Tenure tussle
Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein writes today about Michelle Rhee’s proposed teacher-pay plan.
Sure, there will be times when teachers will be treated in an arbitrary and capricious way if they give up their tenure rights. Guess what: It happens all the time in the private sector, where hiring, promotion and pay decisions are sometimes made with incomplete information, favoritism, or undue emphasis on one factor or another. But despite this imperfection, despite the numerous instances of unfairness and poor judgment, somehow the vast majority of Americans manage to find a job, move up the ladder and enjoy their work, and companies manage to operate successfully and turn a profit. Pretty incredible, huh?
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August 29th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I disagree that teachers can be equated to employees in for-profit businesses, for the following reason: Businesses have a financial incentive to retain and promote effective workers. Principals have little or no financial incentive to retain or reward effective teachers.
On a personal level, I have worked both as a teacher and and an employee in the business world. As a teacher, I witnessed decisions about tenure, class assignment, prep periods and schedules be made in a very arbitrary manner. Principals often rewarded teachers they liked on a personal level. In a business setting, personality and other issues influence tenure and promotion decisions. But at the end of the day, the bottom line wins out.
In a school (much like in any non-profit organization), there is no bottom line. If a teacher does a so-so job, but is great friends with the principal, there is little or no incentive to a principal to fire that teacher and keep on an excellent teacher whose personality clashes with the principal, for example. This has been my experience over several years in both the education world and the business world.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I dare anyone in the private sector to compare their job evaluation process to the carbon-copied, ponderous and effectively useless PPEP system DC uses now. That’s the one where teachers promise to meet certain benchmarks in student performance, then wait in vain for test scores to arrive in time to be used in their rating.
Such a drastic overhaul to the pay system will also require a complete transformation of the teacher rating process, which will inevitably lead to many teachers being inaccurately assessed as the kinks are worked out. Why not start by developing a rating system that works and is fair, before putting livelihoods at risk?
Of course, this all means that we’ll need year-end test scores in time to be useful for staffing decisions. Since the students tested in April of this year, and the scores arrived in the late summer, shall we assume that the Chancellor wants our “year-end” test to be sometime in January?
August 29th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Catherine: Thanks for your insight into the DC PPEP system of evaluation. I have never worked in DCPS so I didn’t have any personal information about the performance evaluations. In my opinion, any attempt to “evaluate” teachers is always going to be difficult to implement fairly and impartially - which is why I’m generally suspicious of “merit pay” systems like the one Michelle Rhee is proposing to implement in DC.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Tenure protects some good teachers and lots of dopes. Doing away with tenure would get a few good teachers in trouble as well as lots of dopes. It wouldn’t address the main problem, which is all the dopes in administrative and board positions.
Schools work better in communities where there are relatively fewer dopes.