Teacher Tenure. Is it time for evaluation and accountability?

Our Alaska Public School System is in deep trouble. Enrollment has seriously declined and that means that school districts all across the state are struggling to make ends meet. In-fact, almost all districts are either hiring no new teachers and employees or as in the case of our Kenai Peninsula Borough School District are planning to deliver pink slips to substantial numbers of teachers.

Loss of enrollment is the result of several factors including the fact each year the children of the baby boomer generation are finishing high school and going off to college. However, more and more parents are simply choosing to leave the public school system for alternative forms of education for their kids.

Home schooling is at an all time high.

Private schools are bursting at the seams as parents try to get their children into solid educational performance where testing shows students in all grades perform at least two to three grades ahead of public school scores and sometimes are ahead as much as four and five grades.

Charter schools recently allowed by the State are continuing to grow.

So, what’s wrong with our public school system?

Many parents now agree that one of the basic problems is teacher tenure. When a new teacher is hired, for two years they are closely observed and evaluated. Their performance is judged and critiqued by their peers and administrators. If they are not performing up to district standards they can be removed as a teacher. However, once a teacher works that first day of the third year, and given tenure, it becomes almost impossible to remove them from the classroom regardless of their efforts and production. Evaluation and accountability are virtually non-existent after tenure.

We’ve all heard over the years about teachers who were poor teachers, had serious personal problems or who simply refused to teach and do lesson preparation. Because administrators could not lay them off, and had to continue to pay them, they did move them to non-teaching positions where they could not effect children. We’ve all heard about teachers who have simply given up on their classes, presenting no lessons at all, and day after day letting the discipline required for learning to go by the wayside with entire classes in total turmoil day after day. Students passed to next higher grade not having attained the expected learning level but simply to "move them on". Teachers simply putting in their time and counting the days until retirement.

With more and more parents losing faith in our teachers pulling their children out of our school districts across the state, isn’t it time for our legislators to eliminate teacher tenure? Isn’t it time for teachers to be accountable? Isn’t it time to give our school administrators the authority to evaluate each and every one of the teachers who are supposed to teach our children and with good substantiated reasons remove them from teaching in the district if its needed? Isn’t it time to reward all our good teachers with continued and well paid employment?

Maybe it is time to eliminate teacher tenure and bring our schools back to the high standards we expect with great teachers who really care?

Think About It!

JCD 1/08/03