Judge teachers by student performance

I imagine most people believe that a good way to judge a teacher is by how well his or her students perform in class.

Not exactly a remarkable concept, is it? The teacher teaches and the students learn and the teacher’s success is measured by the students’ achievement.

But to many teachers, and especially to their unions, this is a radical idea they vehemently oppose because they fear it could destroy tenure, seniority and other sacred precepts of teacher trade unionism.

Joel Klein, New York City’s schools chancellor, calls tenure “ridiculous.†“You cannot run a school system that way. The three principles that govern our system are lockstep compensation, seniority and tenure. All three are not right for our children.†Klein should know. He has about 600 tenured teachers being paid to do nothing and sitting in so-called “rubber rooms†every day as their union seeks to defend them against charges of misconduct or incompetence.

The Obama administration seems to agree with Klein. Its education secretary Arne Duncan has upset the unions by encouraging the nation’s schools to develop teacher evaluation systems that take student achievement into account and the unions, according to The New York Times, “are beginning to realize they can either stand on the sidelines or help develop these systems.â€

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In New Haven, the unions seem to have decided it would be in their best interest to work on reform from the inside, the better to control the results. A new contract with New Haven teachers calls for the American Federation of Teachers to work with the city in developing an evaluation system and with those union helpers aboard, the system is already in trouble.

As The Times said in an Oct. 29 editorial, “School reformers were excited to hear that New Haven planned to take student performance into account in its teacher evaluations. But they uttered a collective ‘uh-oh’ upon hearing that the details — including how much weight would be given to student performance — would be hashed out by a committee that includes teachers and administrators.†The reformers believe student achievement should weigh the heaviest in any evaluation formula, something that is not too likely if the unions prevail in the planning.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has nothing to fear from the politically potent teachers’ unions as he begins his final term as mayor, wants to use test scores and other measurements of student performance to determine which teachers should be retained and which should look for other work. He says layoffs should be on the basis of performance, rather than seniority, and wants the Legislature to make it easier to fire bad teachers as the state’s tenure law is about to expire next June. The mayor is normally very good at getting what he wants.

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Tenure has also been an issue in small town Connecticut lately. Last month, a New Haven Register editorial noted, “Branford’s school board has done something remarkable for Connecticut. It has fired an incompetent school teacher.†Testimony before a committee of the Branford school board indicated Denise Farina, who taught mostly kindergarten in a Brandford school for 27 years, was often absent or late, couldn’t develop or follow lesson plans and often taught the same things day after day. “There was no teaching going on†in Farina’s classroom, Branford Superintendent Kathleen Halligan testified.

But Farina isn’t finished with the school board. It will have to spend more defending itself against a suit she has filed in Federal Court and an appeal she intends to file in state Superior Court.

Protecting teachers like this through tenure has become a national scandal but school boards are reluctant to devote the time and the money, as much as a quarter of a million dollars, that it takes to get rid of one bad teacher.

In Connecticut, a teacher can be tenured after 40 months of teaching. After that, the teacher can grow in the job, serve time or do harm. Whatever course the teacher takes, tenure will be there for him.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.