Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 | 2 a.m.
John Oceguera
Related documents (.pdf)
Sun archives
Tenure for teachers is usually seen as either a protection for educators from capricious school administrators or a way for incompetent teachers to protect their jobs.
Top politicians now appear to be leaning toward the latter view.
Top Republican and Democratic politicians are calling for the end of tenure, the latest this week by Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas.
That Oceguera, who is in line to be the next Assembly speaker and one of the most powerful men in Nevada next session, would call for what has long been a conservative position reflects how far the debate over how to improve schools has shifted in the past two years.
Democrats, from President Barack Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, have run up against teacher unions, a traditional base for the Democratic Party.
Last session, Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, clashed with the state teachers union over his ultimately unsuccessful education reforms.
But to take on tenure, one of the most cherished rights of teachers, seems to be a new front.
At its core is a sense that teachers, once they get tenure, are difficult if not impossible to fire.
In Nevada, the “probationary” period when teachers can be fired at will is two years. But teachers who get satisfactory evaluations in the first year can have their second year of probation waived.
The Clark County School District was not able to provide data on the number of tenured teachers fired for poor performance by deadline.
But the Clark County Education Association, which represents teachers in the Clark County School District, said 20 teachers did not have their contracts renewed two years ago for reasons that would include poor performance. Last year 19 teachers did not have their contracts renewed.
There are roughly 17,000 teachers in Clark County.
Oceguera said in an interview on “Nevada Newsmakers” this week that he wanted to end tenure as a way to improve the state’s dismal education system.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval also called for an end to tenure when he released his education plan this year.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid has stopped short of calling for an end to tenure, but his education plan calls for making it tougher for teachers to get tenure and to “make it easier to get rid of bad teachers.”
Oceguera, in a statement, said, “We have great teachers in our state, but we hear from parents and principals that there are those who are not measuring up and should not be in the classroom.”
He called for a “fair but expedient process for getting inadequate teachers out of the classroom.”
Sandoval, in an interview, said he would have teachers evaluated based on test scores, a principal’s review, possibly a peer review and other factors. A principal would then make a recommendation to the school district, which would make the decision on whether to fire a teacher.
He said the evaluation would be used to give merit pay to good teachers, help some teachers improve their skills and get rid of bad teachers.
“I’ve spoken to several principals, who said it’s an incredibly difficult process to get poorly performing teachers out of the classroom,” he said.
Teachers and some education experts say this is part of a pattern of attacks on the profession.
“I feel we are underappreciated and under attack,” said Ruben Murillo, president of the Clark County Education Association.
He defended the current process. “We try to protect (teachers’) due process rights,” he said. “Every teacher should be given an opportunity to make improvements, to have the support necessary to make them successful.”
He wondered if Oceguera, a deputy fire chief for North Las Vegas, would support eliminating seniority and tenure for firefighters.
Diane Ravitch, an education policy expert and author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” said teachers are under assault, led by Education Secretary Duncan and the federal Race to the Top grant program, which, in part, required states to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores.
“There is a mean-spirited hostility towards teachers in the air,” she told the Sun. She said tenure has been used to prevent cronyism from infecting school hiring and firing decisions.
“The reason for due process is that in the past, before teachers got such rights, they were dismissed for all sorts of meretricious reasons,” she said, “because of their race, their religion” or to hire a local board member’s relative.
But she also said in most states, tenure is granted for new teachers, at principals’ discretion, after three or four years.
Whether you agree, OR NOT,
This is ALL ABOUT POLITICS.
NOT about what's "good for the kids".
All these politicians are interested in is MAKING THEMSELVES LOOK GOOD.
"He wondered if Oceguera, a deputy fire chief for North Las Vegas, would support eliminating seniority and tenure for firefighters."
Ha ha, ha!!!
Ho ho ho!!!
Ah, NO.
I have yet to hear one single innovative idea come out of the mouth of a politician in regards to "improving Education".
Whether it's Sadoval, Reid, Angle, or Oceguera, what you hear is PANDERING.
Not a single original thought.
Parrots.
I just retired from CCSD. What a great time to get away from the sinking ship! I am now working in another school district where teachers are appreciated, experience is worth something, and students, parents, and community are able to work with teachers to provide quality education. It's rekindled the joy of teaching! Good luck to my friends who are still dealing with Clark.
Amazing film about the subject "Waiting for Superman" starts Friday.
Why should teachers or professors be given tenure? They have unions & laws to protect their interests. The average Joe does not have tenure. He (or she) does a good job or is shown the door. Have any idea how many "teachers" are sitting in "rubber" rooms collecting full pay while doing nothing because school districts cannot fire them? New York City is getting rid of those teachers and those "rubber" rooms as we speak. Would you want your child being taught by an incompetent teacher? I'd venture to say you wouldn't. So let teachers stand on their merit just as you & I do every day at work.
Using New York City and the rubber rooms as an example of "progress" is a mistake. The truth is that many of the teachers in the rubber rooms were put there by false accusations due to personality conflicts. Those that deserved to be there were held for so long by the NYC Department of Education's incompetence in preparing the cases in a timely fashion. No one supports standards for teachers more than teachers. I hate having fools as colleagues. However, as a math teacher of 21 years, I have had my share of run ins with incompetent assistant principals and principals who could NEVER do my job. Yet, they are in a position to decide whether I am qualified. The real problems are with the idiots who HIRE bad teachers. The cold hard fact is that from Obama and Duncan on down, most of the "players" in education wouldn't know a good teacher if they saw one. Unions are supposed to protect their members. But, they do NOT HIRE teachers. Administrators do. Why does everyone seem to conveniently forget that fact??
WE need to start with UNLV then work down the food chain. If they are represented by the ASSOCIATION/UNION then Tenure should be revoked ASAP.
Improve education--extend the school year to 224 days, not 180 days. Kids need more time in school. We should also extend the school day by at least an hour--so teachers can work an 8 hour day and kids can get more exposure to "education"
Hey Chupy. Retired from CCSD at what? 42 years old? Working another part time teaching job for full time pay and liking it.
It's often difficult to recruit teachers because of the low pay. Many teachers leave the profession because of the low pay. But at least it was a secure job.
Now some people want to eliminate teacher tenure. This will make it even harder to recruit teachers. They'll move to other states, where the pay is better and the job security better too!
Tenure doesn't mean that teachers can't be fired. A teacher can be fired FOR CAUSE. The principal can't just say, "Fred, you're fired!". The principal has to have a reason that can stand up to scrutiny.
I would welcome elimination of tenure if it weren't for the fact that CCSD uses harassment and intimidation to control teachers and support staff. At some schools, if you speak up about illegal or immoral activity, you are ripped out of your job and banished to a school across the valley or forced to leave the district. The union is useless. All they have to say is, "We have no control. They can do whatever they want." This is not the case of one or two teachers, but a pattern of control.
In this hyper partisan environment anything that gains bipartisan support is probably a really good idea. I am no Democrat, but I applaud these Democrats for standing up to one of their taskmasters: the teachers' union.
When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
Albert Shanker, former president American Federation of Teachers (1985) (was AFT president for over 20 years).
As an educator, I love these politicans who have not clue to what an educator does yet they want to dictate what we need to be doing. I would love for one of these politicans to walk in our shoes.
They have no educational experience but yet have all the answers and know what is good for our kids. So I say Mr. Politican, the next time you need heart surgery or medical attention consult a plummber or auto repair person, because they do not know the first thing about medicine. The same reasoning you are using on us educators.
Ton of respect for teachers, but I agree with this move. Quixotic, I agree that the administrators should be held accountable for hiring poor performers, but we still need to be able to fire teachers after they've started if they're not performing. Just because there was a mistake in hiring them doesn't mean we shouldn't have the ability to get rid of them after the fact.
Chupy, I appreciate that experience certainly helps teachers to be more effective, but there are definitely ineffective teachers that have been in the system for a long time, but they can't be fired because they haven't made any major mistakes according to the unions, they've just failed to be an effective teacher.
gmag, I don't think the expectation should be that candidates come up with "original" ideas, I'm fine with an un-original idea that's worked somewhere else. The leaders in the state haven't proven themselves worthy of coming up with innovative ideas that work. We're at the bottom, let's take ideas that have worked in other districts/states.
This is one of the changes that's being demanded across the country, so the argument that teachers will move to somewhere else "where their skills are appreciated", is becoming less and less valid.
Teachers, you have to understand that while (I think) most of us have a TON of respect for what you do, it doesn't change the fact that you're still human and there are still people that don't perform. If I had my choice, the good ones would be some of the highest paid government employees and the ineffective ones would be fired.
I agree with doing away with tenure, but I agree with gmag about Oceguera.
We can't keep electing people who don't have the their constituents best interests in mind.
One needn't be a baker to know when a pie tastes bad and one needn't be an "educator" to know the public school system has been failing to do its job for decades. The system does less to educate then it does to indoctrinate. Kids know "Heather has two mommies" and they "feel-good-about-themselves," but when it comes to coping with the "real" world, they haven't a clue. Their "product," educated students, comes out flawed - unable to add, subtract, divide or multiply. They can barely read & write and spell? Forget about it. This is not necessarily the teachers fault; it is "progressive" school administrators who force the curriculum on the teachers. It's way past the time to dump the "touchy-feely" baloney. Parents need real "choice" in the schooling of their children. Vouchers, charter schools, whatever it takes to break the monopoly given to public "education."
Get rid of tenures and anything that protects or guarantees a job. Public employees should be treated the same as private employers or even better, small business' owners. They don't have a guaranteed income, not to mention pension or benefits, and if you don't make money you close down.
Public employees are OUR employees, and if they are good, they stay, if they suck, they leave. Many public employees don't care about customer service or performance, and if they get a low score in either and grounds to be fired, they go to the union, and the union forces the public employer to keep useless public employees or else.
You don't want to work for the money we are offering, then we'll find someone else, thank you for your service, next.
How do you define a good teacher? How do you define a bad teacher?
globarrvers, year over year improvements in test scores is a big start. Feedback from managers (principals), as long as they're doing their job and doing reviews in the classrooms (which should be documented). Feedback from parents, peers, etc.
This obviously isn't a new idea and it's being implemented more and more across the country, so we can probably go with whatever standards are being used elsewhere and then modify/tweak as we find problems or opportunities.
Really, you are not an English teacher are you?
doutl13, I assume you were talking to me.
What point are you trying to make?
No improveLV. Post from really.
oh, sorry for the confusion.
There is a way to fire bad teachers. It is built into EVERY teacher contract in the country. The problem lies with the fact that the administrators are usually too incompetent to build the case. I have witnessed cases where even the peers of an incompetent teacher wondered why the person was still employed. The problem is that if tenure is removed, these same incompetent administrators will immediately begin firing every teacher with more than a few years' experience to help keep budget costs down. People have to wake up and realize the "anti-tenure" movement is a cheap political trick to disguise a nasty budget balancing act. The truth is that the majority (98%) of teachers work their butts off for many years with little reward to help children. The ratio of bad to good in teaching is far better than in many other professions. Teachers just really suck at politics and aren't rich like doctors, lawyers and Wall Street to be able to defend themselves. The best we can do is a half hearted union. Seriously, how can Wall Street get away with what it did, but suddenly teachers are criminals????????????
Let's also end tenure (due process) for firefighters and police officers. There are too many bad cops and firefighters out there. Let's not wait for evidence or proof, just let them go!
quixotic59: I can tell you never were an employer or you'd know better. It costs lots of money to train new hires regardless of their background or experience and it also takes a lot of time & effort. No one in their right mind fires responsible, hard-working employees to "save" money and make more work for themselves.
lvfacts101, I can tell you have ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE in the field of education, especially in New York City and its suburbs. For your information, it is STANDARD PRACTICE in recent years, wherever possible, to force out experienced, highly rated teachers STRICTLY because of their salaries and in complete DISREGARD of the business principle you mention. Mayor Moron Bloomberg specifically restructured NYC school budgets to include teacher salaries (which were previously independent) in principal's yearly allocations. As such, principals are now FORCED to try and move their staff towards younger, inexperienced, lower salaried teachers to survive.
America needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Big Business needs to be kicked out of our educational system, standards have to be observed and maintained for teachers, STUDENTS, and PARENTS and enforced. Teahers are being made the scapegoats of degrading societal standards, bad parenting, Republican business and wealthy tax evader interests. The rich are selling out your children to minimize their tax burdens that are already full of loopholes. Johnny can't read because he's too busy texting, twittering, facebooking, video gaming and having sex. School cannot compete with the indulgence of weak parents of their children.
BTW lvfacts, most teachers I work with are sick and tired of all that "touchy feely" garbage you mentioned and would love to be allowed to teach their subjects. They also hate being told that they "have to find a way to pass little Johnny". The implied threat is that they will be targeted the following year for being "uncooperative".
lvfacts101, that's a great point, but there's obviously a point at which it does make sense to fire, hire, and train. That said, if everyone (teachers, administrators, etc.) are accountable for the results, of course they're going to keep the good teachers with experience. they're going to produce better results, which is better for everyone.
Quixotic, according to the contracts, what's the process for firing a bad teacher? I'm familiar with it at a high level, but I'd like to hear your description. Not trying to put you on the defensive, but I think the problem is that it takes far too long to fire a bad teacher, and the definition of "bad" teacher is debatable.
Osaywhoguera? Dumb people of Nevada wake up. Maybe youd find out some real ideas GMAG if you stopped reading the sun and rj. You seem like an intelligent person why are you being spoon fed?
That goes for the rest of you as well. Got internet? USE IT.
improveLV, teachers are evaluated at least once a year by their immediate supervisor. At that time, assuming the supervisor is intelligent and well informed, it is the first step of creating an evidence file of poor performance. In a fair situation, the administrator outlines the deficiencies and (here's the stumbling block) then outlines a plan for improvement. This should involve specifically addressing the deficiencies and supervising the probation. At the end of the probation, the teacher is re-evaluated for improvement.
The problem is that most administrators are people who were afraid of the classroom and wanted the power trip of administration. They may have as few as 3 or 4 years of experience in a classroom, often times not even in the subject they are supervising. They are unable to create an effective program of correction and usually are incapable of properly supervising the probation. Instead, they often engage in harassment to get the teacher to quit. At this point the union steps in to protect the teacher (sometimes reluctantly).
If the supervisors were truly qualified to judge teachers fairly, they could easily compile the evidence to quickly and efficiently eliminate bad teachers. As an example, in 21 years of teaching math and 11 supervisors, only one of my supervisors was a past math teacher and he only lasted two years.
This is the "inconvenient truth" of education. In the business world, usually, you have to work your way up with experience and knowledge. In education, the primary qualification is butt kissing and political savviness. Tenure, frankly, protects people such as myself, whose only aspiration is to be a classroom teacher and have dedicated their 25 or 30 year careers to becomimg experts at their craft. I will put my skills against any administrator or politician who has the testicular fortitude to spend even a week in my shoes in front of a classroom.
Why always pick on the teachers FIRST? Why not end all union contracts for state and local government employees?
quixotic, do you think that a more objective evaluation, like improvements in test scores, is the better way to go? Also, once a teacher receives tenure, does the same process you described above still apply? When admins are supposed to be covering multiple teachers and multiple subjects, is it that strange that so few have been math teachers in the past?
I think your description of the problems reinforce the theory that improvements in test scores should be weighed more heavily than a subjective evaluation by an administrator. What do you think?
Observer, Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe not necessarily "end" them, but certainly renegotiate them to reflect the times.
improveLV, I understand your question, but you will not like my answer. The problem with test scores as a basis for evaluation is like evaluating doctors by how well their patients follow their instrauctions. If my doctor tells me to stop smoking and I don't and get lung cancer, does that mean he is an incompetent doctor? In the same way, I can give a student all the support in the world, but if they don't wish to learn, they won't. Conversely, to be fair, there are students who excel with minimal support and it would be unfair to give me full credit as the teacher.
The true basis of judging a teacher is how many quality learning opportunities they offer their students. Still, many studens and parents resent being held to high standards. "Just pass my kid and let them move on" is a growing sentiment. Don't misunderstand me though, there are many conscientious students and parents out there as there are conscientious teachers.
How do you evaluate a teacher fairly? I fear that question might never really be answered until we, as a society, are truly honest with ourselves as to the realistic results of a guaranteed education. Not every student is destined to be a scholar. To believe in "no student left behind" is to believe that smoking, excessive drinking, obesity, gambling, etc. will be eliminated in our lifetimes.
I will say that the existing system would work much better if assistant principals and principals were recruited from the ranks of good teachers and not the power hungry.
But to go back to the original question, standardized testing is so flawed that it isn't even fair to the students, much less the teachers, schools or states!