Tenure On Trial

Tenure On Trial, New York Observer, July 14, 2014

"In a system that employs about 75,000 teachers (the NYC public schools), only 12 were dismissed for poor performance from 1997 to 2007."  

Meanwhile, the teachers union argues that tenure doesn't protect bad teachers.  According to New York's United Federation of Teachers, tenure enables good teachers to "fight for what students need."  The UFT may be right about good teachers, but it masks the underside of tenure, which is that it traps bad teachers and permanently compromises entire school systems.  

Here's how it works in New York State.  

Example 1:  Let's say you get hired to work in a high functioning public school.  You are a young, perky recent college graduate with some experience as a teaching assistant.  The principal observes your work several times over the course of your first year and helps you become a better teacher.  If your classroom abilities are reasonably OK, you will be asked to return for a second year.  The only ways you will not get tenure is if you quit voluntarily or if you are not offered an opportunity to return prior to your third year anniversary.  That's not you, so at the end of year 3, your principal will recommend you for tenure in a form letter to your superintendent.  The school board will approve your tenure at their next meeting, a perfunctory vote.  Immediately afterward, the superintendent will call out your name to congratulate you on your coveted status as a tenured teacher.

That's it.  You are 25 years old, and you have something that closely resembles a lifetime guarantee of employment.  If you want to make teaching your life's work then losing your job is one thing that will NOT keep you up at night for next 25 to 40 years.  Without regard to the depth of your expertise or the skill with which you impart knowledge, you are going to be in a classroom.  You might become Teacher of the Year material, or you might become burnt out and tired of kids.  Once you've got it, tenure treats everyone the same, and that's where the problem begins.

Example 2:  Imagine the school you were hired to work in is on a rough corner of a hardscrabble neighborhood.  The kids have high needs, social problems abound and it's not even safe to park your car.  You're a great teacher and a great person, so you see the opportunity of your lifetime to make a difference.  However, your principal is less motivated than the one in Example 1.  She started out idealistic, like you, but now after many years, she would rather be doing anything else.  She's in a union too, and she already has tenure.  Her teacher observations don't happen as often, or maybe not at all.  The new teachers were placed there by "the district" and the principal is not motivated, intellectually or politically, to care about who can teach well and who cannot.  Nobody's monitoring attendance, professional development is an afterthought.  You receive tenure after three years, but so do a bunch of other young teachers who really don't belong in a classroom.  You will all teach in that system for a generation or more, regardless of ability.  

Here's the secret code to all this.  In high functioning school systems, weak teachers are either coached to improve or let go, before the tenure lock-up.  In awful school systems it's easy to slip through those first three years.  The clock ticks, and a generation of kids pays the price.  At best, current K-12 tenure is deeply flawed, but the Scardales of the world deal with it by hiring carefully and firing within the probationary first three years.  School districts that are addled with financial, social and managerial problems spiral downward because tenure poisons their teaching stock, permanently and profoundly.  The consequence of bad tenure decisions linger and have an incalculable impact on systems with the most needy students.