Judge rules that California's teacher tenure and dismissal laws are unconstitutional

Raspberry Fileds

As it says on the tin in the title. Essentially, teachers become tenured in California (and many other states) after less than two years, and are almost never dismissed afterwards. And an advocacy group has challenged those laws and won, though the ruling has since been stayed following appeal.

This is an article from The Economist: Teacher tenure: a stunning defeat for teachers’ unions in California



As well as summarising the events, the article offers strong support for performance-related pay and the laying-off of "bad teachers". Any thoughts


PS Can a mod please make a link out of the above address.

Powerhouse

It's not clear why this story from California is significant (other having quite a high cultural prominence in the Anglophone world). This is a state where the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in the arly 1970s and they carried on anyway so pesky court findings might not bother them much. The phrase 'the ruling has since been stayed following appeal' enhances the suspiciion that what it says on the tin in the title might not be the full story.

As it happens all of these headline issues raised,- teachers' tenure and sacking 'bad teachers' (these two things are the same thing by a different name surely?) - are standard topics of debate in Ireland and presumably the world over. Not sure there's much (new) to see here.

evolving_doors

Ahh the old performance linked pay dross thrown out by the usual clueless 'entrepeneurs'..

First off the article is lazy

Pupils assigned to better teachers are more likely to go to university and earn good wages; girls are less likely to fall pregnant, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study published in 2011

What was their measure for better teachers?

Bill Gates once noted that if every child had maths teachers as good as those in the top quartile, the achievement gap between America and Asia would vanish in two years.

So that's what the world needs eh to be more like Asia? So what.. Bill can sell more product.. What's so great about Asia anyway.. if we really want to be like china we should become a communist country!! Equal wealth for every citizen... I don;t think so.

Studies have repeatedly shown that teacher quality is more important than class size, income level or access to high-tech wizardry.

Links please author!! That idiot doesn;t know the impact of an pupil teacher ratio. Just 1 extra disruptive pupil in your class and it becomes a nightmare.

The case highlights a new tactic of education reformers: framing their case as a defence of children’s civil rights, not an attack on teachers. In April John Deasy, the Los Angeles schools chief and a witness for Students Matter, compared the denial of adequate education to ethnic-minority children to the refusal of cafés to serve coffee to black students over 50 years ago.

eh!!!

I could go on but this is one of those nothing articles about 'Them Lazy Pesky Teachers' and 'Us enterprising private sector superheroes "

Any thoughts to share yourself OP!!

Raspberry Fileds

Thanks for adding the link.

Armelodie wrote: »

Any thoughts to share yourself OP!!

The ruling from the Seventies wasn't that capital punishment per se was unconstitutional; just the process of sentencing it, I think. Anyway, the recent ruling was just that tenures in their current form are unconstitutional.

Its direct significance lies in the fact that the notorious unions (whose purpose is almost exclusively to promote teacher self-interest, rather than, as in Ireland, what they believe is best for students) have had their principal employment benefits ruled unconstitutional, and that, with there now being a precedent, other states will likely follow. Indirectly, it has, IMO, the potential to revolutionise education in the US, which would lead to huge advances in social mobility, which, on its own, would be hugely favourable, but would also generate much economic growth. I'm don't naively expect that that will be the result, though!

I began writing a post about my opinions on teacher tenure, performance-related pay, etc, but it is a staggeringly complex subject. Suffice to say, the status quo is not favourable but performance-related pay will likely have far-reaching and unknown consequences on education.

ytareh

'Payment By Results' ?!Now there's an innovative new idea for Irish education !

evolving_doors

ytareh wrote: »

'Payment By Results' ?!Now there's an innovative new idea for Irish education !

Grading your own students + payment by results = " All A's in my class again jeeves, fetch me my Middleton Rare."

Pay rises all round I presume.

whiteandlight

Raspberry Fileds wrote: »

I began writing a post about my opinions on teacher tenure, performance-related pay, etc, but it is a staggeringly complex subject. Suffice to say, the status quo is not favourable but performance-related pay will likely have far-reaching and unknown consequences on education.

Performance related pay has been used before in the Irish system and was unsuccessful.

Removal of tenure is the removal of one of the key benefits to education. The pay and potential for advancement alone (I believe) is simply not enough to actually draw the talented teachers we need when they could earn multiples of this with the potential for advancement in other areas.

The removal of tenure in Ireland and the introduction of part time CIDs has (again I believe) been to the detriment of students in the country. Teachers are more and more footloose scrambling to get an extra hour or two a week on contracts meaning that students, particularly the Junior Cycle students, are having multiple teachers even within one year.

You can argue that it is good for teachers to experience different schools and I would completely agree but there is a big difference between encouraging movement between schools and the ridiculous part time contracts and CIDs that are being offered by schools.

I still cannot understand what has changed so fundamentally in the last 10 years that part time is now the norm instead of full time? It is not helping students and you can't blame teachers for trying to increase their hours towards a full time job. The reality in a recession is that if a teacher has an option for 15hrs instead of 7 they will move, even if it's mid year