Plenty of ink has been spilled about whether tenure contributes to better or worse high school instruction. Tenure insulates teachers from education stakeholders, more specifically parents, fellow teachers, and administrators, who may want to remove an unpopular but otherwise good and effective teacher. These successful teachers must contend with political pressures from administrators, parents, or colleagues. A principal may demand that the teacher teach to the test to produce higher test scores or inflate grades to generate higher pass rates. Parents may complain to the principal about the curriculum, the teacher’s political or religious views, or their child’s grade. The school board may object to whistle blowing activities. Fellow teachers may object to the teacher’s activism. Administrators may want to hire those that can be more easily molded to carry out their policies and fire those that get in their way (Brekke, 2001, Koorstra, 2000). Teachers should not be terminated for political reasons, and tenure insulates teachers from these political winds.
However, tenure may be a redundant protection since public school teachers are guaranteed due process by state and federal governments and additionally sheltered by union grievance procedures. Tenure acts as a disincentive for some teachers to give more than a minimum effort (Pound, 2000) and makes it quite expensive and difficult for school boards to fire incompetent, destructive, and dishonest teachers. From 1990 to 1999, “Los Angeles Unified School District—the second largest in the nation—dismissed only one teacher.” Administrators tend to move bad teachers rather than fire them, so they gravitate to schools in low-income areas where supervision tends to be more forgiving (Schwab, 2005) and where, ironically, the best teachers are needed. High school tenure requires no record of published research or long probationary period required at the university level (Stephey, 2009). In California, teacher probation is only two years.
Let’s conduct a mind experiment. What would high school education look like if both teacher protections, unionization and tenure, were removed? We would then be a nation of private schools! My oldest son attended a private high school five years ago. Nine out of thirteen former teachers and the principal have moved on. Not all private schools suffer from the high turnover that plagued this school, but public schools without union and tenure protections would certainly approach the higher turnover rates of the private sector. University of California, Berkeley education researcher Xiaoxia Newton shared with me by email that a national study comparing private and public school churning was conducted by R.Ingersoll in 1995. (Teacher supply, teacher qualifications and teacher turnover. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics.) This study showed that small private schools have relatively higher levels of teacher turnover. (See Dr. Newton's work comparing charter and public schools here.) Does higher teacher turnover hurt student performance? According to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, teachers at low-performing schools often leave before they have mastered their craft and created a successful learning culture (Barnes et al., 2007). If all schools suffered from much higher turnover, student learning would suffer. Additionally, private schools often pay less than public schools and fewer good candidates would be attracted to the profession.
What if we kept unionization in place and limited the use of tenure in high school, either requiring a longer probationary period or weakening tenure that shields teachers receiving poor performance reviews? Five years ago California voters discarded these ideas, packaged as a ballot measure, Proposition 74. I see little evidence that changing probation and tenure policies will more than slightly affect the aggregate of teacher performance and therefore, student performance, but it may be worth looking at the probationary period again. Would students be better served if California had a three-year probationary period? I think so. Most California high school teachers are good at what they do, but, anecdotally, I have come across poor-performing teachers who weren’t quite weeded out after two years of probation. One more year of hard scrutiny, adding fifty percent more time to their probationary period, may have convinced them to find ways to improve their skills or seek another line of work. Since these teachers, now mediocre performers at best, cannot be removed and have little interest in improving, student performance suffers. Would beginning teachers be discouraged by a three-year probationary period and one more year of high-stakes performance reviews? I think not. Most states demand a longer probationary period than California.
Alternately, the law could be changed to weaken tenure protections for poor-performing teachers. If a teacher receives inferior performance reviews from administrators AND a board of peers AND state tests scores declined for a majority of students under this teacher, we have a pretty good idea that something is wrong. This teacher should lose tenure protection. Notice that tenure would still protect teachers against overzealous parents, administrators attempting to remake departments to their liking, and faculty objecting to a teacher’s politics. Only truly bad teachers would fail performance reviews run by both administrators and fellow teachers, including subjective examinations of performance and an objective analysis of state test scores. Those teachers could choose to learn necessary skills or leave the profession and student learning would incrementally improve.
Bibliography
G. Barnes, E. Crowe, and B. Schaefer, The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Five School Districts, Executive Summary, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2007, http://www.nctaf.org/resources/demonstration_projects/turnover/documents/CTTExecutiveSummaryfinal.pdf
Brekke, Stewart E, Why Teachers Need Tenure, 2001, http://teachers.net/gazette/JAN02/brekke.html
Koorstra, Dirk, Tenure Protects Good Teachers, Too, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, February 10, 2000, http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2696
Pound, Gerald A, Tenure Law is Impediment to School Reform, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, May 12, 2000 http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2874
Schwab, Alexander, Teacher Tenure Protects Jobs Instead of Education, http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/guest_commentary/reform-teacher-tenure.htm
Stephey, M. J., A Brief History of Tenure, Time, Nov. 17, 2008
a few comments/observations:
ReplyDelete1) why just refer to high school teachers and tenure vs. all public school
2) school boards don't hire/fire teachers -- they hire/fire superintendents who are ultimately responsible for all personnel decisions.
One of the problems, from one perspective, is that many superintendents are products of the educational tenure system and are too closely identified with collective bargaining units and can't act as more independent executive officers of educational institutions...
3) principals/administrators may object to "whistle-blowing" activities...more likely than school boards
The following statement is not all that compelling to me: What would high school education look like if both teacher protections, unionization and tenure, were removed? We would then be a nation of private schools!
...collective bargaining is NOT the defining quality of public schools. Not only are there private schools with unions, there are other more critical defining qualities of public schools (i.e., lack of admission requirements and ability to reject applicants, exemption from state-dictated curriculum/textbook requirements, etc)....
You have covered all the important points. A two year probationary period is simply not enough. All schools should have mentor programs where experienced, competent teachers mentor the new ones. But we need to find a way to get rid of incompetent teachers. In New York State it costs approximately 300,000 dollars, or at least that was what it cost 8 years ago , to get rid of an incompetent teacher. Sometimes three years is not long enough to make a decision about a teacher. Administration should be able to give the teacher another year in order to make the decision about tenure. And another problem we face is all the incompetent administrators. Any suggestions for how to deal with them?
ReplyDeleteI am way outside my area of understanding. I think I believe teaching is a calling. I am not at all sure that learned skills can come close to equaling a natural ability to teach (an ability which I don't think I possess incidentally, and you, I believe, do), so I don't know that I believe incompetent teachers can "learn" to teach after the initial two or three year period of learning basic hands-on (or hands-off) skills everyone needs. In a hackneyed phrase, teachers are born, not made.
ReplyDeleteIn my dealings with most school administrator's I have found them to be generally incapable of knowing good teaching from bad. Or much of anything else. And kids know even less. Popularity is worthless as a determinate of teaching skill, whether from administrators or kids. I don't know what the determinate might be, but standardized tests seem equally worthless. Sadly, I think the only truly accurate way of assessing a teacher's skill can be determined from questioning ex-pupils at least ten years later. Thirty years will give a more accurate assessment. Useless in practice, but important in realizing you may be doing some worthwhile things.
As you can now tell, I have no solutions, only questions.