Teacher tenure remains sacred, but hurts students

Teacher tenure was a good idea a long time ago and it remains a good idea for teachers, but a bad one for students, parents and other innocent bystanders.

Tenure has its roots in the early 20th century, when teachers in the emerging cities were subject to the patronage whims of political bosses, while those in small towns often found their professional conduct stifled by small town prejudices. These conditions lessened as teachers unionized, but tenure remained sacred to the teaching profession and their unions.

Today, things have gotten so out of hand with incompetent, tenured teachers in the Washington, D.C., schools that Michelle Rhee, the schools’ chancellor, has offered raises of as much as $40,000 to teachers willing to give it up. The raises would be privately financed through grants from Microsoft’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other foundations of similar stature.

A teacher taking the raise would teach for a year without tenure protection, then face a principal’s evaluation that could lead to retention or dismissal. Those rehired could retain tenure rights and get a 28-percent pay hike over five years, while those willing to give up tenure would receive much higher pay, but be subject to annual evaluations that could include their students’ performance on tests.

This sounds like a proposal that would be enthusiastically embraced by teachers, or at least good teachers, but The New York Times reports that the 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union is divided, with many members and the union itself reluctant to give up the extraordinary protection tenure affords teachers.

“Tenure is the holy grail of teacher unions,†Rhee said, “but has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults.†She thinks, the Times wrote, that tenure may be great, for instance, for those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance.

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And therein lies the problem. In no other profession that I know of does anyone, after a 40-month tryout (the probationary period in Connecticut), get a lifetime job. In other states, the probationary period can be as short as two years.

True, there are provisions in the law for dismissing tenured teachers that sound reasonable enough. In Connecticut, they may be fired for inefficiency, incompetence based on evaluations, insubordination, moral misconduct, proven medical disabilities, elimination of a position for which there isn’t a similar position available and “other due and sufficient cause.â€

But the reality is far different. School boards have discovered that while it is not impossible to fire a tenured teacher, it is very difficult. In Connecticut, a tenured teacher facing termination is notified in writing of the reasons for termination, then has a termination hearing before the local school board or an impartial hearing panel and finally has the right to go to court to appeal his or her termination in Superior Court and higher courts, if necessary.

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Over the years, school systems have often opted to keep tenured teachers rather than go through the cumbersome and costly efforts involved in getting rid of them. Recent surveys have reported it costs between $200,000 and $400,000 in legal fees to terminate a tenured teacher. Even tenured teachers who commit crimes have been known to fight to keep their jobs. Last summer, a Long Island teacher had to be put on paid leave after her fifth drunken driving arrest in seven years while an arbitrator determined her future.

Communities seeking legislative relief run into Democratic-controlled legislatures, which often perform like wholly owned subsidiaries of the unions. In New York last spring, the Democratic legislative majority ruled test scores made by a probationary teacher’s students couldn’t be consulted in considering tenure. Understand, this wasn’t even a move to protect teachers who already have tenure, but an effort to make it easier for the untenured to get lifetime jobs and pay lifetime union dues.

The unions, notably the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, continue, in an era of declining labor power, to be among the most effective special interest groups. In addition to successfully defending tenure, they remain firm in their opposition to school choice and to merit pay for teachers.

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During the campaign, President-elect Obama was booed when he spoke in support of “performance pay†for teachers in a speech at the NEA convention, but the party got an earful at its Denver convention from Democratic big city mayors, who said union contracts have limited their ability to fire bad teachers and give students access to better schools.

“We have to understand that, as Democrats, we’ve been wrong on education and it’s time to get it right,†said Newark Mayor Cory Booker, an Obama ally. We’ll see.

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