JUST SAYIN’-As most of my readers already know, I taught for LAUSD for over 37 years. My reasons?
(1) teaching would afford me the opportunity to work with my beloved youngsters to inspire an exciting exchange of ideas, encourage analysis, stimulate creative and challenging thinking, and utilize the Socratic method, (2) teaching would allow me to spend quality time with my family, (3) teaching offered good benefits including a generous pension, and (4) teaching offered job security through tenure (excepting for moral turpitude and proven pronounced inability to teach the subject matter and manage the classroom).
Tenure in the early 1900s was instituted because teacher salaries were so low that offering tenure would be a fair trade-off--granting teachers job stability and benefits (compared to other professional jobs held by college graduates). Tenure was introduced to attract teachers into the profession even if the salaries were comparatively low. Tenure offered job security and stability (both benefits having always been treasured by employees). Within its parameters, teacher contracts also offered the promise of seniority, a further enticement to the teaching profession.
Over the last 100 years, the implementation of tenure has evolved but has also become controversial.
States across the nation have been free to establish their own requirements for teacher tenure.
When I entered the classroom, probation was three years in Los Angeles. Now it varies throughout the country from 18 months here in LA to 3, 4, or 5 years in other locations. Some bases for approving tenure are based on student standardized test scores (disregarding factors such as poverty, hunger, absentee parents, alcoholism or drug abuse, or physical or mental abuse inside or outside the home) and clear evidence of improvement on a scale established by people who have not been in the classroom for years and are often out of touch.
During those first few years of my career, I used to be afraid each time a principal or department head entered my classroom unannounced. What would they think? How well were the kids behaved? Did they like my lessons and how I executed them? Did they like me?
I knew of principals who transferred teachers based on nepotism or personality differences.
Eventually, I realized that if I were doing what I was supposed to do throughout the day, people could drop by at any time and I always welcomed their appearance. And because students generally liked me and liked the curriculum I taught, they showed themselves loyal to me and acted on their best behavior. But not all teachers (even the very good ones with a lot of potential) are that fortunate.
Despite all of the above, I still was apprehensive until I received that magical notice, “You are now tenured”!
Based upon when I began teaching in the early 1970s, it took me nearly 20 years to make a mere $20,000. Now teachers, thank goodness, generally begin their careers at a starting pay of twice that much—well-deserved for the extra years of education required to be certificated and the many hours spent after school and into the evening (and even at Nutrition and Lunch) to prepare lesson plans and to correct papers.
I was always concerned, however, with those instructors who were not dedicated to the profession and only thought of it as an 8-3 job. They often thought of their “charges” with disdain and contempt and with a sense of superiority. I knew we needed to implement measures to retrain them or get them out of the profession altogether. Tenure alone is certainly not the answer in and of itself.
LAUSD should definitely increase the tenure years to at least 3, if not 5. I am a big union person, so UTLA might disagree with my conclusions. The probationary period is meant to be the time to train newbies, share lessons and ideas, increase observation time both within their classrooms but also for them to visit other teachers who consistently demonstrate expertise—to learn how to emulate best practices without merely mirroring them.
Once I became tenured and recognized as one of the good ones, I was saddened that the famous or infamous STULL evaluations (The Stull Bill, AB 293, 1971, sponsored by Assemblymember John Stull), that are executed every other year, ultimately became a joke. The number of visits by administrators were often exaggerated, and some years there were essentially no visits at all.
Principals and evaluators are often reticent to give a totally unsatisfactory evaluation, especially during the probationary years when, quite ironically, appropriate actions can more easily and satisfactorily be taken. After tenure, it is almost too late to make the necessary adjustments.
To punish even good teachers who might have rubbed the administrator the wrong way, teachers can be assigned classes for which they are unprepared—example: having a math instructor teach English (instead of taking advantage of their expertise and placing them accordingly). Sometimes teachers are administratively transferred to other schools (as much as 40 or more miles away—since the District is so large), and appeals can take months or even years.
The current system in Los Angeles is, without question, untenable. We must, therefore, make thoughtful and prudent modifications without punishing students in the classroom when good teachers are sent elsewhere or punishing the teachers who often do not even know why they are being questioned or disciplined.
No question, though, upon careful and fair determination utilizing well-defined, reasonable, and consistent rules, “bad” teachers must go (but only after substantial work to improve performance has not produced the desired result).
On the other hand, the recent court decision (stayed while under appeal) by LA County Superior Court, Judge Rolf M. Treu, is outrageous! The case is Vergara vs California, whereby this lower court decided to eliminate tenure (as well as seniority benefits). It is using the justification that students in every community must be assured the best education possible with the best teachers in the classroom.
Sounds good! But we must look at the details. First of all, the Students Matter organization is suspect because of who is behind it. Funders like Dave Welch (of Silicon Valley) and Eli Broad (of private charter school fame) and others of their ilk cannot be trusted. If they have their way, the entire education system would be under the authority of people who generally have never been in the classroom and yet, nevertheless, consider themselves experts.
They claim to have students’ interests in the forefront, but as I have mentioned at other times, the ultimate goal is to privatize schools and break unions.
I know the word union makes the skin of many crawl. The fact of the matter is that all the labor gains from which the greatest number of us have benefitted are the result, directly or indirectly, from union strength. With unions, teachers cannot arbitrarily be dismissed because someone doesn’t like them. Thus, we must not let our gains be watered down or thrown out altogether.
Teacher (and student) creativity must be allowed to flourish. The present system with the constant standardized testing (for which teachers are essentially coerced into teaching to the test—a pressure particularly felt by the probies) discourages this. Teachers must be allowed the academic freedom that nearly every pedagogue would agree is necessary and appropriate .
I know of too many teachers at private charter schools who have been dismissed for exercising such academic freedom, or for even questioning the methods suggested by the principal, or for reporting a breach in health and safety conditions. These are the reasons why unions (teachers at independent charters are not represented by unions), contracts, and tenure must be guaranteed. Teachers need union representation when written up in order to determine whether charges have any basis or are merely trumped up to trade them for less-accomplished, more malleable, and more easily intimidated teachers.
Similarly, students who do not immediately live up to demanding standards (with which they have not been confronted before) are often dropped from the school roster almost immediately (rather than keeping them and “risking” temporarily lowering State and District testing numbers at that school). Such students, if given the opportunity, can very well rise to the occasion and can become enviable students whom others can emulate—if only educators would believe in them!
Our society is the sum of its parts. Each student does deserve an outstanding education with outstanding teachers. We need to give them that chance just as we need to train teacher prospects (beginning way back in college) with the necessary skills, desire, and motivation so that someday they can be the crème de la crème in their future schools.
Eliminating tenure, along with its tangential elements, is just not the logical, judicious way to proceed. If you think getting qualified teachers is a problem now, just wait until these court decisions are implemented!
Just sayin’!
(Rosemary Jenkins is a Democratic activist and chair of the Northeast Valley Green Alliance. Jenkins has written Leticia in Her Wedding Dress and Other Poems, A Quick-and-Easy Reference to Correct Grammar and Composition and Vignettes for Understanding Literary and Related Concepts. She also writes for CityWatch.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 49
Pub: June 17, 2014