Tenure Tit-for-Tat

CapitolFax reports on the back-and-forth between reporter Scott Reeder and the Illinois Federation of Teachers today. I think its useful to cut through all of the tit-for-tat about bias and get down to the central facts and arguments being advanced by Reeder.

On that point, I've got to agree with Comerford on what seems to be the central fact of Reeder's story, as opposed to all of the he said, she said stuff.

If Reeder is only counting the number of firings that are appealed, but is reporting that as the number of firings, he's gotten the central fact in his story wrong.
Reeder could set the record straight be redoing his census and asking the school districts how many tenured teachers they fired who did not appeal, and that seems to be in order.

However, I have to say that even then Reeder's story misses the big picture. Whether tenured teachers in-and-of themselves are getting fired proves nothing. In fact, it might prove that waiting four years to give teacher tenure weeds out teachers who aren't up to the task. In order to complete the picture, Reeder should report how many non-tenured teachers leave their school before reaching tenure.

Another big hole in Reeder's argument as I see it is the underlying assumption that tenure -- and tenure alone -- is the problem. After all, the University of Illinois, University of Chicago, DePaul, Northwestern ALL have teacher tenure, and they're considered flagship educational institutions. Even though we're talking about higher education here, I still think its highly relevant, and the bias here in Reeder's reporting is that he focuses in only on evidence that supports his hypothesis and ignores evidence that completely discounts it.

In fact, "tenure", whether de jure or de facto, is all pervasive in American society. There was plenty of incompetence in Enron, but how many people were fired there? Every week we hear of lead toys finding their way onto Wal-Mart's shelves, but I certainly haven't heard of any firings. One could even argue that incumbent elected officials are the beneficiaries of tenure. If tenure is broken, all of America is broken, and I think you can have a great discussion on that issue. However, it does beg the question of why Reeder is so narrowly focused on teachers.

Finally, and perhaps this is the most important point. Even if you think that the tenure system is broken and is protecting thousands of bad teachers who need to be fired, Reeder never answers the "What then?" question. Illinois, like every other state in the nation, is facing a labor shortage when it comes to hiring teachers, just to fill the vacancies created by retirement and teachers moving to other professions or other states. If we fire thousands of teachers, who does Reeder propose we replace them with? Will he drop out of journalism, invest his time and money in getting his certification so that he can dedicate himself to teaching the hardest-to-reach kids in our urban centers and struggling rural communities? The question I always ask of those who are so quick to criticize teachers is "Why are you standing here on the sidelines throwing stones instead of putting yourself in the game?" I still haven't gotten a straight answer.