Author Topic: No more tenure for teachers?  (Read 7554 times)

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Offline Cire

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No more tenure for teachers?
« on: April 07, 2014, 05:17:06 PM »
Yea or Nay


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Offline Dugout DickStone

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2014, 05:20:54 PM »
obviously

Offline brandochav

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2014, 05:23:00 PM »
Good and bad.

Good for getting rid of bad teachers, bad for getting rid of good teachers....all depends on the administration.

Offline john "teach me how to" dougie

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2014, 05:25:35 PM »
Tenure is the second worst thing to ever happen to education.

Online star seed 7

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2014, 05:26:35 PM »
i honestly have no idea what tenure is
Hyperbolic partisan duplicitous hypocrite

Offline john "teach me how to" dougie

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2014, 05:30:03 PM »
i honestly have no idea what tenure is

Your teachers obviously had it.

Offline CNS

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2014, 05:43:28 PM »
i honestly have no idea what tenure is

Your teachers obviously had it.

Lol

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2014, 06:04:14 PM »
 :surprised:
Hyperbolic partisan duplicitous hypocrite

Offline kso_FAN

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #8 on: April 07, 2014, 06:10:13 PM »
99% of the time if you do your job you will be just fine. JMHO.

Offline LickNeckey

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2014, 06:45:23 PM »
Tenure is a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.

1. I don't believe anyone should be fired without just cause.

2. If a person has cause to be fired they should be fired.

I understand that this is not always what occurs.

Offline 0.42

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2014, 06:49:26 PM »
Tenure can be necessary at institutions of higher education for professors who do valuable but controversial research that pushes the boundaries of our collective knowledge and might piss off anyone from a politically connected rival professor who doesn't agree with your research to a department head to a regent and even potentially meddling politicians (i.e. Rick Perry) because it violates social mores. I wouldn't advocate getting rid of tenure at that level but providing better incentives for professors who produce higher quality research and teaching--more and better bonuses, better teaching load, better research facilities/materials to use--could help spur competition and dispel the temptation to sit on one's laurels after getting tenure.

I don't see the necessity for tenure in elementary, middle, and high schools however. At that level you're more or less sticking to a previously chosen curriculum and the latitude you're given is in the method that you present that curriculum to your students. I'd be interested to hear KK's take on it though.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2014, 06:53:50 PM by 42 »

Offline EMAWmeister

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2014, 07:16:22 PM »
Heard a brief conversation on the radio about this this morning. It seems like they were most upset with this new Kansas bill because now a teacher can be fired without going through an administrative observation period and a hearing.

I've always had a job where you could be fired at any given moment for a variety of reasons, so this is a hard view for me to understand. However, my job performance has never relied on the success of others like a teacher's does.

Offline CNS

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #12 on: April 07, 2014, 07:19:25 PM »
The only issue with this is that it is bound to become a method of budget reduction.  Firing experienced quality teachers is the wrong answer.  Not saying this is going to happen a bunch, but I don't trust the collection of idiots that usually comprise a district office to manage that correctly.

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Offline jmlynch1

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #13 on: April 07, 2014, 07:30:50 PM »
Makes sense in higher education, but i didn't realize it was an actual thing in k12 until a few years ago. I guess I'm curious to the justification for it at that level.

Offline Cire

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #14 on: April 07, 2014, 08:26:20 PM »
The thing that sticks me about it is the way it was passed.  It gets attached to a bill that basically had to pass at the last minute.  What's the motivation for that?  Seems like a pretty big deal.  Why not do that separately

Offline Kat Kid

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #15 on: April 07, 2014, 09:22:40 PM »
I mostly agree with what NickLeckey said.  Bad teachers have always been able to be fired, it just requires administrators to do their job.

All "tenure" ever guaranteed was due process.  In large organizations, due process is good risk management and a good check/balance on the diffusion of middle managerial power over subordinates that may harm the broad interests/mission of the large organization but advance the narrow interests of the manager at the expense of a subordinate.

I am not nearly as concerned about the development as some others, but there is a lot of uncertainty about how things will proceed in the context of the new standards/evaluation system.  As has been previously mentioned by meister, test scores are being increasingly linked to teacher evaluation.  If it were as simple as: show student growth, show you are teaching the standards, show that you are an asset to the school etc. that would make a lot of teachers happier.

The same people that want to decrease spending on at-risk students, decrease qualification requirements for teachers, shift funding toward private schools, (all while decrying failing public schools) want to toss out due process rights, want to strip away collective bargaining, want to defund the new common core standards.

If these people are in charge of policy?  Well yeah, it might make you a bit less understanding about the many reasonable arguments that can be had about teacher quality, student outcomes and what improvements might be made through the reform of schools.

Offline kso_FAN

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #16 on: April 07, 2014, 10:22:06 PM »
Well said KK.

Also, seems like this is the path away from step salary schedules and toward some sort of evaluation/merit pay system for teachers.

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #17 on: April 07, 2014, 11:28:30 PM »
I agree with having tenure at the collegiate level of education.  However I really don't know about the HS level and below.  I had probably the worst history/government teacher in the history of teaching in HS because he was tenured.  He literally gave out these 50 question study guides that nobody did other than 2 ppl, then those spread to the entire class, the tests were the exact same study guides just with the questions mixed up.  If you knew the first 2 words of the questions you could get a 100% ever test, we also graded our own study guides.  On the other hand I had some teachers that really did care and I actually learned a lot from them, they were also tenured.  So I guess I am more in the rewarding those types of teachers and making the other ones better, I don't know how you can do that tho with the current system.

Offline ednksu

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #18 on: April 08, 2014, 12:15:13 AM »
For people wondering about why k-12 teachers NEED tenure, remember that one time when Kansas schools tried to force teachers to teach creationism in science classrooms and remove evolution?  Yeah, that is why we need tenure, to protect those teachers who said, thanks, but no thanks.
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Offline Mrs. Gooch

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #19 on: April 08, 2014, 08:50:02 AM »
In my experience, there were some pretty bad teachers in high school but the reason they were kept around was not necessarily because they were tenured but because they were coaches.
We also had a good young teacher who was fired for some political reason (I can't remember exactly why) since she wasn't tenured yet. All the teachers in her department were against her firing, but the administration had their own agenda.

Offline Cire

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #20 on: April 08, 2014, 09:01:41 AM »
In talking to my teacher friends around JOCO (my mother has taught for 35 years).

The older ones like my mom were fired up.

Younger ones were meh, attitude is that olathe, shawnee, blue valley and gardner are competitive enough for good teachers that they aren't going to get a bad rep for firing.

Anger was more directed at admin for not taking steps to get rid of lazy asses, as previously said they CAN get rid of people but admins don't take the time to do it.

One of them said that reports from topeka was that the moderate repubs were threatened with right winger challengers in primarys and that Koch was in the Majority leaders office as they were called in.  No idea if that's true.

Offline _33

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #21 on: April 08, 2014, 10:38:20 AM »
The "step" salary schedule is another reason for teacher tenure. You don't want all the experienced teachers getting let go in favor of cheaper teachers every time there are budget cuts.

Offline sonofdaxjones

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #22 on: April 08, 2014, 11:13:14 AM »
It's impossible to have this discussion because like with most issues of this nature, for liberals there's absolutely no middle ground of any kind.   So in turn, that cements the positions of ultra-conservative knuckleheads.

Then, the rest of us are just caught in the middle and labeled.

Sad, but true.







Offline Rage Against the McKee

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #23 on: April 08, 2014, 11:15:52 AM »
It's impossible to have this discussion because like with most issues of this nature, for liberals there's absolutely no middle ground of any kind.   So in turn, that cements the positions of ultra-conservative knuckleheads.

Then, the rest of us are just caught in the middle and labeled.

Sad, but true.

Luckily, there aren't any liberals or ultra-conservatives in this discussion.

Offline Stellarcat

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Re: No more tenure for teachers?
« Reply #24 on: April 08, 2014, 11:17:43 AM »
I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about the problem the legislature caused by stripping teachers of their due process rights. Underperforming teachers do not have a "job for life". First, they can be non-renewed in the first 3 years without cause. Second, administrators have a process that they can follow to remove poor teachers from their positions. Due process just means that teachers cannot be arbitrarily non-renewed without cause.

With the funding problems in schools, it is a real concern that an inexperienced teacher could replace a veteran teacher simply because that veteran teacher is making the big bucks (ha). A new administrator could be hired and arbitrarily remove teachers to make room for teachers that he or she wants. Teachers have yearly contracts, which never seemed like a big deal to me before this. Now, I could have been teaching at a school for years, had excellent reviews, parent and student support, no disciplinary issues, and....boom. Just like that, my contract could be non-renewed.

I like to think that I was a pretty good teacher, and it makes me sad that as I've been trying to decide when to go back to work, I'm pretty sure that I won't be seeking a job in the classroom. I adored my students and their families, but knowing that it could all be ripped away for any arbitrary reason...sad. And yes, I'm aware that I used the word arbitrarily a few too many times in this post, but unfortunately, that is the reality.