Friday, December 09, 2005

Teacher Tenure

This past week over at Capitol Fax, Rich provided us with Scott Reeder’s comprehensive report on teacher tenure. Scott’s reporting was very insightful, and the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board took notice.

If anyone doubts that it's hard to fire an incompetent school teacher in Illinois, now there are statistics to prove it.

Only two teachers a year, on average, get fired for incompetence, according to an investigative series published this week by a Downstate newspaper chain. Five more teachers get fired for misconduct.

That's out of 95,500 tenured educators.

It would be nice to believe all teachers are hard-working, competent and dedicated to children. Most educators fit that description, but not all. As in every profession, teaching has wormy apples too.

The Illinois tenure system was created 64 years ago, ostensibly to protect veteran educators against political reprisal by their bosses. Today, though, tenure seems to protect only mediocrity. Despite changes in law over the years to raise accountability standards, "it remains almost impossible to fire a tenured teacher," reporter Scott Reeder wrote in the investigation for the Small Newspaper Group.

Reeder, who writes for papers in Moline, Rock Island, Kankakee and Ottawa, obtained tenure data by filing about 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests with the Illinois State Board of Education and 876 school districts.

Most districts don't even bother trying to dismiss underperforming teachers, according to the investigation. Only 7 percent of school districts made an attempt to fire a teacher in the last 18 years, and only two-thirds of those districts were successful. It costs on average $100,000 to go through the bureaucratic maze of firing a teacher. If a hearing officer finds a single mistake on any of the dozens of forms required, he's likely to toss the case.

Cash-strapped districts would rather wait for a bad teacher to retire. Some districts secretly arrange to pay a teacher handsomely to leave, Reeder found.

Reeder calculated that changes in state tenure law prompted more than 2.5 million hours of administrative work for principals in the last two decades. They have little to show for that work.

Reforms passed in 1985 required principals to evaluate tenured teachers at least every two years. The intent was to make it easier to fire the profession's worst by documenting poor performance and inability to improve with help. Principals nevertheless have shown great reluctance to use the authority. Only 6 percent of districts have issued unsatisfactory ratings to tenured teachers.

In one case, an East St. Louis assistant principal impregnated a 14-year-old at his school. Even though a DNA test determined with more than 99 percent certainty that he was responsible, a local tenure hearing officer ruled that to be insufficient evidence for dismissal.

Yes, the state could find ways to make it easier to remove bad teachers. But beyond that, there is no compelling reason to keep the tenure system in public schools. It doesn't protect good teachers. It protects incompetent ones.

4 comments:

pathickey 7:59 AM  

Get behind takes breaks to families paying private school tuition and you will see the grip loosen on the reigns holding back Public Education in Illinois.

More tax breaks create more competition in our free market state of education. Teachers Union will be less snarling when the idiocies of tenure issues come to the table if the know that Mr. and Mrs. McEralsnapper might be more inclined to send young Kipper and Sprat off to St. Pecunia Non Olet, where is finally fiscal parity with SD 6345789 - Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper Community High School.

Tax breaks to families that already helping keep down the costs of Public Education is not a Church STate issue: it is a CYA issue for the school lobbies ( bus companies, insurance, Teachers union, sporting goods industry, drivers education empire, and nut-ball lawyers) and really bad people in education.

Dan Cronin (R), Kevin Joyce (D)and Ed Maloney (D)are but a few common sense legislators who have worked to make Public Education more effective and more affordable.

Tax breaks to private school families is the 800Lb. gorilla sitting at your dinner table. He can help or he can be a real pain in the Association of Better Schools

Extreme Wisdom 9:29 AM  

Hickey,

Good points, but we need to go farther than tax breaks.

1. Cut all Property taxes for schools (66% cut for most of IL)

2. Pass HB750 increases

3. State Pays 100% of $6500/7000 "tuition" for every IL student (2.2 mil) indexed to inflation.

4. Abolish the "School District" taxing entity.

5. Repeal all Mandates save broad, sequenced testing regime that proves progress

6. Convert every IL school into a "Charter", making Principals, Teachers & Parents part of an independent "governance" model capable of receiveing 503c3 donations.

Send the bureaucrasy home. Fund the Child, not the "System."
__

Impossible? All reforms are impossible...until they aren't. Then they happen.

pathickey 10:30 AM  

"MMMMMMMMMMM Bureaucracy" H-Simpson

Dear Extreme,

Dead serious - the bureaucratic dragons that need to be slain are very well fed. The education lobbies are the most well-stocked larders for the gluttons in public education. Leveraging the ACLU against reform, mantled in 'separation of Church and State,' allows those lobbies to stick the tip of the sword in at first thrust. Followed by the 'save the children; its for the children; what about the children?' bludgeon from the political hacks and editorial boards.

Tough fight - where's all the tough guys?

  © Blogger template The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP