Because pensions aren’t portable, teachers lose big if they move or switch careers. This week children across the country are returning to the classroom, and with the new school year comes a renewed debate about the best way to challenge the culture of mediocrity that prevails in too many public schools.
The Washington Teachers Union will file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of its 241 teachers fired last week for poor performance in the classroom, union President George Parker said Monday. “The story is not the firings so much as the document upon which the firings are based,” Parker said. “It is a flawed document.”
Make it harder to get, easier to revoke There are a few third rails in education reform. School choice and merit pay are among them. And just as discussion about them has increased in both frequency and seriousness recently, so has the focus on what is arguably the holy grail of teacher collective bargaining: tenure.
March 21, 2010 By Jeanette M. Rundquist nj.com The East Orange school district spent a year in a legal fight before it could dismiss a teacher who, the district said, had struggled to manage her classroom and instruct her students. The Trenton school district spent between $300,000 and $500,000 in legal fees trying to dismiss [...]
March 5, 2010 Editorial Chicagotribune.com Last fall, Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee laid off 229 teachers. Here’s what was unusual about that: She chose who would stay and who would go based on the competence of the teachers. That’s a radical departure for public education. Most schools across the country make personnel decisions largely [...]
The consequences of putting job protection ahead of learning. The Wall Street Journal School reformers generally agree that the most important education resource is the teacher. But one of the biggest obstacles to putting a good instructor in every classroom is a tenure system that forces principals to hire and retain teachers based on seniority [...]
By EVA MOSKOWITZ The New York Post Regrettably, it now appears likely that budget cuts will require teacher layoffs in New York City public schools. These will be based solely on seniority under the current teachers-union contract. In Washington, DC, however, they’ve taken a different approach.
NOVEMBER 19, 2009 By NEIL KING JR. and JOHN HECHINGER The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority. And a brawl over just that idea is now playing out in the shadow [...]