Teacher Tenure Ruled Unconstitutional

[nageov3t]

this is the first I'm even hearing of this case, but it sounds really interesting.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that teacher tenure laws deprive students of their constitutional right to an education, a decision that hands teachers’ unions a major defeat in a landmark case that overturns several California laws that govern the way teachers are hired and fired.

“Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students,” Judge Rolf M. Treu wrote in the ruling. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

...

The plaintiffs argued that California’s current laws made it impossible to get rid of low-performing and incompetent teachers, who were disproportionately assigned to schools filled with poor students. The result, they insisted, amounted to a violation of students’ constitutional rights to an education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/california-teacher-tenure-laws-ruled-unconstitutional.html

I come from a family of teachers, and as much as I wanted to support teachers in general, I've heard so many stories from them about shitty teachers being dumped in bad schools or "rubber rooms" because they couldn't fire them.

 

[Oldgamer]

I think this is actually a good thing honestly...

 

[Genx87]

I have also heard tenure is a barrier to entry for young teachers. Districts will drop them before they are tenured.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Is there actually a Constitutional right to an education? Or is that strictly California's Constitution?

Anyway, I'm the son of educators and I support this. There needs to be a better method of getting rid of underperforming teachers, and tenure binds districts to simply shifting them around. It's not a good model and it doesn't entice teachers to perform at a high level after they've been granted tenure.

 

[Genx87]

Is there actually a Constitutional right to an education? Or is that strictly California's Constitution?

Anyway, I'm the son of educators and I support this. There needs to be a better method of getting rid of underperforming teachers, and tenure binds districts to simply shifting them around. It's not a good model and it doesn't entice teachers to perform at a high level after they've been granted tenure.

Without reading the full opinion. I'd suspect this falls under the equal protection clause.

 

[Mxylplyx]

I've noticed many teachers seem to adhere this notion that the administration would like to do nothing more than fire them all, so they need all these protections from them. Why is this? Teacher tenure has never made much sense to me, or any kind of professional tenure for that matter. If I had a comfy job that I knew I could never be fired from, I'm sure I'd find myself caring less as well.

 

[TheSiege]

College tenure = good. Highs chool or lower tenure = bad.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I've noticed many teachers seem to adhere this notion that the administration would like to do nothing more than fire them all, so they need all these protections from them. Why is this? Teacher tenure has never made much sense to me, or any kind of professional tenure for that matter. If I had a comfy job that I knew I could never be fired from, I'm sure I'd find myself caring less as well.

Well, the problem is that school budgets routinely get cut quite aggressively, and from an administrative standpoint, it makes sense to get rid of the teachers who have been there longest; they're drawing the largest salary, so they're the obvious choice. School administrators don't really see "better" teachers as having a higher ROI, so it's a good cost-cutting measure to replace your highly-compensated teachers with younger teachers who will work for less money. This obviously has a detrimental effect on the quality of the education, but it rarely costs administrators their jobs. The problem is that tenure doesn't just protect good teachers who cost a lot of money, it protects bad teachers who cost a lot of money; it's not merit-based, it's experience-based, and more experience doesn't automatically make someone better.

 

[fskimospy]

Well, the problem is that school budgets routinely get cut quite aggressively, and from an administrative standpoint, it makes sense to get rid of the teachers who have been there longest; they're drawing the largest salary, so they're the obvious choice. School administrators don't really see "better" teachers as having a higher ROI, so it's a good cost-cutting measure to replace your highly-compensated teachers with younger teachers who will work for less money. This obviously has a detrimental effect on the quality of the education, but it rarely costs administrators their jobs. The problem is that tenure doesn't just protect good teachers who cost a lot of money, it protects bad teachers who cost a lot of money; it's not merit-based, it's experience-based, and more experience doesn't automatically make someone better.

Experience is strongly correlated with improved teacher performance in the first few years. After that it levels off.

Then again the question always comes back to "what is teacher performance?" I find it very interesting how much time we all spend debating what teachers are good what what teachers are bad when in many cases nobody can even decide what the goal is.

 

[crashtech]

Tenure is completely against the ideal of egalitarianism and meritocracy. It's an anachronism. The only real problem is establishing performance metrics when student outcomes are non-deterministic.

 

[PokerGuy]

The ruling makes sense to me. The entire concept of tenure is stupid -- it essentially makes sure you can have absolutely no accountability based on performance. Then the hands of the schools are tied and they end up dumping lousy teachers (the ones that should be fired) into crappy schools, making them even crappier, and unfairly lowering the quality of education for the students at those schools. Time to do away with tenure and start thinking about performance evaluation.

 

[crashtech]

But there are some good arguments against oversimplifying the way performance is measured. Some of the best teachers take on the most difficult students, and just because the yearly performance delta of some of these kids is poor, doesn't mean they have a bad teacher. My sister-in-law is a teacher, so I have become more attuned to some of the issues teachers face.

 

[fskimospy]

The ruling makes sense to me. The entire concept of tenure is stupid -- it essentially makes sure you can have absolutely no accountability based on performance. Then the hands of the schools are tied and they end up dumping lousy teachers (the ones that should be fired) into crappy schools, making them even crappier, and unfairly lowering the quality of education for the students at those schools. Time to do away with tenure and start thinking about performance evaluation.

I think that teachers unions have been foolish in protecting the small minority of teachers that everyone agrees are horrible. (the people who fall asleep in class, the crazy ranting old men, etc) These are cases at the margins, though.

Evaluating performance in education is insanely, insanely difficult. People think that there is general agreement on what is good or bad teaching, but for the most part they are wrong. Is the goal to memorize the most facts? Is the goal to build certain skills? Is the goal to integrate children well into society? Is the goal college prep? How do we measure each of these and how do we structure an evaluation that measures a teacher's contribution to student learning?

 

[sactoking]

Ummmm, tenure is not protection from getting fired, tenure is the ability to get a hearing to show why you should be fired.

 

[crashtech]

Ummmm, tenure is not protection from getting fired, tenure is the ability to get a hearing to show why you should be fired.

Tenure is much more appropriate in a university setting, when students are old enough to be taught controversial subjects. There's little need for it in a K-12 setting, where a teacher should not be teaching anything requiring protection of their academic freedom.

 

[nageov3t]

Ummmm, tenure is not protection from getting fired, tenure is the ability to get a hearing to show why you should be fired.

a "hearing" which can last 2-5 years to get rid of a tenured teachers (http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/03/getting-rid-of-bad-teachers-ctd/174968/).

 

[PokerGuy]

I think that teachers unions have been foolish in protecting the small minority of teachers that everyone agrees are horrible. (the people who fall asleep in class, the crazy ranting old men, etc) These are cases at the margins, though.

Yep, but that's one of the problems with unions in general -- in an effort to protect their members, they go overboard and protect even the ones that should not be protected. If unions were more willing to say "yeah, that one is scum, go ahead and kick them out" when there's concrete example of someone that should be fired, they'd have a lot more supporters.

Evaluating performance in education is insanely, insanely difficult. People think that there is general agreement on what is good or bad teaching, but for the most part they are wrong. Is the goal to memorize the most facts? Is the goal to build certain skills? Is the goal to integrate children well into society? Is the goal college prep? How do we measure each of these and how do we structure an evaluation that measures a teacher's contribution to student learning?

I agree that it's not at all easy to come up with measurements and evaluation metrics, but just throwing up your hands and saying "well, it's hard so it can't be done, lets not try!" doesn't work. There are plenty of other professions where it is hard to measure someone's performance, and yet ways are found to do it. Yes, they may not be perfect, but in order to have any accountability for performance you must have evaluation.

 

[fskimospy]

I agree that it's not at all easy to come up with measurements and evaluation metrics, but just throwing up your hands and saying "well, it's hard so it can't be done, lets not try!" doesn't work. There are plenty of other professions where it is hard to measure someone's performance, and yet ways are found to do it. Yes, they may not be perfect, but in order to have any accountability for performance you must have evaluation.

Nobody is saying not to try, but if you're making employment decisions on evaluation materials I think it is important to know that those evaluations are at least reasonably indicative of that person's performance and I don't think we can say that here.

We already spend millions if not billions yearly attempting to come up with new ways to measure teacher performance, but much of that time and money is wasted because we can't even agree on the goal. If you don't have a common goal in mind, how do you assess who is meeting it?

 

[Engineer]

I have also heard tenure is a barrier to entry for young teachers. Districts will drop them before they are tenured.

Yes, I've seen this happen.

 

[PokerGuy]

Nobody is saying not to try, but if you're making employment decisions on evaluation materials I think it is important to know that those evaluations are at least reasonably indicative of that person's performance and I don't think we can say that here.

We already spend millions if not billions yearly attempting to come up with new ways to measure teacher performance, but much of that time and money is wasted because we can't even agree on the goal. If you don't have a common goal in mind, how do you assess who is meeting it?

So the answer is "well, we can't do it, lets stick to having no accountability at all". No, that doesn't make sense, but that seems to be what NEA and other such groups push for. The concept of tenure is wrong and needs to be done away with.

Surely there are other professions where the "goal" is not clearly defined. Police officers for example. There has to be some metrics you can use to determine who's doing a good job and who isn't??

 

[dyna]

Ummmm, tenure is not protection from getting fired, tenure is the ability to get a hearing to show why you should be fired.

This seems to be implied from the article, so really the issue is that the administration is lazy and doesn't want to put a teacher through a review process.

 

[fskimospy]

So the answer is "well, we can't do it, lets stick to having no accountability at all". No, that doesn't make sense, but that seems to be what NEA and other such groups push for. The concept of tenure is wrong and needs to be done away with.

Where did you get that idea?

Sending people to the moon was hard. It doesn't mean we didn't keep trying, but we also didn't launch rockets off the pad when we knew they didn't work.

 

[PokerGuy]

Where did you get that idea?

Well, every time there's any discussion of using any kind of performance or merit based promotions etc, the unions scream bloody murder and pretend someone wants to destroy education.

Sending people to the moon was hard. It doesn't mean we didn't keep trying, but we also didn't launch rockets off the pad when we knew they didn't work.

That's not a very good analogy. A rocket launch either works or it doesn't. You can't really launch and then tweak or adapt to information and change things. When it comes to evaluations, it doesn't have to be perfect, it can (and should be) tweaked over time to make it better.

Often I think it's harder to spot really good teaching than it is to see lousy teaching. Lousy teaching is hard to clearly define, but it is apparent to most when you see it. Having tenure makes it very hard to get rid of even the most obviously lousy teachers.

This ruling is a step in the right direction, but it is not based on the problem itself, it's more directed towards the disproportionate impact of tenure on certain kids. I agree with that assessment, but I also disagree with tenure itself, regardless of whether the impact is disproportionate to one group of kids or not.

 

[hal2kilo]

I don't have an issue with whatever legislation it takes to get rid of bad teachers.
It's a stretch at best, for this to be a constitutinal issue. SCOTUS won't wate their time on this and will throw it back to the lower court.

 

[ElFenix]

Is there actually a Constitutional right to an education? Or is that strictly California's Constitution?

california. a lot of states have some sort of constitutional duty to provide an education.

I don't have an issue with whatever legislation it takes to get rid of bad teachers.
It's a stretch at best, for this to be a constitutinal issue. SCOTUS won't wate their time on this and will throw it back to the lower court.

SCOTUS doesn't have anything to do with it because it's not a federal question. no jurisdiction.

it's in the first sentence in the article.