Dear Ms. Brown,
Before going into my personal problems with your attacks on teacher tenure, let me first state that I have for years appreciated your work as a news correspondent with both NBC News and more recently CNN. You have spent the past twenty years honing your craft and reporting the news we, as a nation, require for a functioning democracy. However, I now find myself wondering what your motivations might be for entering this fight against public teacher tenure. More on that later.
Let's be clear right up front, I am a public education teacher with over 16 years experience in the classroom and I benefit from seniority and tenure laws. However, you may be surprised to learn that I believe very strongly, as do many of my educator colleagues, that these systems need to be reformed. Many of us agree that it is too costly and too difficult to remove an ineffective teacher from the classroom. Likewise, during this age of budget cuts, many of us have seen highly effective teacher's cut while ineffective teachers remain in the classroom simply due to the date they were hired. I agree that students in urban schools are often left with inferior and insufficient educational experiences. Too often these students sit in classrooms with weak teachers, outdated materials and disparate financial resources.
So, we have some common ground from which we can approach this problem. However, we first need to get beyond your stated reasons for opposing these practices. Simply stated, you're attacking the wrong issue to come up with a solution for your problem. It isn't teacher tenure and seniority laws that are providing the neediest students with bad teachers- it's economics.
In 1997, while working toward my Master of Science degree in Education at the University at Albany, I had the pleasure of attending an event with Jonathan Kozol, author of the 1991 groundbreaking social-educational work, "Savage Inequalities", in which he observes the unequal distribution of educational funding in inner-city public schools and the impacts it has on students. During his talk, I recall the question of educational spending as a solution to inequalities being presented. Kozol's reply, "When does anyone ask if throwing money at the military will solve a problem? They don't. They only question throwing money at things that represent human decency." And here lies our current problem- socio-economic status, funding inequities and greed.
Money, spent wisely and thoughtfully, CAN solve the very problems we are all facing, and in particular the problems you face, with public education. I'm not talking about raising taxes and randomly throwing it at schools. I'm talking about a redistribution of the funds that creates an equitable funding source for students in ALL schools. 60 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education supreme court case, schools continue to suffer due to economic inequalities as stark as those based on race. That's because school district in New York fund their schools primarily through their local property taxes. Poor communities = poor funding which leads to funding gaps. Worse than that, New York State has continued to decrease their share of funding which leaves schools with less money to accomplish more. Wealthy districts can continue to provide programs while poorer districts struggle. These districts, like the one I teach in, continually cut faculty and programs which results in fewer opportunities and larger classes for our students.
Ms. Brown, solving the economics of public school funding will help resolve many of the concerns you have with teacher quality. Ending tenure protections will do little to strengthen the effectiveness of teachers. In fact, it may have the opposite effect. Without tenure protections, teachers will be reluctant to experiment with new ideas and methods. Teachers will be reluctant to speak out on behalf of the many issues we and our students face on a regular basis- issues like equity, access to resources and constitutional rights. More importantly, destruction of tenure may actually prevent highly qualified prospective teachers from entering the profession as instability enters into the equation.
Now, as I mentioned, I am not necessarily a fan of tenure and seniority as they are currently practiced. I agree that bad teachers are too often protected and too difficult to remove from the job. As a teacher, I feel this reflects poorly on our entire profession. However, tenure is not absolute as many will try to imply. It is costly and prolonged, but not absolute; and lets keep in mind that behind every bad teacher is an administrator who recommended that teacher for tenure. Teachers don't "turn bad", often times all the signs are there from the start, but overworked administrators don't have the time or resources to fully observe or evaluate teaching. So the goal here, to remove truly ineffective teachers, must be streamlined and reformed.
To start, tenure should be granted after a longer time period than is currently used along with higher professional standards and expectations. Current tenure law in New York State allows for granting of tenure following three years of teaching. Extending this to five years may provide a longer period for observation and teacher support. The longer time period may also have the impact of improving new teacher quality as they seek professional development in order obtain tenure and Administrators can have greater input into teacher concerns and development.
Seniority is more difficult to address. As districts face budgetary concerns, there may very well be a push to cut the fat at the top, not because these teachers have become lazy and apathetic, but due to the cost of maintaining these teachers. In addition, these teachers often represent the most outspoken members of the faculty and can be seen as being politically adversarial. Fixing tenure will allow for some natural reform of the seniority concerns by keeping the best teachers in the profession.
Lastly, how do we identify poor teaching? Standardized testing is not the answer as teacher ratings rely on the randomness of student assignment. The New York system of pre-test and post-test comparisons is an absurd joke. Students barely try to perform on a pre-test that has no meaning or consequence for them, while teacher determined Standard Learning Objectives (SLO's) are completely random and immediately suspect when realizing that pre-test score indicate unreliable information.
Unfortunately, none of the reforms you mention will lead to better educational outcomes. Students, particularly those you are choosing to defend, are suffering NOT because the schools can't remove the teachers, but most likely because the best teachers have probably chosen to leave the school. The structural and physical condition of many of these schools are failing and the pay scales in many of these schools are often below regional standards. As a result, some of the best teachers move from these schools to higher paying and safer suburban schools. These schools offer greater access to technology, resources, and course offerings. Why wouldn't they leave?
As Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute recently wrote, "Addressing the core drivers of these schools’, and students’, problems requires working in close partnership with teachers and unions. The vast majority of teachers are doing yeomen’s work under very difficult conditions; improving education means improving those conditions, making teaching in the schools that need strong teachers more attractive, and supporting those teachers to help them improve their craft."
Lastly, let us consider your motivation Ms. Brown. As a current board member of Success Academy charter schools, your interest in these students and the future of public schools is questionable. Much has been written concerning the negative impact charter schools have on public schools and the lack of achievement demonstrated by these charters. In fact, Success Academy has had their own struggles with student achievement considering their inability to place students in the top public high schools in New York City. So lets not pretend that your motives go far beyond the destruction of public education and the privatization of our educational system.
Overall, private charter school businesses have shown little actual success in improving student achievement. In fact, the achievement levels at public schools and charter schools have historically been similar. Given the lack of tenured positions and seniority, I'm guessing that the problems these schools face are not a result of said programs. If tenure and seniority are the problems then charter school scores should be through the roof! So why is it, Ms. Brown, that you are not going out of your way to file law suits against the charter schools that are failing students? I suppose there's a greater return in pandering to hedge-fund managers and other privateers who gain financially through tax credits and the destruction of the public schools.
So in the end Ms. Brown, is it the public good you're trying to benefit, or your own? I think it's pretty clear in which direction your interests lie. If you truly want to help students in this country, then we welcome your help in trying to end the inequities that exist in public schools. We can do this by reforming public taxation and revenue distribution rules and by helping struggling urban schools and other low-income schools across the state to balance their budgets, help them stop the endless teacher and program cuts and help them restore programs that will help ALL students in New York to have a true common and equitable educational experience.
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