This week’s whopper is an editorial by the San Jose Mercury News regarding Superior Court Rolf M. Treu’s decision declaring California’s tenure rules for teachers to be unconstitutional. Part of Judge Treu’s reasoning was that the tenure rules allegedly make it extraordinarily difficult to discharge incompetent teachers and incompetent teachers deny students a quality education.
The first component of the whopper is the Mercury’s assumption that teacher quality is automatically improved by making it easier to fire poorly performing teachers. The problem with this “reasoning” is that it completely ignores the fact that there may be a relationship between changes in the tenure rules and the ability of school districts to hire superior teachers. Just possibly somebody who is smart enough to be a great teacher may be smart enough to avoid a profession in which their career prospects are determined by politicians and judges who haven’t set foot in a classroom since they graduated from high school. Testimony in the lawsuit demonstrated the percentage of incompetent teachers is probably very small. Is it automatically better for students if 97% of teachers lose job security so 3% can be disciplined?
The next whopper is the claim that an 18 month period is way too short to determine teacher competency and grant tenure. Since zero evidence is presented to support this contention, one can legitimately ask – why? In contrast, how long does it take the US Army to determine if a person is competent to lead a platoon in combat? The Officer Candidate School curriculum takes 12 weeks.
Perhaps the most astonishing whopper is the Mercury’s claim that the when layoffs occur under the current system, then “the best teachers” are “the first ones shown the door.” In California, layoffs are based on seniority. Thus, according to the Mercury none of the best teachers can be found in the ranks of long-term experienced teachers. What possible evidence or reasoning can substantiate that assertion?
Last, but not least, the Mercury argues that improvement in schools is blocked by the “political cash” of teacher unions. Now, teacher unions aren’t right on every issue associated with public education. But they can assert proudly that they have totally been there for the long haul – doggedly fighting on behalf of school and students when everybody else was worried about something else. I would hazard a guess that for most of the wealthy patrons of “school reform”, the education of low income kids is a fad – that will in a few years be replaced by the next fad. When that happens, it will be the teachers’ unions that will still be there – in the political and policy trenches – insisting that schools not be left to accomplish impossible tasks under irrational rules with inadequate resources.
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