We should be fighting to expand the concept of tenure away from just teaching and into every job, public and private.

Instead we are seeing it go away in the one place where it has worked for decades.

I can't help but wonder if we had expanded it outside teaching years ago if this wouldn't be happening, because it would not be seen as special or unique.

Education should be the only goal. This requires objective testing of both students and teachers, the elimination of tenure, and a rational reassessment of the money we are spending on the job. It's past time we, as a nation and party, took this stuff seriously.

protects educators from political attack and manipulation. That's necessary in order to deliver a comprehensive education that includes the ability to look at, and question, all sides of any issue. Tenure has been under attack, and been eroding, for a very long time now. It doesn't protect "marginal" educators; there are, and always have been, procedures in place to remove them. Admins just haven't wanted to USE those procedures. Test scores are a faster, easier way to get rid of those who don't get in the corporate reform line. Regardless of the FACT that the greatest factor influencing the outcomes on standardized tests are NOTHING that a school or teacher does, or doesn't do: it's parent socio/economic status.

It doesn't help your case to repeat the talking points of the corporate reformers.

Testing is necessary in every job to determine what is and is not working.

You are correct about one thing: we are spending a freaking fortune on education. It's no surprise that corporations are eyeing this King's ransom and thinking they can deliver a better result for less. If they can, great. The goal of the education system is education, not job security for educators.

Education is not a business, and not a factory. We don't do quality control for the raw materials going in, and therefore there are widely ranging differences in the products going out. Why? Because they are people, not materials or products, and they can't be standardized. That's reality.

There are plenty of ways to evaluate whether or not an educator gives students abundant opportunity to learn. That's what educators are responsible for: providing opportunity and support to the degree that they system allows them.

Any teacher can give you a list of what works and what doesn't; the educational and economic systems in the U.S. currently don't support what works, and often pushes what doesn't.

Standardized tests are, at best, flawed tools for determining STUDENT achievement; at worst, they are weapons of mass public education destruction, depending on how they are used, and by whom.

Designing objective tests will be a difficult and ongoing process. Learning to properly evaluate and learn from the results will take even longer. But this does not invalidate the process or need. There really is NO valid reason not to use them. There are, however, plenty of reasons for teachers and students to dislike them, but so what? Again, the goal here is education. That's the ONLY goal. Nothing else matters at all.

Learning all the tips for picking multiple choice answers, not education.

to fit a unit of instruction in a specific class is not used to determine instructional quality nor overall "achievement" of the student. It's designed to demonstrate student learning from specific, local instruction, and it's not used as the single determiner of "achievement" or "teacher effectiveness," as high-stakes standardized test scores are. Teacher-designed tests for their own classroom are simply one measure among others of what students have learned.

And, of course, the same fact holds true for those tests as for any standardized tests: they measure what students know and can do. The don't measue teachers, and teachers do not control all the factors that influence the outcomes of those tests.

The objection is to the abuse and misuse of standardized tests.

I'm sorry you can't understand that. What can I do to help you get there?

The results might not be interpreted correctly, but that's a separate issue and it's safe to assume that most involved would work to improve the process. In other words, none of these things are valid objections. Testing is necessary to discover where the problems are, and might even identify possible solutions. Good teachers can be recognized and rewarded, bad teachers eliminated, and parents would have objective standards by which they could measure school performance.

The end result is improved education outcomes. The kids win, and that's the only thing that matters.

I don't think so, or you'd know how ludicrous that statement is.

Standardized tests are about validity and reliability. Validity of tests used in education is sometimes at issue: whether or not the tests are testing the academic skills purported, or something else. Test designers work hard to try to ensure validity; sometimes, too hard. For example, When I was proctoring California's second grade STAR tests 12 years ago, the math portion wasn't valid. Most of the math test consisted of "story problems." The problems were not written in the test booklet, but read aloud to the students. That's to make sure that poor reading skills wouldn't cause poor performance in math. Reasonable, right? Except that the story problems could be read only once, and the students were given 10 seconds to answer. They could take notes on their scratch paper, and use that scratch paper to work out an answer...if they could do so in 10 seconds. I'd say that test was more about auditory memory than math. That's just one example; there are many, many more.

The greatest issue, though, is not "interpretation" of the results. It's the misuse of the results. When you know going in that the greatest factor affecting outcomes is parent SES, not what the school or teacher does, then evaluating schools and teachers based on those results is ridiculous. You're going to blame teachers for having students from under-educated families in poverty?

The whole point in MAKING standardized tests, which we've always given, high-stakes is to be able to misuse them for political purposes. That's corrupt.

I could go on, but it's pretty clear that you really don't want to face the realities that I deal with on a daily basis.

Designing good objective tests is really hard, interpreting the results harder still, and until that process is complete (or more complete) we shouldn't place too much weight on the results.

I agree. But disagree if you use this to conclude that the effort is not necessary. You might have a point if the current system was working, but its not. And if designing an objective process to test second graders is too tricky then we have the wrong people doing the job.

And so you know, I have seen that whole poverty / parental involvement point made many times. You do understand (I hope) that it's not really a valid point at all. Students from underprivileged backgrounds will underperform across the board, and once enough testing is completed the performance deficit can be predicted. Individual teachers who fail to do their jobs would still stand out, as would exceptional teachers, and the same applies to schools and school districts. We might even discover that the issue is as much marginal teachers going to (and keeping their jobs) in underprivileged areas as it is parental poverty. We wont know until we test. Until then, it's theory.

In any case, our conversation here is irrelevant. Major changes are coming. Students and schools are going to be tested. Teachers can either get ahead of the curve and shape these changes, or other people with other agenda's will.

I read an article that documented the statistics around licensed professionals who lose their license due to job related issues. It covered Attorneys, Doctors, CPA's, Dentists, etc., along with teachers. The percentages of professionals who lost their license to practice due to job related issues was relatively consistent across all professions, except one. Teachers were tracking at a single digit percent of those other areas.

I have relayed an anecdotal story about a friend who graduated from Northwest Missouri State as a teacher and began teaching in a suburb of Kansas City. He loved his job, was loved by his students and other teachers and in his second or third year received teacher of the year for the entire district. However, the next year, he was fired under the last hired, first fired policy.

I am not saying to do away with tenure. However, if anyone tries to argue the current system is not fucked up and skews away from the student's best interest, they are kidding themselves. There HAS to be a happy medium whereby we can guarantee security for good teachers, while providing a reasonable method to remove those that should not be educating the nations most valuable resource.

To begin with, teaching is a public service job. The amount of pay over a career vs the amount of time and $$ to get and keep the license, plus the amount of unpaid hours required well beyond the contractual day and year...the people attracted to that kind of abuse do so for altruistic reasons. Therefore, while they run the gamut of weak to strong, there aren't very many, statistically speaking, that are actually BAD. They care, and therefore even the weak are doing some good.

Next...you need to understand that the individual's experience is not the whole. Those of us who actually work on the front lines understand this. There is no teacher, no matter how exemplary, or how heroic, that pleases every student and every family. EVERY principal knows this. They hear it constantly. And guess what? For every individual family that "hates" at teacher, thinks the teacher is "bad," or wants to see a teacher fired, there are a bunch who love that same teacher, request that same teacher, and feel well served by that same teacher. Teachers don't get fired because some don't like what others do in a teacher. For myself? The vast majority of my families have been supportive, enthusiastic, have delayed moves to keep their students with me, and have generally thought I was great. Those that don't? Those families all have some similar characteristics. I know what kind of family doesn't like my kind of teaching. There is usually some sexism involved; I'm not submissive enough to male family members. I'm a good partner, but I don't take orders or respond satisfactorily to fits or threats. I also hold my students accountable, and their grade is earned, not given. I don't accept excuses for not putting forth effort, or taking the help that is readily available. Families who like to blame others rather than take responsibility for their own parenting, or expect their kids to take responsibility for anything, tend to be unhappy with me. So be it.

Teaching is also a political job. There are ALWAYS politics, which makes every teacher without tenure vulnerable. A teacher with tenure has more clout to oppose bad policies and minimize their harmful effects on students than teachers without. And if you think bad policies aren't constantly handed down from the top, you haven't been paying attention. Teachers need the protection of tenure for a whole gamut of political reasons. I'll give you one example; again, personal, although I could give you dozens I've witnessed over the years. I teach in a tea-party strong community. My school board is elected by those tea-partiers. Several years back, I was delivering a lesson on recognizing bias; a state standard that I'm REQUIRED to teach. I asked students to discuss, in small groups, examples they could think of demonstrating bias in any media, and report back to the whole class. Before I could actually get them in groups, a student stood up and screamed, "You're calling Glenn Beck a liar! And he's not! Everything he says is the truth!!!!" Of course, I'd mentioned no specific media or media personality or pov. That didn't matter. Within 10 minutes of the final bell ringing, that student's parents were in the office with my principal, and when they didn't get the satisfaction they wanted there, they called every school board member. An official investigation was opened. I had observers in my classroom for a week. Without tenure, I would have been gone. With tenure, and union protections, I was fine, and nothing went into my personnel file, because there were procedures to be followed, and those procedures exonerated me. This is not an exception to the rule; demands to remove teachers for political reasons are common.

Seniority exists for a reason. I personally think all people should be protected by a union, and all seniority should be respected. See "to begin with." When someone dedicates their life to serving others, the years they've put in should be respected. See "teaching is also a political job." When budgets are tight, without protection, older, more experienced teachers would be fired to make way for younger, CHEAPER teachers. Also, in direct contradiction to popular myth, experienced teachers are just that: more experienced. The first few years in the classroom is HARD. Youthful energy and enthusiasm is generally accompanied by teachers burning the candle at both ends while they figure out how to get all the duties that don't fit into the contractual day done in the most time-efficient way, what things are cost-effective when it comes to putting in the extra time, and what things are not. The system doesn't mind all those untold hours of unpaid work, of course, and doesn't mind the burnout that goes along with it. After all, that's one of the reasons why 50% of teachers quit the first five years, making it possible to keep hiring more cheaper new teachers rather than paying for more veterans.

It's true that veteran teachers can burn out, too. Generally that happens when we just get sick of all the political bullshit, pressure, and bureaucratic, time-wasting demands that come with the job. All a burned-out veteran needs to refresh him or herself is some respect, some support, and a backing off of stupid mandates and policies that do nothing to help students, but provide teachers with more obstacles. In my experience, of course. All I've ever needed to counteract burnout was one student smiling at me and giving me an enthusiastic hello coming through the door in the morning.

Finally, there are reasons why administration might not fire a teacher who actually SHOULD be fired. First of all, see "politics." This is not a phenomenon restricted to education, of course; it exists in any bureaucracy. Every administration lobbies for support from the ranks. When a teacher that should be removed is a supporter of a particular administration, problems are overlooked. In one district I worked in, principals were routinely transferred to a new school every five years. District level admins, and the school board, didn't want anybody getting entrenched, with enough support and enough of a following to be able to resist top-down mandates at a school site level, so they constantly shook up the playing field. The result? First, a core of teachers and certified supporting a particular principal would put in their transfer papers and follow that principal. When the new principal and core supporting staff arrived, major changes would be instituted. It didn't matter how great things had already been going; the new principal had to put his "stamp" on things, so anything good would be because of "his" "leadership." He would then proceed, during the first year, to see who would jump on his bandwagon, and make those who didn't miserable, so that they would transfer at the end of his first year. Without tenure, this whole dysfunctional process would have been even worse.

Which is another point. Tenure reduces abuse; it doesn't abolish it.

Some admins just don't want to do the due diligence required to terminate a teacher. That requires a lot of documented evidence, not hearsay, and time and effort on their part; some admins are working, just like their teachers, by showing up and dealing with everything they can during the day, leaving the rest behind. That's not a conscious decision; we all have a list of things we intend to do that we may get to weeks late, or never, because each day throws more onto the pile, which gains in size until the year is over and whatever didn't get done, doesn't. If an admin sees an immediate, urgent need to remove a teacher, that process will get moved to the top of the list, of course.

"Last hired, first fired" policies kick in, not because anybody deserved to be fired, but because dropping enrollments and budget cuts require cuts in staff. A lot of those situations can be mitigated by fully funding education. Public education is not, and should not be, a cut-throat corporate environment; and every worker, public education or not, deserves union protection.

who avidly hunger for access to billions of dollars of public education money. That's really what "objective testing" and the abolition of teacher tenure ultimately is all about.

Objective testing is necessary to determine what is and is not working. That's all. Without it, the only thing we have to go on is FAITH. And while blind faith might be fine for preachers and politicians, our kids deserve better. And so, by the way, do good teachers.

but there's something called "grades" which measure a student's achievement. These grades are determined by things known as "quizzes" and "assignments". This is a system of student evaluation which has been used for centuries throughout the world. And for 200 years, the United States developed generations of the world's best educated students through this method.

Only recently, after wealthy people got together in a smoke-filled room to discuss how to get their hands on billions of public education monies, did a plan to undercut this system through dubious for-profit "objective testing" scams begin to emerge. During some of these smoke-filled meetings, ideas were also hatched to astroturf the privatization of public education -- in newspaper editorials, on television talk shows...and on internet discussion boards.

Now get on board with the rest. I don't give a crap if a teacher draws his check from the City of Pigville or from Halliburton. I care about results. Objectively tested results. And if it turns out we can save money doing it, better still.

The rest of "whom"? The small cabal of billionaires who are employing internet shills to spam privatization scam propaganda on discussion forums under the phony guise of "caring for the children"?

Is that who you mean by the "rest"?

You've got nothing. The reason is simple: from science and medicine to manufacturing and management, OBJECTIVE TESTING AND REVIEW is an essential part of any professional process. You cannot properly replace a light bulb without it.

And when it comes to spending public money, efficiency should always be the goal. The idea that we need untested, unaccountable, and unfireable public employees in any capacity -- let alone educating our kids -- is absurd. And irrelevant. The goal is education, not teacher security.

Squirming away from the points made in my earlier posts by hiding behind red herrings and strawmen leaves you pretty exposed.

They never thought it would happen.

education has improved sooooo much in Florida... NOT

Teachers are not university professors who generally publish original and often controversial research and so must be protected from any negative consequences of the same. Teachers should not be immune from review, measurement and performance correction that can eventually include termination if they continue to do a poor job. Certainly our education system deserves the best teachers they can find, not just the longest serving ones.

Some of us only care about kids and their education. Others fight to maintain the failing status quo. They don't want objective testing of kids or teachers, they don't want any objective measures at all. What they want is more money. Always. Send them more money, and take it on faith that the job is getting done.

they never have students come out to them and then have the parents blame the teacher for the kid being gay, they never have a quarterback who refuses to work in their class and therefore have to give him an F, costing the school a winning season, they never have to consider publishing a contraversial but spon on article in the student newspaper.

which means I can document that Johnny did no work at all in my class but if the principal wants me to pass him anyhow, I either do that, or am fired. That is exactly, and precisely, what at will means. In my state if a principal wants to fire me for being gay, forget about advising a GSA or having a student come out to me, no tenure means he can do so.

Or is it true that non-tenured teachers currently enjoy protections that fall somewhere between the two extremes? In any case, even if what you said were true (it's not) none of this is a valid argument that teachers need these protections that no one else enjoys (or can even fathom).

As for QB Johnny, that's just another argument for objective testing. If you properly document that Johnny refused to do the work, then it's on him. He isn't graduating or passing regardless, and your supervisor is opening himself up to a huge problem if he plays games of that sort. Obviously it's not perfect, but nothing is, but progress lies along that path.

A probationary teacher can be non renewed (aka fired) for any or no reason in pretty much every state. In some very highly unionized states such teachers have a minimal level of due process but in the majority they have no protections at all. Again, if you wish to find out what life was like before tenure you can ask people who are in their 60's and 70's now who taught, they can tell you.

we get a one year contract which can be non renewed for no or any reason and then after we qualify we get tenure. In my state that was 4 years. In California, it was apparently 2 years. Tenure is simply due process not some magic talisman.

I assumed teachers had to invest at least some real amount of time.

Teaching careers are around 30 years which makes 4 years over a ninth of a career. And again tenure is merely a set of due process rights that a teacher gets before getting fired, not some sort of life time job protection.

As if there are principals lined up across the country just looking to fuck over a teacher for not passing a failing quarterback. Again, the key is documentation. Document it, take it to the media (who will eat it up) and sit back and watch.

Tenure tends to do the opposite. Example: Here we have a female grade school student raped by two boys on the playground. The school knew about it and never reported it. The father found out about it and went to the school and went off on the principal. They school finally called the police......on the father. After all the investigations, it was clear the "protectors" of the children fucked up hard core. They all still have jobs and offered to let the female student transfer. That is NOT a system I would be proud of.

but here on planet earth, teachers are routinely pressured to pass students who shouldn't be passed. I am willing to bet that it is a way more common scenario than the one you found.

Watching it unfold before our very eyes.

This is what DU has become.

First, I don't think this decision will ever hold up on appeal. Second, it's too important to the institution of public education not to fight it to the death.

But I do think there will be changes made to the system, or should be, if we want tenure to survive. If we want strong protections for teachers, we need to make sure that the tenure systems in our districts and states are working in the interests of parents and students as well as teachers themselves, that they stand up to public scrutiny in terms of standards. Because you have to understand there is not a lot of sympathy out there from the vast majority of Americans who have zero protections in their jobs. They should have these protections, but the fact is they don't, and they struggle and live in fear—the result of decades and decades of shrinking rights for workers. It is very hard to garner support from the disenfranchised ... and we ignore this problem at our own risk.

Freaks me out to think about it.

you think Im kidding?

education is making sure the republicans can't put prayer and creationism in the curriculum. All other problems be damned.