rebuttal?

[crs]

I'm looking for an informed, even-handed rebuttal of this paragraph: There are countless dedicated public school teachers in our nation. Guggenheim made a doc in 1999 focusing on them. But educators and the teachers themselves acknowledge that schools have teachers who are not merely incompetent, but even refuse to teach. Protected by the tenure

Comments

[binkbink]

Perhaps the defect is not that there are bad teachers with tenure (some even break the law and remain) but that they got the tenure in the first place without being detected

[nathanw]

I think this is about public school teachers, not colleges - so no research to fall back on, and an entirely different set of criteria for "tenure", which mostly seem to involve doing the job for a while.

[binkbink]

If no research, what is the point of tenure? What desirable freedom does it protect?

Public Schools have tight curricula and very little latitude for differences of opinion because what they teach is mostly already proved or approved, so there isn't a need to provide the intellectual freedom that is meant to blossom in a university.

I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as tenure in the public school systems and I don't see the purpose, except to prevent a teacher being replaced by someone who is not nearing retirement (which incurs a legacy cost) or less experienced and therefore paid less.

The teachers I know all are "at will" employees, and subject to being let go with very little notice and essentially without cause.

[ocschwar]

In cities with political machines, teachers would have reason to worry that they would suffer retaliation if they didn't work for the local precinct captain for free, for example. So there is a place for tenure. But only a limited place.

[awfief]

My viewpoint is skewed, but the biggest problems I've found are teachers *not* failing kids that should be failed, because regardless of tenure, inflating the grade makes the kids happier, and thus makes the parents happier, and thus the parents don't sic themselves on the teacher or the administrators

[desireearmfeldt]

(WIthout having read the context of the quote, I am inclined to suspect "fail" meant something more like "did badly on the standardized test" than "was given a bad grade by that teacher."

[awfief]

Ah, so "teachers are failing at the task of teaching kids", not "teachers are giving failing grades to their kids."

Easier to believe, what with "No Child Left Behind". My experience is with teachers who give a crap, so I only have hearsay from them about other teachers who don't....but sure, "bad teachers" are a problem, tenured or not....cue the "standardized tests are not necessarily a good measure of a student's learning" rant here.

[anyee]

If you really need the info, I can get my parents on the horn and have them talk you ear off about their decades of experience with unions and students.

[mollishka]

Why is it that when discussing teachers in the US people always manage to forget that there are large parts of the country with no teachers' unions and no tenure system? There is a conversation to be had here that has NOTHING to do with either of those considerations.