Fill info gap on tenure
Published 12:00 am Friday, May 30, 2014
From Talking about Politics blog, by Gary Pearce:
If you did a poll – and Senator Berger surely has — you’d probably get overwhelming support for this proposition: “Should public school teachers get an 11 per cent raise in exchange for giving up tenure?”
Therein lies the challenge to Senate Democrats. Berger says: “You say you want higher teacher pay. Here it is.” But here’s the trap: Teachers have to give up “tenure,” which most people think means that after you’ve been in a job for a while you can’t be fired, no matter how lazy, unproductive or incompetent you are.
Democrats have an education job to do here. They have to define what “tenure” really is. Not automatic protection for incompetent teachers, but minimal protection against arbitrary and capricious personnel decisions by principals and administrators who may not like a teacher for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with their performance or ability.
Like, say, a teacher who speaks up about a lousy principal, or objects to a bad central-office decision, or raises an uncomfortable question about school policies, or is so good an incompetent principal feels threatened or — yes — is a member of the “wrong” political party.
One education expert I talked to described Berger’s proposal this way: “It’s another one of their manipulative political moves. People automatically think ‘yay! Higher teacher pay!’ But that’s such a small part of the picture. Lack of tenure turns teachers into obedient minions. It completely eliminates creativity, innovation, teacher leadership, and progress within schools. If teachers are too worried about their jobs to speak up, education hits a stalemate. Which in turn makes all these ‘liberal ideas’ (read: common core) nearly impossible to implement successfully. Which is exactly what they want. Raising teacher pay is great, but they’re doing it to hide the fact that they’re throwing teacher autonomy and creativity in the trash.”
Long ago, a wise man gave me good advice about politics: Never underestimate the intelligence of voters, and never overestimate the information they have.
To escape this trap, Democrats need to fill the information gap.