Opinion: Tenure rules should be tweaked, but gently
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
BY DAVID B. PUSHKIN
THE RECORD
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/op-ed/tenure_083110.html
David B. Pushkin of East Rutherford is a research consultant with the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia and chairman of the American Chemical Society’s subdivision for chemists with disabilities.
REGARDING “Calls mount for a N.J. tenure system based on teacher skills” and “New efforts to evaluate teachers,” The Record, Aug. 22):
Having taught at the secondary and college levels since 1984, I’m of two minds regarding teacher tenure and the removal from the classroom and dismissal of ineffective educators. On one hand, it is vital that school systems dismiss incompetent and abusive educators. On the other hand, there’s the question: “What defines effectiveness?”
In my 2001 book, Teacher training: A reference handbook (ABC-CLIO Publishers), I discussed the historical background, as well as inherent pros and cons of teacher tenure. I also devoted much space discussing foundation building for effective life-long educators, as well as how to evaluate them.
The key premise is that every educator is an intellectual individual with his and her own baseline perspective of what the teaching-learning process looks like. Extensive educational research has shown it takes approximately three to five years for educators to evolve and develop their pedagogical approach, and yet tenure is awarded at the early end of that development process.
What does this mean? Tenure could very well be given to an educator who is still developing and possibly not for the better. While this may be the exception rather than the rule, it does raise the question as to the wisdom of awarding tenure after three years of classroom service as opposed to four.
Let’s not stick our heads in the sand about tenure. There’s a very good reason to keep the tenure system, albeit in tweaked form. While tenure protects jobs, educators still need protection from politics — not theirs, but the politics of others.
Teachers targeted
Throughout my career I have witnessed educators become targets of students, parents, colleagues and superiors for their own teaching practices simply because they differed from the dominant culture. It didn’t matter if the teaching practices were effective or ineffective. Education (public, private or parochial/religious) in general is resistant to significant change. Any educator who sticks out is at risk, because a system at rest tends to remain at rest, and education systems follow the laws of motion in a desire to maintain the status quo.
As we look around us, we see a nation that seeks to quash differences more than celebrate them, and for all the anti-bias legislation on the books, the sad reality is that education systems do discriminate, be it towards one’s ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation or physical ability.
But the decision on when to award tenure underlies the main flaw in almost every effort by state and local officials to improve teaching and school quality: one-size-fits-all policies. Why must all educators receive tenure after three years, or four or five?
Perhaps it might make more sense to work with a sliding scale and award tenure when an educator is clearly ready to earn it. If an educator can’t earn tenure after five years, perhaps that’s a sign he or she needs to consider leaving the profession?
How do we evaluate for effectiveness? While most legislative concerns focus on the elementary grades and statewide assessments, the outcome is a more generic one-size-fits-all policy that is imposed on middle and high school educators. This is very myopic.
Knowing what works and where
As a chemistry and physics educator, I know that what “works” in my learning environment doesn’t necessarily work for all chemistry or physics educators, or math educators, or history educators, or educators working with tweens, or educators working with young children.
And yet, New Jersey, just like many other states, insists on creating policies that directly contradict years of educational research. Why?
Because it’s more convenient and efficient. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s effective.
I’m all for reform, I’m all for making the teaching profession better, and I’m all for seeing our state’s schools be the best they can become. But not at the expense of supporting professional development across the spectrum of individual educators who serve a spectrum of learners, age groups and academic subjects.
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