From Failing Schools
by Sabrina
With all the recent attacks on teachers’ due process rights, and on teacher unionism and organizing, continuing reports of retaliation against ethical teachers continue to disturb me. For instance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported on teacher whistleblowers who have been targeted for helping expose local testing scandals there:
His bosses had no trouble dismissing Ryan Abbott’s report of cheating on standardized tests in an Atlanta school. They simply cast him in a self-fulfilling role, Abbott says: “disgruntled teacher.”
Abbott was already on probation, after four years at Benteen Elementary. His students had not posted the big increases in test scores seen in other classrooms. Yet he had the audacity to level charges against a popular colleague. After word of Abbott’s allegations spread through the school, Benteen’s principal opened an ethics case — against him.
“It’s put me in a very difficult spot,” said Abbott, whose job security remains tenuous even though state authorities corroborated his claims of cheating at Benteen. “It’s a tough place to be.”
Abbott’s experience illustrates the perils that befall Atlanta Public Schools teachers who report cheating or other wrongdoing, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.
Miles away in New York City, another teacher shared his story about how unfair evaluations followed his and other teachers’ complaints about an abusive administrator:
As Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Cathie Black are pushing to be able to lay off senior teachers on “merit” grounds, my experience at the Bronx High School of Science raises questions about how teachers’ ratings are handed out.
The national education debate has centered on how to increase “teacher quality.” New York City Chancellor Cathie Black, for example, has called for first laying off teachers who were given “unsatisfactory” (U) ratings (along with those in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool). But there are more than a few cases in New York City that make clear that U-ratings are not always an indication of teacher quality, but sometimes are a result of retaliation against whistle-blowers and union activists.
The recent disciplining of Fordham School of the Arts principal Iris Blige for ordering her assistant principals to U-rate teachers whom she had never seen teach reveals a few important things about the DOE’s process of determining merit. First, U ratings can be arbitrarily ordered by a principal. Second, the penalty from the DOE for doing so is a slap on the wrist — a $7,500 fine for Blige, the same amount charged to teachers who used sick days when they were actually on vacation.
I was unfortunate enough to have witnessed this process firsthand at the Bronx High School of Science. In the fall of 2007, the math department welcomed a new assistant principal, Rosemarie Jahoda. Soon, however, we found that the newer teachers in the department were being subjected to a level of scrutiny and paperwork that was excessive. As soon as I spoke up about the issue, which was my responsibility as a member of a UFT consultation committee that met with the principal, I immediately began receiving unjustified disciplinary letters. These were quickly followed by groundless unsatisfactory lesson observation reports. I had had a spotless teaching record for my entire previous career, including at Bronx Science.
I was not alone. My newer colleagues were warned against speaking to their more senior coworkers. They were reduced to tears in meetings with the AP, and yelled at in front of their students. One was fired; others soon left. Senior teachers were not spared the abuse — one was called “disgusting” by AP Jahoda after speaking up in a department meeting.
As a result, 20 of us (out of a department of 22) filed a harassment grievance in 2008 against our AP and Principal Valerie Reidy. After spending eight full hearing days over the span of one school year, a neutral fact-finder substantiated our complaints, concluding that the “the totality of Jahoda’s treatment of teachers … constitutes harassment.”
The DOE, however, completely dismissed her findings, and has substantiated my U-rating as well as those of some of my colleagues, in its rubber-stamp “appeals” process. As a result, I’ve been forced to turn to the courts for relief. Oral arguments in a lawsuit against the DOE were held this week.
Misinformation about teachers’ job protections, a hostile sociopolitical climate, and the pressure to trim budgets is putting a number of teachers into threatening situations, where their professional livelihoods (and emotional well-being) are concerned. How do we expect to attract and retain talented teachers when so many will face injustice on the job? How can we grow an effective, productive school system when we push out the most ethical, dedicated professionals? How can teachers put students first when we’re busy looking over their shoulders all the time, trying to do incredibly difficult work in toxic, fear-driven school environments? How can we expect students to learn and prosper when the adults around them are bullied and stressed to the brink?
Simple answer: we can’t. Toxic work environments for adults are toxic learning environments for children– it’s impossible to put students first by leaving the people who support them vulnerable to unfair attack. Instead of launching political battles over teachers’ rights, we should be refocusing on building positive cultures in all schools, that ensure teacher quality before teachers take charge of a classroom and support continued professional growth
http://failingschools.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/should-we-un-do-due-process/
Showing posts with label due process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label due process. Show all posts
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Unlike Florida, Wyoming not afraid of Teacher Due Process
Teachers do not have tenure, they have the right to due process which they only earn after proving themselves for thee years. The Florida Legislature is seeking to strip that protection away. -cpg
From the Trib,com
by Joan Barron
CHEYENNE -- After a lively debate, the Wyoming Senate on Tuesday killed a bill on third reading that would have repealed teacher tenure.
While Senate File 52 was defeated by a 28-12 vote, the Senate went on to advance two education and teacher accountability bills.
Senate File 70, education accountability, and Senate File 146, teacher accountability, will come up for third and final Senate votes today.
Supporters of repealing teacher tenure, or continuing-contract status, argued that it is too difficult now to get rid of ineffective teachers who may be partly to blame for subpar student performance scores in a K-12 system that costs the state $1.5 billion per year and pays teachers an average of nearly $59,000 per year.
Opponents said repealing the protection for teachers would discourage students from entering the profession. They also said the move would mean teachers would avoid innovation or doing anything creative that could jeopardize their jobs.
Sen. Hank Coe, R-Cody, the bill's sponsor, said opponents of the bill have been hearing from one side while he believes that 79 to 80 percent of people in the state support getting rid of tenure.
One opponent of the bill, Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Laramie, said it would not have improved the quality of teachers or education.
If the legislators are serious about modifying teacher contracts, they should order an appropriation and pay each teacher $3,000 to become an "at-will" employee, he said.
Nicholas questioned whether the University of Wyoming's College of Education was rigorous enough. He noted that UW students who major in education have some of the lowest ACT scores on campus but graduate from the College of Education with the highest grade-point averages.
This either means the College of Education is turning students into "geniuses" or there is a "lack of rigor" in the department, Nicholas said.
Majority Floor Leader Tony Ross, R-Cheyenne, argued that the Legislature could be exposing itself to a rash of lawsuits if it were to remove the teacher tenure protection. He said the action could be construed by the courts as taking a property right without due process.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said he worked without tenure as an economist for a large company, got along with other employees and did not fear upper management.
"It really does work out there in the real world," Case said.
Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, said the senators who opposed the bill were arguing for the status quo, but the status quo was not helping the school children.
Sen. John Hastert, D-Green River, said the bill would "stifle teachers."
The state, he said, already has a system to get rid of bad teachers.
"This bill is just punitive," said Sen. John Schiffer, R-Kaycee.
"The debate should be about quality teaching," Schiffer said. "This bill is about trying to hammer somebody."
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said the bill had the effect of giving more power to principals and administrators -- a group that also had "bad applies" and was no less accountable for student performance than teachers.
Coe succeeded in delaying the effective date of the bill until July1, 2012. During the interval, he said, work could begin setting up the proposed new accountability programs and clearing up any problems with the tenure repeal bill.
But efforts to save the bill failed.
After the vote, Kathryn Valido, president of the Wyoming Education Association, said the debate was thoughtful "and the senators made a good decision."
"They have options on the floor that offer great accountability and they decided this wasn't the best option," she said after the vote.
The senators, she said, looked at all the unintended consequences of the bill, not just the potential for litigation.
Her organization, she said, likes Senate File 46, the Teacher Accountability Act, because it clearly defines how accountability is measured.
"And that is with good teacher evaluation," Valido said. "That's what we always said we wanted -- good, strong teacher evaluation."
She said the current system of terminating poor teachers has been been in place for 53 years and is effective.
The WEA has been on record of supporting Senate File 70, the Education Accountability Act, from the start, she said.
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/article_b3224066-7ed9-529d-9bb8-1e25733795dc.html
From the Trib,com
by Joan Barron
CHEYENNE -- After a lively debate, the Wyoming Senate on Tuesday killed a bill on third reading that would have repealed teacher tenure.
While Senate File 52 was defeated by a 28-12 vote, the Senate went on to advance two education and teacher accountability bills.
Senate File 70, education accountability, and Senate File 146, teacher accountability, will come up for third and final Senate votes today.
Supporters of repealing teacher tenure, or continuing-contract status, argued that it is too difficult now to get rid of ineffective teachers who may be partly to blame for subpar student performance scores in a K-12 system that costs the state $1.5 billion per year and pays teachers an average of nearly $59,000 per year.
Opponents said repealing the protection for teachers would discourage students from entering the profession. They also said the move would mean teachers would avoid innovation or doing anything creative that could jeopardize their jobs.
Sen. Hank Coe, R-Cody, the bill's sponsor, said opponents of the bill have been hearing from one side while he believes that 79 to 80 percent of people in the state support getting rid of tenure.
One opponent of the bill, Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Laramie, said it would not have improved the quality of teachers or education.
If the legislators are serious about modifying teacher contracts, they should order an appropriation and pay each teacher $3,000 to become an "at-will" employee, he said.
Nicholas questioned whether the University of Wyoming's College of Education was rigorous enough. He noted that UW students who major in education have some of the lowest ACT scores on campus but graduate from the College of Education with the highest grade-point averages.
This either means the College of Education is turning students into "geniuses" or there is a "lack of rigor" in the department, Nicholas said.
Majority Floor Leader Tony Ross, R-Cheyenne, argued that the Legislature could be exposing itself to a rash of lawsuits if it were to remove the teacher tenure protection. He said the action could be construed by the courts as taking a property right without due process.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said he worked without tenure as an economist for a large company, got along with other employees and did not fear upper management.
"It really does work out there in the real world," Case said.
Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, said the senators who opposed the bill were arguing for the status quo, but the status quo was not helping the school children.
Sen. John Hastert, D-Green River, said the bill would "stifle teachers."
The state, he said, already has a system to get rid of bad teachers.
"This bill is just punitive," said Sen. John Schiffer, R-Kaycee.
"The debate should be about quality teaching," Schiffer said. "This bill is about trying to hammer somebody."
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said the bill had the effect of giving more power to principals and administrators -- a group that also had "bad applies" and was no less accountable for student performance than teachers.
Coe succeeded in delaying the effective date of the bill until July1, 2012. During the interval, he said, work could begin setting up the proposed new accountability programs and clearing up any problems with the tenure repeal bill.
But efforts to save the bill failed.
After the vote, Kathryn Valido, president of the Wyoming Education Association, said the debate was thoughtful "and the senators made a good decision."
"They have options on the floor that offer great accountability and they decided this wasn't the best option," she said after the vote.
The senators, she said, looked at all the unintended consequences of the bill, not just the potential for litigation.
Her organization, she said, likes Senate File 46, the Teacher Accountability Act, because it clearly defines how accountability is measured.
"And that is with good teacher evaluation," Valido said. "That's what we always said we wanted -- good, strong teacher evaluation."
She said the current system of terminating poor teachers has been been in place for 53 years and is effective.
The WEA has been on record of supporting Senate File 70, the Education Accountability Act, from the start, she said.
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/article_b3224066-7ed9-529d-9bb8-1e25733795dc.html
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Teachers right to due process under attack
From the New York Times
By TRIP GABRIEL and SAM DILLON
Seizing on a national anxiety over poor student performance, many governors are taking aim at a bedrock tradition of public schools: teacher tenure.
The momentum began over a year ago with President Obama’s call to measure and reward effective teaching, a challenge he repeated in last week’s State of the Union address.
Now several Republican governors have concluded that removing ineffective teachers requires undoing the century-old protections of tenure.
Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure. As state legislatures convene this winter, anti-tenure bills are being written in those states and others. Their chances of passing have risen because of crushing state budget deficits that have put teachers’ unions on the defensive.
“It’s practically impossible to remove an underperforming teacher under the system we have now,” said Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, lamenting that his state has the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation.
Eliminating tenure, Mr. Sandoval said, would allow school districts to dismiss teachers based on competence, not seniority, in the event of layoffs.
Politics also play a role.
“These new Republican governors are all trying to outreform one another,” said Michael Petrilli, an education official under President George W. Bush.
In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has campaigned aggressively for the state to end “last in, first out” protections for teachers. Warning that thousands of young educators face layoffs, Mr. Bloomberg is demanding that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo scrap the seniority law if the budget he will unveil Tuesday includes state cuts to education.
Teachers’ unions have responded to the assault on the status quo by arguing that all the ire directed at bad teachers distorts the issue.
“Why aren’t governors standing up and saying, ‘In our state, we’ll devise a system where nobody will ever get into a classroom who isn’t competent’?” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. “Instead they are saying, ‘Let’s make it easy to fire teachers.’ That’s the wrong goal.”
Tenure laws were originally passed — New Jersey was first in 1909 — to protect teachers from being fired because of race, sex, political views or cronyism.
Public-school teachers typically earn tenure after two or three years on probation. Once they receive it, they have a right to due-process hearings before dismissal, which in many districts makes it expensive and time-consuming to fire teachers considered ineffective. Tenure also brings seniority protections in many districts.
In recent years, research on the importance of teacher quality has sparked a movement to evaluate teachers on how well students are learning — with implications that undermine tenure.
The movement gained momentum with the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant contest last year. Eleven states enacted laws to link student achievement to teacher evaluations and, in some cases, to pay and job security, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
Now some politicians and policy makers have concluded that if teachers owe their jobs to professional performance, then tenure protections are obsolete.
The former school chancellor of Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee, who campaigned against tenure as early as 2007, has made abolishing it a cornerstone of a new advocacy group, Students First, which has advised the governors of Florida, Nevada and New Jersey.
All are Republicans, but Ms. Rhee, a Democrat, insisted that the movement was bipartisan.
“There’s a willingness to confront these issues that has never before been in play,” she said, noting that some influential Democratic mayors, including Cory A. Booker in Newark and Antonio R. Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, have also called for making it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers.
In a speech in December, Mr. Villaraigosa — who once worked as a teachers union organizer — said, “Tenure and seniority must be reformed or we will be left with only one option: eliminating it entirely.”
The two national teachers’ unions insist that they, too, favor some degree of reform. The American Federation of Teachers endorsed a sweeping law in Colorado last year that lets administrators remove even tenured teachers who are consistently rated as ineffective.
Many teachers who accept linking job security to their effectiveness still want to require administrators to present any evidence against them in a hearing, which critics of tenure like Ms. Rhee say is unnecessary.
Ada Beth Cutler, dean of the education college at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said, “One of the fears I hear from teachers is that in these tough budget times, what’s going to stop someone from firing someone at the top of the pay scale?”
Mr. Van Roekel of the National Education Association labels tenure laws “fair dismissal laws” that protect from arbitrary firing.
“In all my years in education I don’t remember a time when there was this much concerted effort to eliminate fair dismissal laws,” he said.
In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie, whose combativeness with the teachers’ union has buoyed his national reputation, appears to have a good chance of getting a bill from the Democratic-controlled Legislature that reshapes tenure.
Under a pair of bills moving through the Indiana General Assembly, teachers would have to earn “professional” status based on evaluations tied to student learning, and their collective bargaining would be limited to salary, not seniority rules.
“Most of these reforms would have been dead on arrival” last year, said Tony Bennett, the Indiana superintendent of public instruction.
Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana has said that “teachers should have tenure,” but the bills introduced by his fellow Republicans call for teachers’ traditional protections to be sharply reduced.
It is similar in Florida, where lawmakers plan to reprise an anti-tenure bill from last year that provoked such an outpouring from teachers that the moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist, vetoed it.
That is unlikely under the new Republican governor, Rick Scott, who told the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce last month: “Good teachers know they don’t need tenure. There is no reason to have it except to protect those that don’t perform as they should.”
And in Idaho, Gov. C. L. Otter, a Republican, presented an education plan last month that said bluntly, “The state will phase out tenure.”
Idaho’s schools superintendent, Tom Luna, argued that the plan would not subject teachers to arbitrary dismissal.
Mr. Van Roekel of the teachers’ union disagreed. Recounting a story that had the burnish of something told many times, he recalled that around 1980, when he was a union leader in Arizona, he had arranged to have a speech pathologist assess a teacher whom a principal was trying to fire because of a speech impediment. The pathologist determined that the teacher had a New York accent.
“She would say ‘ideer,’ instead of ‘idea,’ ” Mr. Van Roekel said. “The principal thought that was a speech impediment. Without a fair dismissal law, that principal could have fired her arbitrarily, without citing any reason.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01tenure.html?_r=1&hpw
By TRIP GABRIEL and SAM DILLON
Seizing on a national anxiety over poor student performance, many governors are taking aim at a bedrock tradition of public schools: teacher tenure.
The momentum began over a year ago with President Obama’s call to measure and reward effective teaching, a challenge he repeated in last week’s State of the Union address.
Now several Republican governors have concluded that removing ineffective teachers requires undoing the century-old protections of tenure.
Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure. As state legislatures convene this winter, anti-tenure bills are being written in those states and others. Their chances of passing have risen because of crushing state budget deficits that have put teachers’ unions on the defensive.
“It’s practically impossible to remove an underperforming teacher under the system we have now,” said Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, lamenting that his state has the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation.
Eliminating tenure, Mr. Sandoval said, would allow school districts to dismiss teachers based on competence, not seniority, in the event of layoffs.
Politics also play a role.
“These new Republican governors are all trying to outreform one another,” said Michael Petrilli, an education official under President George W. Bush.
In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has campaigned aggressively for the state to end “last in, first out” protections for teachers. Warning that thousands of young educators face layoffs, Mr. Bloomberg is demanding that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo scrap the seniority law if the budget he will unveil Tuesday includes state cuts to education.
Teachers’ unions have responded to the assault on the status quo by arguing that all the ire directed at bad teachers distorts the issue.
“Why aren’t governors standing up and saying, ‘In our state, we’ll devise a system where nobody will ever get into a classroom who isn’t competent’?” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. “Instead they are saying, ‘Let’s make it easy to fire teachers.’ That’s the wrong goal.”
Tenure laws were originally passed — New Jersey was first in 1909 — to protect teachers from being fired because of race, sex, political views or cronyism.
Public-school teachers typically earn tenure after two or three years on probation. Once they receive it, they have a right to due-process hearings before dismissal, which in many districts makes it expensive and time-consuming to fire teachers considered ineffective. Tenure also brings seniority protections in many districts.
In recent years, research on the importance of teacher quality has sparked a movement to evaluate teachers on how well students are learning — with implications that undermine tenure.
The movement gained momentum with the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant contest last year. Eleven states enacted laws to link student achievement to teacher evaluations and, in some cases, to pay and job security, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
Now some politicians and policy makers have concluded that if teachers owe their jobs to professional performance, then tenure protections are obsolete.
The former school chancellor of Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee, who campaigned against tenure as early as 2007, has made abolishing it a cornerstone of a new advocacy group, Students First, which has advised the governors of Florida, Nevada and New Jersey.
All are Republicans, but Ms. Rhee, a Democrat, insisted that the movement was bipartisan.
“There’s a willingness to confront these issues that has never before been in play,” she said, noting that some influential Democratic mayors, including Cory A. Booker in Newark and Antonio R. Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, have also called for making it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers.
In a speech in December, Mr. Villaraigosa — who once worked as a teachers union organizer — said, “Tenure and seniority must be reformed or we will be left with only one option: eliminating it entirely.”
The two national teachers’ unions insist that they, too, favor some degree of reform. The American Federation of Teachers endorsed a sweeping law in Colorado last year that lets administrators remove even tenured teachers who are consistently rated as ineffective.
Many teachers who accept linking job security to their effectiveness still want to require administrators to present any evidence against them in a hearing, which critics of tenure like Ms. Rhee say is unnecessary.
Ada Beth Cutler, dean of the education college at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said, “One of the fears I hear from teachers is that in these tough budget times, what’s going to stop someone from firing someone at the top of the pay scale?”
Mr. Van Roekel of the National Education Association labels tenure laws “fair dismissal laws” that protect from arbitrary firing.
“In all my years in education I don’t remember a time when there was this much concerted effort to eliminate fair dismissal laws,” he said.
In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie, whose combativeness with the teachers’ union has buoyed his national reputation, appears to have a good chance of getting a bill from the Democratic-controlled Legislature that reshapes tenure.
Under a pair of bills moving through the Indiana General Assembly, teachers would have to earn “professional” status based on evaluations tied to student learning, and their collective bargaining would be limited to salary, not seniority rules.
“Most of these reforms would have been dead on arrival” last year, said Tony Bennett, the Indiana superintendent of public instruction.
Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana has said that “teachers should have tenure,” but the bills introduced by his fellow Republicans call for teachers’ traditional protections to be sharply reduced.
It is similar in Florida, where lawmakers plan to reprise an anti-tenure bill from last year that provoked such an outpouring from teachers that the moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist, vetoed it.
That is unlikely under the new Republican governor, Rick Scott, who told the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce last month: “Good teachers know they don’t need tenure. There is no reason to have it except to protect those that don’t perform as they should.”
And in Idaho, Gov. C. L. Otter, a Republican, presented an education plan last month that said bluntly, “The state will phase out tenure.”
Idaho’s schools superintendent, Tom Luna, argued that the plan would not subject teachers to arbitrary dismissal.
Mr. Van Roekel of the teachers’ union disagreed. Recounting a story that had the burnish of something told many times, he recalled that around 1980, when he was a union leader in Arizona, he had arranged to have a speech pathologist assess a teacher whom a principal was trying to fire because of a speech impediment. The pathologist determined that the teacher had a New York accent.
“She would say ‘ideer,’ instead of ‘idea,’ ” Mr. Van Roekel said. “The principal thought that was a speech impediment. Without a fair dismissal law, that principal could have fired her arbitrarily, without citing any reason.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01tenure.html?_r=1&hpw
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