Michelle Rhee, DC Schools Chancellor, has unveiled non-tenure track pilot program for teachers in the DC public school system. With the help of private foundations, Rhee will offer this non-tenure track for teachers, in exchange for significantly increased pay.
Teacher tenure: it’s the boogie-man of school administrators and free marketeers. But you know, it’s like anything else: of course there are good and bad teachers, as well as those in the middle. Just as there are good and bad administrators, schools board members, janitors, major automobile companies, insurance companies, and corporate boards of directors.
Teachers will tell you they need the protection from incompetent administrators. Administrators will tell you that the due process afforded a teacher subject to dismissal has made it impossible to effectively manage a school. The free marketeers will tell you that all those bad teachers are holding education hostage.
One thing I have always found interesting about the teaching profession: it’s one of the most highly trained workforces in America. Between the degrees required, the post-professional training, and more, I would challenge you to find a more highly educated workforce.
Spend some time around big city schools, or free-marketeers, and you will hear blame assigned to the teachers unions for the challenges facing school systems. If you combine yesterday’s news of the Gates Foundation seeking to develop performance-based teacher pay system and the desire of the NYCDOE and others to assess teachers based on standardized tests, well, humm, it sounds like there’s going to be a big push to break this key job protection for teachers.
It’s actually not all that long since teachers first gained these protections. While there were teachers unions going back to the turn of the 20th century, the right to collective bargaining, which led to such job protections, did not occur until the 1960s. The reason why job protection emerged: principals were hiring and firing at will, without oversight, often tied to patronage and other things that had nothing to do with what was best for the students.
Albert Shanker used to say that teachers should not be held responsible unless the students were also held responsible. As any teacher can tell you, the background of the student: their socio-economic circumstances coupled with any physical and cognitive challenges they face make for something that many teachers struggle to deal with.
Maybe the orchestras will be next….
One response to “To Go Where No Public School Teacher Has Gone Before: No Tenure”
Both as symphony musicians and teachers, my wife and I, along with every other colleague we know both young and old, collectively understand that without tenure, you are giving up your right to due process. Trying to wrestle that right from us is not only unethical, but it goes against the concept of due process under the law.
If there weren’t this due process in place AS ALWAYS AGREED TO BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE, a teacher or musician would have to take a case to court to fulfill due process of law, but at the wages that either of these vocations pay on average, it is just not possible. The court costs for litigation with the administration would also burden the district (and therefore the tax payer) with much higher taxes to run the local school system. A losing proposition for all.
The most important relationship in these two professions to make them successful is between teacher/student and conductor/musician. Administration is not the key player in the process. For administrators to try to power-grab from these essential relationships is beyond greedy, it’s disgraceful – and I think the general public would see right through that kind of thing if they knew all of the facts.
Of course bribing newer and less aware hires, as everyone is aware, is the true goal of these so-called “free marketeers” – the result of who’s philosophies have most recently been seen manifest in the world’s economic marketplace. How is that working out for everyone?
This is pure unadulterated union-busting via the oldest form of warfare known to man – divide and conquer. And in the long run, it won’t work out for the work force or for the better good.
Before asking these professionals to give up or trade away anything at all, first provide ALL extensively trained teachers and symphony musicians salaries commensurate with their specialized abilities that are claimed to be of such importance to our society.