There has been lots of talk on this blog about the need to make it easier to terminate poor teachers in the public school system, especially since exposure to good teaching is one of the few proven elements in enhancing student performance. Some have even suggested that, rather than backfilling state and district budgets with federal stimulus money, this economic crisis is precisely the time to let lots of poor teachers go.
This is a central sticking point in debates between many reformers “versus” the teachers unions, one of whose goals is no doubt to protect the jobs of its members.
I don’t doubt that too many poor teachers are currently protected by the combination of easy tenure, job protections, and a culture of letting poor performance slide. In addition to broadening and improving the quality of initial teaching applicants, it seems to me a no-brainer to make earning “tenure,” or the equivalent, more difficult.
While higher education’s tenuring process is not perfect, it actually works pretty well – lots of people do get turned down, after seven years of demonstrated performance evidence, and careful, multi-level peer-review analysis of that performance.
Still, like many proposed education reforms, it is a bit unclear to me how much better advocates believe our school system would perform if we fired a lot more current teachers. I think a few questions are in order, and I ask them sincerely wanting to know what people think.
What percentage of teachers do you think should be fired (that is, their performance is so bad that they should not be in front of students)? How do you determine which ones they are, with current weak technology and information about the link of teacher quality and student performance? What percentage of poorly performing teachers might be able to turn their performance around with appropriate coaching/mentoring?
What kinds of teachers are going to replace the X% who would be fired under this scenario? How confident are we that these replacements will be better teachers, given that it means going “deeper” into the potential teacher pool (a problem that California discovered a few years ago when they tried to lower class sizes)?
I don’t raise these questions to defend the position that no teachers should be fired.More challenging tenure standards and more time to tenure seem more appropriate to me than using the current crisis to let people go. But in any event we need to think through the next logical steps in the sequence, if this is a serious reform proposal.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I’ll bite. I don’t know a percentage, and I would leave it up to the school leadership team at each school to decide how many, but my guess is we are talking about an overall small amount which would still have a large impact. More importantly however, I would ban direct placements immediately. I forget the exact number, but I think direct placements number about 130 teachers in DPS. Let’s start there.
And if there is ever a time to attract new people to the teaching profession, it is now. TFA is seeing remarkable increases in applicants (all those students who were going to go into finance have to do something), and the opportunity to find career changers is high. However what is at least as important as attracting new teachers is providing a better environment for them to teach. Teachers should have operational support at each school whose job is to remove the barriers to effective teaching – everything from equipment working to helping enforce discipline. We have to make the job more attractive (outside of just pay) to attract and keep good new teachers.
This is a complex issue, but I will say that I am a union member who believes the issue of tenure should be addressed. I have no way of knowing what percentage should be let go, but in my experience I have worked with many who should not be in the classroom. I am most interested in those who go beyond ineffectiveness and actually do harm to students, most often via berating and belittling. This should be unacceptable regardless of tenure, and I have no sympathy for adults who disrespect or mistreat students.
As with other issues, it is important to keep in mind that urban and suburban settings have different needs than many rural districts. Some rural schools have difficulty finding ANY applicants, much less quality ones, and letting teachers go simply because their students are not advancing at some set arbitrary rate would cause real problems.
I believe most teachers who are only moderately or marginally effective have potential, but schools in Colorado and across this nation devote too little time and structure to professional development, especially regularly scheduled and embedded professional learning community endeavors. Poor teacher quality is largely the fault of the system, not necessarily the teachers in it. I would put my money on hiring more teachers so that all teachers have more time in their day for collaboration and preparation as opposed to getting rid of teachers whose hearts are in the right place but who have lacked the opportunity, resources, and proper support to improve.
We need a system that maximizes the potential of our teachers as a primary avenue to maximizing the potential of our students. Such a system would also attract more and higher quality candidates to the profession. Simply removing tenure and creating a revolving door without changing the learning culture or addressing professional satisfaction could actually do more harm than good.
I think Kevin speaks well to the issues of tenure and the difficulties in finding quality teachers especially in rural districts.
One aspect of teacher evaluation that can and should change is peer evaluation. This is a “third rail,” or as Alan puts it, a “political hair ball,” among teachers. Unions, Toledo comes to mind, have put these peer evaluations into place, ensuring Kevin’s point that there is little if any substantial help for struggling teachers and have had success. It means more release time for master teachers to evaluate teachers, but I personally believe that poor teachers impact all teachers and should be removed. Most teachers I have broached this subject with bristle at the thought of evaluating their peers. “That’s not my job!” This is a very limited and narrow view of our profession that has to be changed.
Respectfully, until the retirement mechanism is revised, I will be surprised to see any major changes in tenure. So long as teachers cannot be mere occasional workers in the classroom and professionals cannot enter without a penalty, there will always be this tension.
Nobody can afford to spend 10 or 15 years at something and then decide it wasn’t a good fit, unless their retirement futures are portable and separated from that specific service. Even then, starting out anew is a challenge. The same is true in reverse for would-be teachers.