Increasingly, state legislatures have been working to weaken or even abolish
the practice of teacher tenure, including the requirement to use teacher evaluation data in the decision to grant tenure.
Not exact matches
Backers
of teacher tenure lost another battle to defend the job - protection
practice when a Brooklyn court refused to toss a lawsuit challenging it.
Third, there's a revolution underway in
teacher evaluation and many
of the HR
practices associated with it, including retention,
tenure, compensation, promotions, and layoffs.
Opponents
of the
practice of offering
tenure to public school
teachers outnumber its supporters in 2010 by a margin
of nearly two to one.
The differences on
teacher tenure policy are even larger, as 62 percent
of Republicans but only 34 percent
of Democrats altogether oppose the
practice.
These components are often uneasy companions in the dual pursuit
of two separate goals: improving teaching
practice; and judging
teachers as either competent (and thereby worthy
of tenure, additional responsibilities, or supplemental compensation) or ineffective (and thereby slated for corrective action or termination).
But meanwhile, in most
of tenure cases so far under the new law, the arguments have been over typically either individual incidents
of alleged misconduct or longer patterns
of teachers failing to improve their
practices.
Forty - three percent
of respondents said they somewhat support or strongly support
teacher tenure practices, and nearly the same amount said they somewhat oppose or strongly oppose them.
The 2009 publication The Widget Effect (Weisberg, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009), a study
of teacher evaluation
practices in 12 diverse districts in four states, found that over 99 %
of tenured teachers in districts using a satisfactory or unsatisfactory rating system earned a positive rating.
In the published presentation
of results, the question about
teacher tenure asks: «Do you support or oppose
tenure for
teachers, the
practice of guaranteeing
teachers lifetime job security after they have worked for a certain amount
of time?»
Under previous and current state law, districts laying off
tenured teachers must do so in order
of seniority, a
practice known as «last in, first out,» or LIFO.
This was one
of the key lessons learned early on by EPAC and led to the recommendation to delay full implementation
of the evaluation system by a year: 2012 - 2013 was scheduled in the
tenure reform law as a capacity - building year for districts to choose, train in, and
practice using a
teacher practice instrument.
The purpose
of tenure — a term that is frequently misused — is to provide due process protection that allow
teachers to voice their opinions, advocate for their students, and challenge inequities and bad
practices without fear
of unjust retaliation by principals, superintendents or school boards.
In a forthcoming article, my colleague Sara Ray Stoelinga
of the University
of Chicago Urban Education Institute illustrates how
teacher tenure creates perverse
practices in schools across Chicago.
With respect to
tenure decisions, first
of all, you need to have — in the system, you need to have clear standards that you're going to evaluate the
teacher against, that express the kind
of teaching
practices that are expected; and a way
of collecting evidence about what the
teacher does in the classroom.
We achieved this sign - on rate even though all participating LEAs will have to implement a bold set
of policy and
practice changes, including using student growth as one
of multiple measures in evaluating and compensating
teachers and leaders; denying
tenure to
teachers who are deemed ineffective as gauged partly by student growth; relinquishing control over their persistently lowest - achieving schools; increasing the number
of students who are taught by effective
teachers; and, in many cases, opening their doors to more charter schools.
Race to the Top initiated a long - overdue debate over how to improve
teacher quality in the United States and highlighted a number
of dysfunctional state
practices around
teacher training, placement, evaluation,
tenure, and dismissal.
Three widespread
practices in particular are in need
of major revision:
teacher evaluation and
tenure systems that do not distinguish effective
teachers from ineffective ones; forced placement, where
teachers are assigned to schools based on seniority rather than the match
of teacher skills to school preferences and needs; and LIFO (last in first out), by which
teacher lay - offs are based entirely on seniority rather than
teacher effectiveness.
During his
tenure in New York, King ushered in
practices such as
teacher evaluations tied to student performance and supported the Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments, all
of which garnered a significant amount
of public pushback.
The four bills would increase the probationary period — the length
of time before a
teacher is up for
tenure — from four to five years; end the
practice of laying
teachers off predominately based on seniority; put
teachers evaluated as ineffective back on probation; make it easier to fire
teachers for a broader slew
of offenses; and limit collective - bargaining rights, barring unions from negotiating areas such as
teacher evaluations.
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.
TRENTON — The first major change toNew Jersey's
tenure law in a century, but one that leaves intact the
practice of laying off
teachers based on seniority, won unanimous backing today
of a Senate committee.