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Melissa Galvez

Will California's Ruling Against Teacher Tenure Change Schools? - Dana Goldstein - The ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...372536

California teacher quality teacher hiring tenure

shared by Melissa Galvez on 16 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • On Tuesday, a California superior-court judge ruled that the state’s teacher tenure system discriminates against kids from low-income families.
  • one to three percent of California teachers are likely “grossly ineffective”
  • The ruling, in Vergara v. California, has the potential to overturn five state laws governing how long it takes for a teacher to earn tenure; the legal maneuvers necessary to remove a tenured teacher; and which teachers are laid off first in the event of budget cuts or school closings.
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  • but since 2009, two-thirds of American states have weakened their teacher-tenure laws in response to President Obama’s Race to the Top program.
  • But the ruling’s rhetoric is stern and memorable stuff, borrowed directly from the playbook of the Silicon Valley philanthropists and deep-pocketed advocacy groups that bankrolled Vergara.
  • Is the premise of Treu’s ruling correct? Will axing tenure and seniority lead directly to better test scores and higher lifetime earnings for poor kids?
  • California evaluates teachers for tenure in March of their second year of work, before two full years of student-teacher data are available.
  • California law mandates that the least experienced teachers be laid off first, even if they are more effective than their older colleagues, a policy known as “LIFO,” or “Last In, First Out.”
  • it also hurts teachers, who aren’t given enough time to prove their skill.
  • under current California law, principals are forced to make high-stakes decisions about teachers without enough evidence.
  • rich curricula
  • Nationally, teachers work an average of 3.1 years before they become eligible for tenure.
  • For high-poverty schools, hiring is at least as big of a challenge as firing, and the Vergara decision does nothing to make it easier for the most struggling schools to attract or retain the best teacher candidates.
  • n Chicago, economist Brian Jacob found that when the city’s school district made it easier for principals to fire teachers, nearly 40 percent of principals, including many at the worst performing, poorest schools, fired no teachers at all.
  • For one thing, firing a coworker is unpleasant. It takes more than a policy change to overturn the culture of public education, which values collegiality and continuous improvement over swift accountability.
  • The larger problem is that too few of the best teachers are willing to work long-term in the country’s most racially isolated and poorest neighborhoods.
  • It is about making the schools that serve poor children more attractive places for the smartest, most ambitious people to spend their careers.
  • excellent, stable principals
  • Only 12 states have formal laws on the books mandating LIFO.
  • their student bodies should be more socioeconomically integrated so schools are less overwhelmed by the social challenges of poverty.
  • Melissa Galvez on 16 Jun 14
     
    excellent article about Vergara vs California. Argues that yes, teacher tenure laws are insensible and need to be changed. But that is not the most important problem plaguing low income schools--it's getting great teachers to teach there in the first place. Schools need to change in many ways to make them places that excellent teachers want to teach
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