad”. How many are gotten rid of every year?
If those who want to fire bad teachers really had a clue – what they would advocate is mandatory firing of all school administrators when the schools failed to meet NAEP standards.
and those standards would be NATIONAL – none of this state’s right crappola.
this is how Europe and Asia operate. They have national standards for curricula and testing because education is considered a strategic imperative and accountability is everyone’s responsibility.
If GM or Ford has “bad” employees… you do not blame the union or “bad” employees – you blame the folks who run GM and Ford.
If American Airlines does a bad job – you do not demand that the unionized employees be fired – you hold the management responsible.
this whole concept is yet more bizarre right wing echo chamber blather.
I don’t think Mr. Schreiber’s article was an attempt to blame teachers. Frankly, I don’t think that Go. McDonnell’s proposed reforms were an attempt to blame teachers. If anything, Gov McDonnell’s plans blame tenure. Mr. Schreiber seems to think that tenure plays a valuable role in protecting teachers from politically – inspired persecution. To me, that seems a bit over-blown for the K-12 crowd. While I am sure there are miscreants on various school boards who would try to use their position for political purposes, the same can be said for police, firemen, building inspectors, tax assessors, etc. Mr. Schreiber also acknowledges that tenure could be ended by writing:
“If tenure is abolished the rules for evaluation must be clear and unbiased. “.
Mr. Schreiber then describes the testing approach used by Michelle Rhee in the Washington, DC public schools as an example of how testing might be the basis for the “clear and unbiased” evaluation process.
But how did the teachers in the DC schools react to Ms. Rhee’s reforms?
Very badly indeed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/education/24teachers.html?_r=1&hpw
LarryG – is it fair to blame the teachers in DC for trying to stymie even the limited level of reform undertaken by Ms. Rhee?
It is the teachers who elect the union leaders and it is the unions which often obstruct legitimate reform.
Michelle Rhee tried to reform a troubled school system and the teachers, through their union, blocked that reform.
Your private enterprise comparisons are a stretch at best.
People who disliked the products produced by GM or Ford simply switched to other automotive companies. They can do that because there is competition in the automotive business.
People who don’t like American Airlines can fly United. They can do that because there is competition in the airline business.
There is no effective competition in the public education market, at least at the K-12 level. Therefore, the customers (i.e. parents and students) cannot “vote with their feet”.
Your comparisons don’t hold water.
Gov. McDonnell’s proposal seems based on the belief that tenure is an impediment to the effective management of teachers as a whole. Therefore, he wants to essentially eliminate tenure. Presumably, teachers will remain protected from wrongful discharge in the same way that many public service employees are protected – through an appeals process. Policemen, tax collectors, firemen, soldiers, sailors and many other people employed by the government don’t need tenure. Why do teachers?
you gave good examples at the end. How do we get rid of bad cops or bad tax collectors?
do you have a clue if Sheriff deputies or Fireman have one year contracts?
Do you know what happens when a teacher is not offered a contract ? It happens all the time guy. They already weed out bad teachers in Va by not offering them a contract to sign for the upcoming year.
do you really know how to evaluate a teacher any better than you would a fireman or a county planner? Would you evaluate a Latin Teacher the same way you would a 3rd Grade Reading specialist?
How about a Soccer Coach verses a 1st grade teacher with half his class being at-risk kids who are already behind a grade level and the 1st grade teacher next door who has no at-risk kids in her class?
how would you evaluate them?
how do you RATE a 3rd Grade Math specialist?
do you think there is a standard in Va that applies to all 3rd grade Math teachers in Va or would you favor letting each school set their own standards or how about the principal.
can’t vote with your “feet”? ha ha ha… you can walk right out right now and homeschool your kid and/or send them to a Church or private school.
How do you rate homeschool parents or Church or private school teachers?
this whole thing is yet another right wing echo chamber propaganda deal.
IF the folks were REALLY SERIOUS about this – they want FIRST a standardized teacher evaluation system that protected teachers from bad principals or political agenda school boards, etc.
the fact that we’ve just cut straight to the chase tells you what this is really about.