Wednesday, March 24, 2010

War against public education continues

The first step in the attack against tenure for Missouri teachers came during the 2009 legislative session when a bill was passed granting merit pay in St. Louis schools to teachers who were willing to sacrifice their tenure rights.

Anyone who thought that would be the end of it was sorely mistaken, and did not take the hatred of Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, into consideration.

During her eight years in the House of Representatives and her first term in the Senate, Mrs. Cunningham has offered one bill after another designed to cripple public education. As a House member, she notoriously, and successfully, lobbied former Speaker of the House Rod Jetton for the chairmanship of the Education Committee, offering only one qualification- her ability to corral large amounts of campaign cash for House members from All Children Matter, a national group dedicated to putting public money into private schools.

And now, with SB 1024, Jane Cunningham has declared all-out war on tenure for Missouri teachers. Her bill would eliminate it altogether and not put any brake on vengeful administrators who want to eliminate teachers for personal disagreements or other petty reasons.

It would also create a paperwork nightmare for public schools, which normally would be something Mrs. Cunningham would frown upon, unless, of course, it involves public schools.

The bill calls for the following:

-The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education must "prepare a report on the effectiveness of the graduates of state-approved teacher preparation programs. The report must include an analysis of public school student learning gains on statewide assessments. The first report must be prepared by March 1, 2011, and then every two years thereafter."

-"The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education must annually prepare a report by December 31 on the number of classroom teachers, by school district, whose students' declining academic performance indicates educational insufficiency."

-Instead of tenure, teachers who have taught for five years would be eligible for "professional performance contracts," which would be limited to no more than five years. After that time, if a school board wishes to fire a teacher, it can do so, without cause, according to the bill.

-Superintendents will be required to send to the state commissioner the names of teachers who are fired due to "educational insufficiency." That will go on the teacher's permanent record.

-Each district must establish procedures to evaluate all educators, which will include parent input.

And, though the bill says that items other than test scores should be considered in evaluating teacher performances, there is no doubt that the scores are meant to be the final factor in whether teachers continue to be employed.

On the face of it, that sounds like a sensible approach. After all, if the students are not doing well on standardized tests, it would certainly seem like the teacher should be held accountable. Of course, that is a simplistic approach that does not take into consideration some important factors.

-No one ever talks about the serious problem we have with students who simply do not care and put no effort into their education.

-Many students have no support structure at home. With homes where the parents do not see the value of education, and in homes where children undergo physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, how well they bubble in a standardized test is the last of their concerns.

-Scores are not just affected by the quality of education students are receiving from their current teachers, but also from the quality of education they received from their past teachers.

-Schools (and teachers) are held responsible for the test scores of students who move into their school district well into the school year, many times right before the standardized tests are given. (Some school districts are notorious for "encouraging" low-achieving students to transfer to other districts so their scores will not affect the districts' performance.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to basing employment strictly on the results of standardized tests.

Of course,the opponents of teacher tenure have made it seem like there is no way to get rid of a poor teacher. That is simply not true. While we see the admittedly horrid cases in New York, Los Angeles and other major cities of teachers who remain on the public dollar despite low performance because union rules make them almost impossible to remove, that is not the way it is in most United States school districts and nearly all Missouri school districts. Teacher tenure laws do not say you cannot remove a teacher, they just require that the teacher be given due process.

Proposed laws like this one are part of a continuing effort to undermine public schoolteachers, most of whom are performing well at what can be a thankless job. Teachers continue to be the major target, simply because we are a convenient target.

I know of no good schoolteacher who wants to see bad teachers remain in the classroom. This, however, is not the path Missouri should be taking. This is a bill that needs to be shelved immediately.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

better be looking over your shoulder, Randy.

Anonymous said...

Any law that would enable the Joplin School District to rid itself of Randy Turner sounds like a good one to me.

Anonymous said...

Anon 4:59:

Is Turner a bad teacher? If you have no evidence of this -- as I suppose is the case -- then I would say that your comment, and what it implies, perfectly exemplifies why teachers need tenure in the first place.

Stan D. said...

Too bad blogger won't allow you to preview comments before they are posted. I, for one, am disgusted with inane, slanderous comments that are ubiquitous in the digital world today. Unless your comment adds to the discussion, you should refrain from posting it.

Anonymous said...

Good teachers should be rewarded for their good service. The same should be said for good workers that work hard to perform their jobs in a manner that support the company they work for. Unless I am mistaken, the State of Missouri has no law that assures all workers are protected from firing at will. I do not understand why the teachers should have different rules than the rest of the working population of the state. While there are cases of good teachers being on the wrong side of local school board and/or administration "politics", the laws should be the same as far as employment for teachers as the rest of the working public has to live with. There should be no guarantee that someone has a job for life just because they have put in a certain number of years service. The public can and should assure the school boards are representing the best interest of the students. If not. we have the ability to change the board if they are not working in the best interest of the students. All should be judged and employed according to performance, not "tenure"!

Anonymous said...

Hey - I don't have "tenure" in my job...why should one group be so protected. If my boss decides he doesn't need me around, he sends me on my way. Someone in our family has been in education for as long as I know and they can't explain why a teacher should have tenure. Teachers are paid with taxpayer money, why are they more protected than the guy down the street who works in a factory?

The day is coming when this will be made more just...teachers need to quit hiding behind tenure.

Mark said...

What the eff are teachers hiding behind. They have a job that is thankless; and it doesn't pay well, yet it supposedly is deemed a professional job that requires college degrees to perform. Most of the ones I have seen do care as well, so why label them all, Dick? Also, tenured teachers can be fired. They can't "hide" behind that. And if you think tenure is so great, start teaching. You chose the job you are in.

Anonymous said...

7:35:

The function of tenure (in a university, anyway) is this. A large component of the goal and aim of the university is the pursue of truth, which is reflected/found in both research and discussion/teaching.

Without tenure, that goal is seriously compromised, as profs will quickly take the majority line as to what is and isn't true. Since the majority is not always right about what is true, it is not in the university's interests to have teachers acting in this way.

The consequence is that although tenure surely helps the professor, it's real contribution is a benefit to the university itself and its goals.

Since other jobs don't have "pursuit of the truth" as an aim, it's not surprising they don't have tenure systems. The market run for profit business (which aims at profit, not truth) and the not-for-profit college (aiming partly at the search for truth) are just oranges and apples.