by Andrew Veselka Staff Reporter _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ It is commonly acknowledged that if a person is bad at their job, he or she should not do it. The only way to get quality results out of any occupation is by making sure the person responsible has the skills necessary to complete the tasks at hand. If not, then odds are the person will inevitably fail at his or her duty. This fact is generally accepted by most societies and is one of the main reasons most of our institutions function so successfully. This is why it is so difficult to comprehend the position of the American public school system. This system, vital to the future of the nation, is almost completely unable to accomplish something fundamental in the progress of any organization: the ability to fire bad employees. This illogical restriction is due to tenure, the lifeblood of the entire teaching industry. Tenure is basically job security run amok. The idea behind it is that after two or three years of teaching, a teacher should be able to gain security from unjust unemployment by making it harder for the school system to fire him or her. What it has resulted in, however, is a system in which it is so unbelievably time-consuming and expensive to fire poor teachers that most schools have stopped trying. It is so costly, in fact, that the amount of teachers fired from public schools in cities across the country hovers at close to zero percent. Of course, there are alternatives to this system. One such idea is charter schools, which require more work from truly skilled teachers but for much better pay. These schools have already proven to be effective in inner-city school systems, producing 85% graduation rates where flunking out used to be the norm. Another solution is merit-based pay, in which teachers are evaluated according to how well they interact with their students and, as a result, may be fired or receive a monetary bonus for their efforts. What makes these solutions better than the tenure system is that they are able to reward teachers who are doing well while simultaneously weeding out those who are not. In contrast, the tenure system only provides raises on the basis of seniority and is sometimes forced to lay off quality teachers who have not yet acquired tenure. So what is stopping the educational system from abolishing this absurd rule? It is the teacher unions: highly financed, highly organized, massive organizations, and the most powerful political force in American education. Although they claim that they wish to improve the school system and produce smarter students, it is obvious by their actions what they truly care about. Ever since educational reform has been proposed, they have fought tooth and nail against it, even if it is their students that pay the price. Take, for example, the New Jersey Education Association, which in 2008 opposed a tremendously popular bill that would provide students with scholarships allowing them to escape failing classrooms. Another example is the Washington Teachers Union, which in 1992 encouraged teachers from the district to ignore a policy change converting half an hour of preparation time into instructional time. When the district stood strong, the teachers sent letters to the parents threatening that if they did not take the union’s side on the issue, they would refuse to write college acceptance letters for their children, a job not actually mandatory in public education. The real problem, however, is not with the few unions who care more about their time and money than their students. It lies in the unions as a whole, who refuse to accept that school reform is the way of the future and are using all of their political power to stall it. Nevertheless, there are reforms already implemented despite their resistance. Possibly the most prominent advocate of reform at the moment is the Obama administration, which only a few months ago implemented its “Race to the Top” program, giving large grants to states that reform their public education systems. Only Tennessee and Florida have won part of the four billion dollars of grant money so far, but the program has inspired other states to make changes in their school systems as well. A more difficult victory was just won in Washington D.C., where Michelle Rhee, chancellor of one of the worst performing school districts in the nation, persuaded the Washington Teachers Union to agree to abolish tenure in favor of the merit-based pay system after two years of negotiating with the unions. Many teachers claim that education reform is just another example of people no longer respecting their instructors. Granted, every profession deserves the support of at least one union; teacher unions do offer valuable job security in an underappreciated field. However, when unions put the jobs of truly terrible educators above the future of students and the nation as a whole, can they honestly say that it is the children they are looking out for? |