Sunday, May 18, 2008

Tenure damages the Teaching Profession

The Rochester Education Association is our community’s MEA unit – our local teachers union. Its President wrote an opinion piece that appeared last week in the local paper:

Rochester Eccentric: Earning tenure an important milestone (05/11/08)

She writes, “The sense of celebration was contagious in the school district's Harrison Room when it was announced that 74 teachers had recently earned tenure.”

She’s right. The recognition and celebration of tenure has become an annual event on the agenda of the Rochester Board of Education, and the mood is always upbeat.

But for all of the positive things teachers do, it’s a shame that the school board cannot find better things to publicly celebrate. The countless individual accomplishments made by teachers both in and out of Rochester's classrooms seem far more worthy of a celebration than a change in employment status.

Tenure is certainly an important ritual in the culture of educators, but only because the teacher unions continue to perpetuate the notion that teachers need to be “protected” from some oppressive and ignorant opponent. Like many of the current practices in education, tenure may have made sense at some point in our history, but it now seems outdated and unnecessary today. It’s hard to see how it’s good for the teaching profession, and it seems unhealthy for public education.

Even the tone of the op-ed was one of “pre-emptive defense”. For those outside of “the family”, tenure is indeed a controversial and unpopular law.

A new report from The Education Sector, “Waiting to be Won Over” shows, “Almost seven in 10 teachers (69 percent) say that when they hear a teacher at their school has been awarded tenure, they think that it’s “just a formality—it has very little to do with whether a teacher is good or not.”

Becoming tenured does not translate into increased pay for a teacher. It does not trigger additional responsibility. There is no change whatsoever in the teacher’s professional duties.

The Eccentric op-ed reinforces tenures real purpose: “A rite of passage for all teachers, reaching tenure status means they are no longer "at-will" employees.”

Tenure has absolutely nothing to do with teaching children, or rewarding great teachers. It is nothing more than a unique one-sided law in which the government intervenes and regulates the employment relationship between an employer and an employee.

For many of the countless teachers who have become tenured over the years, tenure has little value. Top-notch professionals earn our respect – and their position in the classroom – by creatively engaging our children, and constantly challenging them. Their efforts, skills – and results – provide security, and they don’t need laws to protect them.

Instead, the tenure law serves as the biggest weapon in the MEA’s arsenal, its sole purpose
apparently being to protect those teachers that don’t belong in the classroom.

The article claims this concern is a “misconception”.

Misconceptions about tenure are perpetuated, though, when administrators shirk their responsibilities.

There are ample opportunities for them to utilize the evaluation process as an opportunity to alert teachers to areas in their performance needing attention.

Tenure protections are in no way meant to override or replace effective supervision. For those who stumble along the way, a healthy and respectful partnership between the Education Association and administration can get an underperformer back on track.


Technically, there is a process for addressing those who are gross “underperformers”. But it is a painful and cumbersome process that attempts to bury administrators in paperwork, eliminate the use of objective and meaningful test data, and drag out the process for an absurdly long time. The pain an administrator must bear to remove an “underperforming” teacher is considerable, so it’s logical that they will only go there in the most extreme cases.

Even teachers agree. From the Education Sector report:

According to teachers, not only do the system’s incentives lock in teachers who’d rather leave; its rules make it hard to push colleagues out when they really should not be teaching. Well over half of the teachers surveyed (55 percent) say that in their district it is very difficult and time-consuming to remove clearly ineffective teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom but who are past their probationary period. Only 13 percent say this is not the case. And almost half of teachers (46 percent) say they know a teacher in their own building who is past the probationary period but who is clearly ineffective and shouldn’t be in the classroom.”

It is these bad apples – protected by tenure and the MEA – that spoil the reputation of the teaching profession as a whole. Eliminating tenure privileges, and enlisting the help of the MEA to help police it’s ranks, would be a far more effective way to help teachers, students, and public education.

I’ve pasted below the Eccentric article in case the link doesn’t work:



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May 11, 2008


Earning tenure an important milestone


The sense of celebration was contagious in the school district's Harrison Room when it was announced that 74 teachers had recently earned tenure. A rite of passage for all teachers, reaching tenure status means they are no longer "at-will" employees.

Tenure was awarded in 1937 and amended in 1993 by the Michigan Legislature.

The Tenure Act provides for probationary periods, regulates discharges or demotions, provides for resignations and leaves of absence, created a tenure commission and established the concept of the "continuing tenure of office of certificated teachers in public educational institutions."

It's hard to imagine this idea as being controversial when you see the fresh faces of these eager professionals. It's not unusual either to hear stories told with affection from many satisfied students and their families about their interactions with these relatively new staff members.

If you want your teachers to make the necessary commitment to their students, they naturally need a sense of security which is an important by-product of gaining tenure. Once tenure is earned it is no simple "cake walk" from here to retirement, though. Pressure to perform comes from all corners: MEAP, NCLB, MMC, NCA, SIP, MLPP, AP, PLC and under the watchful eye of the public.

The teachers strive to continually incorporate best practice and build positive relationships with students and parents. The success of our students is at the core of our mission and as fellow Education Association members we commit to guiding each other in continued quality performance.

Misconceptions about tenure are perpetuated, though, when administrators shirk their responsibilities.

There are ample opportunities for them to utilize the evaluation process as an opportunity to alert teachers to areas in their performance needing attention.

Tenure protections are in no way meant to override or replace effective supervision. For those who stumble along the way, a healthy and respectful partnership between the Education Association and administration can get an underperformer back on track.

Gaining tenure has afforded these beginning employees some contractual protections besides those afforded them through the operation of law. For example, if the unfortunate circumstances of layoff should occur, temporary and probationary teachers will be the ones to be put on notice first.

The newly minted tenure teachers are just completing four years of probation (two years for anyone who previously earned tenure in another Michigan school district). Their performance during that time has been deemed satisfactory under the scrutiny of their building principal or departmental supervisors. In addition, each teacher has also completed 210 hours of professional development, 90 of which had to be completed on their own time.

Probationary teachers are required also to work with an assigned mentor and to develop goals for their performance in consultation with their supervisors.

Please join us in congratulating the newly tenured teachers in Rochester. We invite you to watch them, too, as their contributions over the coming years strengthen the fabric of our school community.

Cathy Perini Korreck is president of the Rochester Education Association.



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