The paper makes a number of recommendations for federal and state policy that would reform state tenure laws and
district tenure processes:
Not exact matches
If the teacher gets a bad review for three years in a row, even if they have
tenure, then the school
district is required to begin a termination
process.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that a school
district's failure to provide
tenured public - school teachers with a hearing prior to dismissal violates the teachers» due -
process rights under the 14th Amendment.
The classroom observation
process had occurred formally (if superficially) twice a year for all teachers, irrespective of
tenure status, as part of the
district — union teacher contract.
And a recent study found that highly unionized
districts have more rigorous and robust
tenure processes.
It's not quite a trend yet, but two more state - appointed arbitrators have sided with Newark teachers brought up on
tenure charges by
district superintendent Cami Anderson, claiming in both cases that her administration did not follow the proper
process.
Monday's senate hearing focused on the state's 3020 - a hearing, the
process that requires
districts to prove their case for terminating a
tenured teacher.
In addition, John E. Deasy, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School
District and «a staunch opponent of
tenure rules and «last in, first out» seniority for teachers,» testified on the side of the plaintiffs, while also noting, however, that «good administrators don't grant due
process rights to ineffective teachers.»
Under current state law,
districts must decide by March of the second year whether to grant teachers permanent status or
tenure, which provides due -
process rights and job protections.
«Proponents of
tenure will tell you that any school or
district can remove a teacher by the due -
process system that the
tenure law affords.
«This mechanism of having access to more information on teachers to inform the
tenure process is available in most school
districts,» Wyckoff said.
First, it provided those making the
tenure decision with more information on teacher effectiveness including a
district - developed Effectiveness Framework, a tool designed to guide principals and superintendents through a rigorous
process for determining which teachers have earned
tenure.
«We are proud of the steps New York City has taken in recent years to strengthen
tenure but we also recognize that we still don't have a fully fair, efficient system that protects teachers and students,» said April Rose, a fourth grade teacher in Queens, N.Y. «Our vision for
tenure is to set a high bar and a clear
process, and in doing so, allow
district and school leaders to focus on more pressing concerns like reducing attrition among educators in their first few years and creating safe, supportive school environments.»
During his
tenure with the organization, Colleston has helped to develop and lead all aspects of the
district's authorizing function, including overhauling the
district's charter school policies, managing the charter school application
process, overseeing citywide authorizing strategic priorities, and leading the development of the
district's first School Performance Framework.
And Anderson said while she recognized that the new teacher
tenure law known as TEACHNJ provided some avenues for removing the least - effective teachers, the
district needed to move more quickly than through a
process that can include extensive documentation and arbitration.
Currently, California's
tenure process creates a «do or die» scenario, whereby school and
district leaders must decide within 18 months if a teacher can be permanently at the front of a public classroom.
She pointed out that her amended bill would still extend the probationary period before teachers receive
tenure from two to three years and would at least give
districts the ability to negotiate a streamlined dismissal
process through collective bargaining with local teachers unions.
And once teachers receive
tenure, it can take almost a decade and up to $ 500,000 to dismiss an ineffective teacher — rendering the
process so costly and time consuming that
districts like LAUSD rarely even bother to try.
«On the problem with extending the
tenure beyond two years... It's important that while we want teachers to at some point have due
process rights in their career, that that judgment be made relatively soon; and that a floundering teacher who is grossly ineffective is not allowed to continue for many years because a year is a long time in the life of a student... having the two - year mark — which means you're making a decision usually within 19 months of the starting point of that teacher — has the interest of... encouraging
districts to make that decision in a reasonable time frame so that students aren't exposed to struggling teachers for long than they might need to be....
There's a national conversation underway about teacher
tenure, and nearly half the states and the
District of Columbia are already overhauling their teacher evaluation
processes so that they are tied more directly to student testing data.
This will make Denver Public Schools — Colorado's largest school
district — the
district with the highest relative proportion of teachers to lose
tenure, which demotes teachers to probationary status, which also causes them to lose their due
process rights.
Critics, however, argue that the cost of due
process does, in practice, lead
districts to retain ineffective teachers and as a result
tenure not only allows poor teachers to stay in the classroom but also reduces the incentive for teachers to be as effective as they could be.
Tenure critics rightly note that in many school
districts, the
process an administrator has to go through in order to dismiss a teacher for cause ends up being so lengthy and expensive that it can feel nearly impossible.
Many teacher
tenure critics also want to end the
process of «seniority» — which requires that
districts make layoff decisions based on the number of years a teacher has been working.
Missouri should require a clear
process, such as a hearing, to ensure that the local
district reviews a teacher's performance before making a determination regarding
tenure.