Council Reports Teacher Tenure Weakening
article by James Dugan | January 26, 2012
As a part of their 2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), teacher tenure was one focus of the report. In the report, the council found that more states are changing their tenure policies to have greater freedom to remove ineffective teachers.
According to the report, more states are implementing additional requirements for tenure. In 2009 it was reported that no state required student performance to be included in the tenure process, now eight states do.
“There's a real shift to saying all kids, especially our most disadvantaged kids, have access to really high quality and effective teachers. And, that's it's not OK for kids to have ... an ineffective teacher year after year,” Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the NCTQ said to The Associated Press.
Rhode Island, Florida, Colorado and Nebraska have all stated that they have implemented changes to the tenure process that will allow for teachers to be removed if they get multiple ineffective ratings. For example, the state of Rhode Island says that if a teacher receives two years of ineffective ratings, they will be dismissed.
This analysis comes at a time when increasingly more research is showing that good teachers can have a strong impact on a student’s life. In one recent report it showed that students with good teachers make substantially more money later in life.
However, in spite of these changes, many states still have tenure policies that enable ineffective teachers to remain in schools.
According to the Yearbook report, only three states—Florida, Idaho and Rhode Island—have removed tenure from teaching. And for many states there are no restrictions or requirements to receive tenure other than teaching for the minimum number of years, with only eight states requiring evidence of student learning.
“That's the problem with tenure, everybody gets it,” Jacobs said. “If you're held to a high bar where you've really demonstrated that you are effective in the classroom, then there's nothing wrong with that as long as the due process rights that you do get are reasonable.”
Part of the reason for this reluctance to change is that many teachers feel that there is an over-reliance on standardized tests that don’t accurately reflect the students’ knowledge. At the same time, many teachers are worried that by removing or weakening tenure regulations, teachers will be afraid to innovate and express what they feel is best for the students.
Also according to the report, states also have difficulties changing the policies because tenure decisions are often a local issue that is very specific to each individual district and school. However, the report explains that because of the changes being made in tenure policies, tenure is not completely off limits to the states and leads to a need to improve teacher evaluations.
“If we know who the effective teachers are, if we know what kind of an impact effective teachers can have on individual kids and on our society overall, then why wouldn't we take the obvious step of utilizing the information on who are the most effective teachers to make our staffing decisions?” said Michelle Rhee, former schools chancellor in Washington, D.C. and CEO of the student advocacy group StudentsFirst.
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