Rorschach

The personal attacks on Campbell Brown are profound, and represent much more than the absence of good counter arguments to teacher tenure reform.  My wife and I were the targets of ad hominem attacks for years while I served on the Board of Education in Mount Vernon, NY and here's what I think is really going on:

Campbell Brown, in this role as the face of tenure reform in New York, is a Rorschach test on race.  She has a leadership position in a civil rights battle.  The vast majority of teachers are white women, and Brown looks like a teacher.   

Citizen Stewart wrote a blog entry this week that crystallizes it:

"To earn this level hostility Ms. Brown only needed to take up the cause of poor black and brown mothers who want the same level of quality in their children’s classrooms as you’ll find in neighborhoods with the most demanding, affluent families."

Plus, the tenure lawsuit threatens to move the cheese of the teachers' union.  The Diane Ravitch's of the world know that this case will grind its way through the courts, and some legislative changes will result, eventually.  Their squealing is brinksmanship, a fist-pounding to show the rank-and-file they're looking out.

If the folks opposing tenure reform bet on the personal attack card too aggressively they might look like bigots given the premise of the litigation.  If unions don't push hard enough, members might think the leadership is soft.  In reality the union is super powerful and tenure is not going to disappear.  

One thing that made it impossible to negotiate sorely needed changes in the teachers' contract in Mount Vernon, NY is the Triborough Amendment to New York State's Taylor Laws.  Triborough basically guarantees teachers will continue to be paid on the terms of an expired contract, including some components of annual raises.  It prevents labor strikes, but it also makes it extremely difficult to negotiate new terms.  "Our feet are in cement," we were told by a labor negotiator.  Triborough offers a thick layer of protection.

With tenure reform, there are also safety catches protecting teachers.  For example, if the rules on firing tenured teachers were eased, there are volumes of other labor laws that guarantee due process.  If the probationary teaching period were upped to four years instead of three, tenure would still be granted.  New Jersey bumped up to four years fairly recently and the world didn't end.  If student performance could be considered in deciding whether to grant tenure, teachers could just keep doing what they do, and earn tenure.  In each scenario, tenure continues and outcomes will hopefully improve.

The vitriol and personal attacks validate Campbell Brown picked the right fight.  There are layers of protection around the teaching profession, as there should be, and the public narrative about teachers being under attack is grossly overstated.  People lashing out against Campbell Brown are airing their own interest, fear and sadly, ignorance.