Tenure
I will probably write shorter blogs now that I am actually working. I will probably make more grammatical mistakes because I won't edit as carefully as I did. One of the things I discovered while sitting in the rubber room is that writing takes work and that it often works better when you put it aside and then come back to it hours latter. I still missed some obvious mistakes but I often rewrote things that didn't make sense or were ambiguous when I re-read them. I usually do a better job of explaining what I mean. Time is a good thing.
Klein has made a big deal about tenure lately. I have to say that I agree with him. A big part of why we have too many bad teachers is that tenure has always been something a teacher got unless they were so bad that a principal was willing to make a big stink. The one time I tried to deny someone tenure I discovered that if I had not spent three years carefully documenting how bad this guy was that the superintendents office would not back me or my principal up. I felt that this was absurd policy. Joel Klein wants to blame the UFT for this, and possibly the superintendent was afraid to the union, but it was the failure of administrators to not back up principals and AP's that caused this.
It is not that hard to figure out who is a good teacher and who isn't in three years. I would hope that the new DoE policy will keep the bad and the truly uninspired people out of teaching. After tenure I think the issues change dramatically.
3 comments:
Hello, Ed. Please click to the comments of June 1. If you're allowed to respond to the requests (no gag orders etc.), some good, talented, inspired teachers are eager for some unadulterated insight based on your miraculous turn-of-events.
Well, I think tenure is a good idea, and it ought to be tough to get rid of teachers. I agree bad teachers should go, and of course they should not have been granted tenure, and probably many should never have been hired.
However, Tweed has gone after folks like you and a teacher who used a DoE fax machine to transmit an anti-DoE message. Tenure exists precisely to avoid such things.
And frankly, the policy of issuing tenure to anyone with a pulse is worth some very serious reexamination.
Just found your blog today. Interesting reading.
Tenure is an odd concept that doesn't exist in any other profession (...except for court judge?).
My last (non-tenured)industry job they handed me a severance package with 1yr extra pay while shipping my job off to India.
Now, as a substitute teacher all they'd do to me is just stop calling for assignments.
Not much different.
I wonder if teachers would go for the industry method:
"We'll negotiate your salary (probably more than you get now under union contract)related to your skills and experience as a teacher to produce quality graduates.
But we reserve the decision to replace you anytime we find someone better or same skills but costs less. No tenure, no union..."
Think the teachers would go for it?
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