I am writing in response to the recent decision by the California courts stating that teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional. That being said, having worked in public education for 29 years, I do agree that there is a need to reform the tenure laws.
Yes, there are incompetent and lazy teachers, and often administrators are too lazy, overworked or new to the job to complete the lengthy documentation required to remove them.
Let’s remember that incompetent teachers don’t give themselves tenure; incompetent administrators do. Moreover, most national estimates are that about 50 percent of new teachers are gone from the profession within five years — either because they don’t get tenure, or because they realize that the job is too difficult for them.
Nevertheless, tenure assessment and a teacher’s continued employment need to be addressed in a carefully crafted, multifaceted manner. In our state, the New Jersey teachers union is supporting this and has helped craft the new tenure assessment process.
But it is too simplistic to say teachers need to be treated like the private sector, which is the complaint I hear constantly from noneducators. The private sector works on profit. A company that is doing well financially will gladly hire a highly paid employee with many years of experience who has left another company for a variety of reasons, as long as their references are stellar. In fact, they will even send “headhunters” to poach top-earning, competent employees. But the reality in public education is that schools never “do well” financially. They always run on a bottom-dollar budget. Suppose there is a teacher in her 40s with two master’s degrees and stellar references from all prior administrators, parents and other teachers. She then runs afoul of a new administrator, who bullies his staff into rigging her assessments and continuing employment — and she is terminated. (Yes, there are such administrators.)
What can that competent, highly educated veteran do? Run to a headhunter? The reality is that there is no public school district that will even interview such a person, simply because of “budget constraints.” Her career is over forever because she is too costly.
I have sat in at our local Board of Education meetings when high-earning, respected veterans retire or leave for other reasons, and have heard board members express delight that now they can get a “bargain” new teacher.
It’s a complex situation that the privatesector proponents do not understand. By the way, those outrageous “golden parachutes” that the pensioners get go to administrators and superintendents, not to teachers. Kathleen McNellis Middletown