Missouri's billionaire and the war against teacher tenure

The lies have already begun and they will be front center now until Missourians vote on whether tenure should be eliminated for classroom teachers

You have heard the lies before.

-There is no way to get rid of a bad teacher once he or she has tenure.

-Schools would miraculously get better if we could only get rid of all of these experienced teachers who have tenure (and replace them with Teach for America graduates with five weeks of training).

-What other job guarantees its workers lifetime employment?

In addition to those misleading and untruthful statements, this ballot initiative would also require that teachers' evaluations be based on student scores on standardized tests.

It is all happening because one man, retired billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who spent most of his formative years in parochial schools and has little knowledge of what actually goes on in public schools (if you remember, Sinquefield is the man who thought the KKK invented public education), is willing to spend whatever amount of mouey he has to in order to get his way.

As noted in the April 25 Turner Report, Sinquefield has put $1.6 million in less than a year into one of his front groups, the misnamed TeachGreat, in his effort to eliminate teacher tenure.

Those fighting tenure will say that you only have to teach a couple of years and then your job is safe for life. They use New York City as an example, time after time. In the first place, it takes five years to achieve tenure in Missouri, far more than the two or three years in most other states.

And that is not five years of teaching- that is five years teaching in the same school system. On the day teachers begin their sixth year in a school district, they are tenured.

By the time that sixth year rolls around, most bad teachers are not in any position to gain tenure. They have already been sent packing by their school districts, or more often, they realize they are not cut out for a classroom career.

We all know an exception or two, unfortunately, and those are the ones whose stories we will be told about over and over again between now and when we vote on the issue.

The myth that the problem with education is hordes of bad teachers who are populating our classrooms and that everything will be better when we have teachers with less experience, but more enthusiasm and idealism, (and I know and have worked with many veteran teachers whose enthusiasm and idealism not only surpass the younger teachers, but serve as inspiration to them), seems to be reserved only for education. We do not see movements to have million dollar lawsuits handled by young, inexperienced lawyers with five weeks of training, and the last time I recall, no one is circulating petitions to get rid of older doctors so we can have our surgery done by enthusiastic youngsters.

What other job guarantees lifetime employment?

None and neither does education. All tenure says is that if you want to remove an experienced teacher, you have to use due process and that due process is heavily weighted in favor of administrators. In stead of fighting due process because teachers have it, we should be fighting to make sure everyone has due process.

The truth, as you can tell by the fact that Sinquefield calls his front group TeachGreat, will be a casualty when the inevitable ads showing fictitious lazy, incompetent teachers and saddened students, who could be succeeding beyond their wildest teachers if they did not have to deal with experienced teachers.

As for basing teacher evaluations and pay on student scores on standardized tests, that may be the most ludicrous idea of all. The major factor in test scores is going to be the students who are in the classroom. If they come from homes where education is valued, they are likely to score higher on tests. If their families have more income,the same holds true.

In a speech made earlier this week in New York, Rex Sinquefield let it be known that he will accept no excuses such as this. After all, he notes, he was poor, he spent much of his youth in an orphanage, and yet he received a solid private school education and became a billionaire.

"We had a bad home life and we did very well in school and so can they," he said.

He never specified who "they" are.

I suppose he is leaving that to our imagination.