All of the recent talk about the need to eliminate teacher tenure has gotten me thinking. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand the ins and outs of teacher tenure in public education. Working in independent schools, it isn’t something I’ve ever dealt with on a personal level. Perhaps I shouldn’t wade too far into this debate, seeing as how I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but that has never stopped me before, so here goes.
First, my instincts tell me that no teacher should be totally insulated from dismissal, so perhaps eliminating teacher tenure makes sense. If we’re being honest, there are a lot of unengaged teachers in the public schools. I had a few of them myself–but I also found a way to be successful without their help (and I don’t think this point can be emphasized enough: at the end of the day, responsibility for success must rest first and foremost with the students themselves).
Firing every single one of those bad teachers tomorrow–as some seem to demand–is not a practical solution, and more importantly, it would not solve the problems that our educational system faces, even if it were possible. On top of this, the little bit that I’ve read suggests that teachers can be terminated for such reasons as “incompetence” or “inadequate performance,” so would we really need to eliminate teacher tenure to get rid of the bad apples? Perhaps so. It’s certainly easier for politicians to sell (and voters to buy) “firing bad teachers” than defining incompetence or inadequate performance in the classroom. If NCLB has shown us anything, it’s that the very attempt of defining competence or adequacy in the classroom is fraught with challenges.
That said, a shake-up of the system couldn’t hurt. This is by no means a simple fix–I don’t think people can be scared into doing their jobs well–but it may be a starting point. Combine a more challenging path to tenure with better support for early career teachers, substantial professional development, and the promise of an eventual increase in pay, and maybe we start to get somewhere. Make tenure more difficult to achieve, and I suspect that people would begin to strive for it. Make it the next brass ring in the never ending quest for brass rings. (There are many reasons, after all, why so many Ivy League seniors apply to Teach for America; it’s not simply idealism or altruism.)
I guess what I’m getting at is that maybe teacher tenure should be granted only to those teachers who can demonstrate competence. Notice that I did not say that we should fire all teachers who are not granted tenure. Simple math dictates that we need at least some of those mediocre teachers to stick around for at least a little while longer. Nor do I advocate determining competence based on standardized test scores. This doesn’t work. What we need is a more sophisticated model.
Although tenure in higher education faces significant challenges as well, perhaps we can take a page from the university’s book. Not only must a junior professor demonstrate patience, serving in his or her junior role for five or so years, he or she must also demonstrate competence. In history, at least, this means a proven track record of peer-reviewed publications, respectable colleague and student evaluations, and service to the department and the institution, among other things. Scholars spend a significant amount of their preparing this file for the committee.
Obviously, the actual rubric would look quite different for K-12 teachers–most notable would be the absence of publications–but I see value in requiring teachers to compile a portfolio to “sell themselves” to a tenure review committee made up of multiple constituencies–fellow teachers, administrators, board members, and perhaps even parents.
This is naive, I know. But what I see is a lot of entrenched interests arguing past each other, and I think we need some “outside the box” solutions.
Shifting gears a bit, I can say that as an independent school teacher, I long for some sort of tenure system not unlike the one I describe above. (On this note, is anyone out there aware of an independent school that does grant tenure? I’d love to hear about it.) I suppose I’m looking at a series of one-year contracts from now until I retire, and this isn’t exactly reassuring. Given all that teachers are asked to do, and given the price at which they’re asked to do it, the promise of job security goes along way toward a teacher’s peace of mind. (Summers “off” are nice, sure–but they’re not enough in and of themselves, especially if you’re worried about having the next year “off” entirely.)
The fluctuating independent school enrollments of the current economy make any such promise difficult at the moment, but if lifetime tenure is too much to ask (and realistically speaking, it probably is), I would also be very much in favor of a system of contracts that gradually increase in length. It might look something like this:
- One-year contract
- One-year contract (Year 2)
- One-year contract (Year 3)
- Two-year contract (Years 4-5)
- Two-year contract (Years 6-7)
- Three-year contract (Years 8-10)
From there, teachers could either be granted longer contracts (five years? ten years?) at the discretion of the administration, or they could continue on the “three-year plan.” This would still allow schools some leeway in their staffing, but also provide faculty with a measure of job security. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think this would inspire loyalty among faculty as well as ensure the institutional memory and program stability that independent schools seem to covet.
Indie Teacher 
Stephen Lazar
Nov 04, 2010 @ 10:02:53
You have a lot of interesting ideas in the post, but also some misconceptions that I wanted to help clear up:
1) While the details of tenure vary from place to place, it is never a guarantee of a job, it is only a guarantee of due process before dismissal.
2) The idea that making tenure harder to achieve sounds good, but the unfortunate reality is that 50% of public school teachers leave teaching within 5 years (and that number is much higher in urban districts); adding added barriers then would seem likely to increase the number of teachers leaving, which is already a huge problem.
3) I think the main thing you miss though, is that there is a significant political difference between independent and public schools. If you are a good teacher at an independent school, you have a lot of people with power and influence who could back you against a bad administrator: you have a relatively stable board that is familiar with the day to day operations of your school, and you also have the parents who have the power of the purse. In public schools, there aren’t really anyone in power teachers can go to against a principal. If all principals were good and fair, I’d have no problem giving up tenure, but given the high principal turnover in schools and the lack of good ones, I think tenure remains necessary to protect teachers against administrators who might choose to get rid of them for arbitrary or bad reasons.
Indie Teacher
Nov 09, 2010 @ 22:59:38
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond to this comment, but as usual, life has gotten in the way of blogging. In any event, I appreciate your input, Stephen. As I noted in my post, I’m not intimately familiar with teacher tenure in public schools, so I do welcome the thoughts of anyone who is. Regarding your specific points, though, I have a few additional comments:
1) Due process for teachers is certainly a necessity, and I wouldn’t think of arguing otherwise. Perhaps I conflated “teacher tenure” with the tenure system in higher education, which almost always equates (in practice) to a “job for life.” I appreciate the correction.
2) I’m not sure I see the connection between teacher tenure and teacher burnout. I may be missing something, but the teachers who leave the field within the first five years aren’t leaving because they haven’t gotten tenure yet, so tenure isn’t necessarily something that keeps them in the field. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. Maybe some do hold out until they get tenure, but if their hearts aren’t in it, perhaps they should be leaving the field voluntarily (or–if they’re actually that bad–involuntarily). I agree that teacher turnover is a major problem, but those teachers who leave do so for a whole host of reasons from which teacher tenure may actually, in some ways, insulate them. I guess what I’m saying is that although tenure may not guarantee a job, it certainly makes it easier to “go through the motions” and still hang on to that job. But it’s not supposed to make the job easier–just more secure. That is the problem, as I see it, and that’s why I advocated for a long-term contract. It would provide teachers some security and stability beyond the next nine months while still making them accountable to an administrative evaluation at regular intervals. (I would also point out that I advocated for a tenure review that went beyond simple administrators–peers would be included, as would other relevant constituencies.) I agree that we must start with a baseline of due process for all teachers, even first year teachers, but could we actually make teacher tenure something more meaningful/rewarding AND more difficult to achieve? Due process seems fair enough, but if tenure allows uninspired or unengaged teachers to continue in the field with truly mediocre (or worse) performance, it’s not serving its purpose. That’s not due process.
3) I’ll acknowledge that I don’t fully understand the politics of public education (particularly at the district or site level), but either I’ve misread your comment, or you are equally unfamiliar with the politics of independent schools. I’m afraid that teachers in independent schools have even less power than their public school counterparts. There is no due process beyond the very narrow terms of an individual’s contract, there is no union, and in my experience at least, there is no “higher power” (i.e., a board) to whom you could appeal. I could be wrong, but I doubt very seriously that the board at my school is as “familiar with the day to day operations” as you suggest. The board is primarily concerned with long-term strategic planning, fiscal policy, and hiring the head of school. They have no first-hand knowledge of my teaching and probably little second-hand knowledge. Were I to come under scrutiny for any reason (be it my actual teaching, my conduct outside of school, or my personal/political views), I suspect the board would back the administrators with no questions asked. You also mention parents and the “power of the purse.” In most cases, it’s much more likely that parents would wield this power AGAINST a teacher–for any of the reasons mentioned above, or even for grades that they think are too low–than to protect a teacher, as you seem to imply. If parents threaten to take their education dollars elsewhere for whatever reason, schools (especially schools with a weak endowment and no admissions waitlist) may respond to that out of fear. In that situation, the teacher has little power at all.
(In fact, that’s one reason I blog anonymously–so that I can discuss issues frankly without worrying that a parent or administrator will find something I’ve said as a “private citizen” objectionable and use it against me in my professional life. And some of things I’ve read on education blogs lately would get me fired in a heartbeat if they came up beside my name on Google. Private schools do care about image, after all.)
In any event, as I said, I welcome your input. I relish a good argument now and then, and I’ve learned a great deal from you in my short time in the edu-blogo-twittersphere. I hope to continue doing so. If you have any other thoughts on what I’ve said, I’d love to hear them. I suspect we may continue to disagree on some points, but that’s the nature of the game for us history teachers, no?
Stephen Lazar
Nov 15, 2010 @ 20:27:21
No worries on our now very slowly paced conversation – it is November after all.
Response to your second point:
It seems to me that most of the problems you address point to failures of leadership to do their observational jobs, rather than the failure of the teacher tenure system. There are at least five teachers in my school last year who did not deserve the satisfactory ratings they received (NYC has a binary evaluation system), but my principal did not bother to formally observe any of them once (tenured teachers are still supposed to have two formal observations). And the blame for this does not rest solely on my principal – he has too much on his plate. The key point though is that, if we want to be serious about holding teachers accountable to high standards, it is not tenure that is in the way of doing this.
As to your third point, I am actually quite familiar with independent schools, both as a former student of one and having had both my parents work in them in various roles throughout my life, including my father as a principal. I think my error though, was in assuming commonality between my experience and first-hand knowledge and other schools. That was just lazy reasoning on my part. I apologize.
And yes, a good argument is healthy, and enjoyable. One of my least favorite things about Twitter (less so with people who blog) is the echo chamber quality that frequently occurs. Teaching is far too complex for there to be simple solutions that all intelligent people agree upon.
Indie Teacher
Nov 15, 2010 @ 21:46:35
I’m sure there is a great deal of truth in what you say. All of this discussion of policy will certainly be for naught if administrators don’t act to “weed out” the teachers who aren’t getting the job done. (How to make that determination is, of course, a much more complicated question, but it sounds like we at least agree on the fact that there are fair number of teachers out there who probably need to go.)
However, I’m still not convinced that tenure doesn’t play a role here. Again, I’m not that familiar with the dynamics of public schools, but you’ve written of the “due process” that tenure guarantees; I can only assume that this involves a good bit of bureaucratic rigmarole. I wonder, then, if such a binary evaluation system, when combined with even the most reasonable of bureaucratic obstacles to terminating tenured teachers, doesn’t create a disincentive for principals (especially those who already have too much on their plates) to observe/evaluate properly.
In other words, with so much else to do, do principals feel a lack of efficacy in that particular realm of responsibility? I have no particular stake in the issue, so I’ll defer to your firsthand knowledge, but I am curious.
Regarding independent schools, I can only speak from my personal experience as well, so we’re probably both guilty of over-extrapolating. At some point, though, I would be interested in learning more about your experiences and impressions, as well as how/why you reached your decision to teach in public schools. You and I had nearly the opposite educational/career trajectory, it seems.
Stephen Lazar
Nov 17, 2010 @ 10:48:16
I think the lack of efficacy varies in case-by-case situations. I’m not suggesting tenure is not an impediment to removing teachers, that’s exactly the point of it. Some principals are overwhelmed, some are timid, and gasp, some are just bad and lazy.
Shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to share my educational trajectory. I did attend public high school, though.