I don’t always agree with Jay Mathews, but he has written an excellent column this morning. The crux of his argument is particularly well put:

This is a difficult choice and a hard time for D.C. teachers. They are fine people who have chosen a tough profession and put their hearts into their work. Many fear being judged by principals who, unlike Hayes, were not skillful teachers themselves and have little clue as to what helps kids learn and what doesn’t. But I don’t see any way the city’s children are going to get the instruction they deserve — the imaginative, fun-loving, firm teaching found at schools like KEY — unless principals are given the power to hire and fire teachers based on demonstrated skill and improved learning in class.

Rhee is likely to pick a few principals who fail, much as Hayes erred in hiring the two teachers. But the great virtue of the approach used at KEY and similar charter schools, the approach Rhee wants to adopt, is that achievement results — not friendships, not union rules, not inertia — would determine which principals and which teachers keep their jobs. If Hayes and other KIPP principals don’t show learning gains, they are out. Rhee says her principals will also be gone if they don’t show good results. (my emphasis)

When times get rough, why do school districts cut the good stuff? It’s a very good question and one we should be outraged about, explains Mike. Read the whole argument on National Review Online.

There’s a lot of political lip-service of late given to ridding schools of bad teachers. But be aware if you’re looking to do so in Dallas. A 30-year veteran teacher was fired due in part to low ratings on the “Classroom Effectiveness Index,” a value-added evaluation instrument. All of this started back in August when a handful of teachers were let go at the veteran teacher’s school. DISD spokesman John Dahlander explained,

If their TAKS rates are low, and they are not even reaching the levels that other teachers are reaching, then they may be recommended for termination. That falls into a small subset of teachers, but it does happen.

Apparently not, John. Seems there’s a huge difference between recommending termination and said termination actually happening. The  teacher petitioned the Texas Education Agency Commissioner to be reinstated and, low and behold, she’s back (with back pay). The Commissioner found (a la Broader and Bolder) that the school environment and student discipline problems were to blame for the teacher’s firing, not the teacher’s performance. Ugh.

According to 2003-2004 NCES data, only 1.9 percent of our nation’s public school teachers with more than 3 years of experience were dismissed or didn’t have their contracts renewed due to poor performance. Is it any wonder?

The Voice of San Diego,  a local independent paper, examines the ongoing deliberations over a new teachers union contract in that fair city. The interesting context, picked up by the piece, is that San Diego’s new superintendent, Terry Grier, enjoyed one of the most flexible teacher contracts in the country in his last post in Guilford County, North Carolina—that according to Fordham’s Leadership Limbo report. (Check out video of Mr. Grier’s comments at a panel we held to discuss the report.) And guess which district has one of the worst contracts, according to our analysis? That’s right; none other than San Diego.

Of course (and unfortunately), it won’t be so easy for Superintendent Grier to simply replace San Diego’s restrictive contract with Guilford County’s flexible one. As the National Council on Teacher Quality just reported, it’s state law that matters even more than local actions when it comes to teacher policy. Which means that Mr. Grier might soon be having Carolina on his mind.

John Merrow, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, explains that “public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.” That’s certainly the case in New York, where the state legislature recently passed a bill making it illegal for school districts to consider the performance of teachers’ students when making tenure decisions. Merrow concludes:

Denying any connection between teaching and learning is a dangerous course for teacher unions to chart. It contradicts what experience teaches us. And it flies in the face of common sense. If unions are telling us that there’s no connection between teaching and learning, why should we then support teachers, or public education?

Thankfully, the Empire State appears to be far outside the mainstream on this issue. Our recent Rick Hess/Coby Loup study of teachers union contracts found that most of the fifty largest districts in the country either had the explicit right to consider student performance in tenure decisions (that’s the case for eight of them) or faced no specific restrictions against that course of action, either in their contracts or in state law and regulation. Here’s hoping that when Randi Weingarten becomes AFT president, she doesn’t try to export this ridiculous piece of policy to the rest of the country.

The New York Times thinks the Big Apple’s unemployable teachers should be fired.

If states and school districts based layoff decisions on merit, and not seniority, we wouldn’t have to read about ridiculous situations like this. See our report on collective bargaining agreements by Rick Hess and Coby for our reasoning on why the “last hired, first fired” rule should be relegated to the history books.