Post by Chris_Wendt on Feb 28, 2011 13:07:20 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/education/25teacher.html
Randi Weingarten is currently President of the American Federation of Teachers, a national union representing 1.5 million people in 3,000 local union affiliates. At a national conference in Washington, DC last week she outlined a vision for tenure reform which would facilitate removal of poor performing teachers from classrooms.
While her outline would go a long way to improving the current situation, it falls far short of what most business people (private sector employers) and parents would find acceptable.
This proposal would allow teachers to be dismissed in 1 year + 100 days, but would still involve the time and expense of arbitrations, and, would not address this issue of retaining poor teachers and furloughing good teachers during a reduction in force.
However, schools should not be waiting for the excuse of a reduction-in-force to deal with poor performance. That is a head-in-the-sand approach that allows 'bad' teaching to fester in a school. Even without reform, there is still (in NY) Section 3020(a) of the Education Law for dealing with poor teacher performance, not to mention the entire 3-year tenure probation and evaluation period which can be used to "weed-out" teachers who are less than the best before they are ever granted tenure.
But to take issue with my own last statement, without a clear definition of good/bad performance in place, no reform and no existing law could possibly be effective at correcting and improving teacher performance.
Just saying....
Chris Wendt
Randi Weingarten is currently President of the American Federation of Teachers, a national union representing 1.5 million people in 3,000 local union affiliates. At a national conference in Washington, DC last week she outlined a vision for tenure reform which would facilitate removal of poor performing teachers from classrooms.
While her outline would go a long way to improving the current situation, it falls far short of what most business people (private sector employers) and parents would find acceptable.
This proposal would allow teachers to be dismissed in 1 year + 100 days, but would still involve the time and expense of arbitrations, and, would not address this issue of retaining poor teachers and furloughing good teachers during a reduction in force.
However, schools should not be waiting for the excuse of a reduction-in-force to deal with poor performance. That is a head-in-the-sand approach that allows 'bad' teaching to fester in a school. Even without reform, there is still (in NY) Section 3020(a) of the Education Law for dealing with poor teacher performance, not to mention the entire 3-year tenure probation and evaluation period which can be used to "weed-out" teachers who are less than the best before they are ever granted tenure.
But to take issue with my own last statement, without a clear definition of good/bad performance in place, no reform and no existing law could possibly be effective at correcting and improving teacher performance.
Just saying....
Chris Wendt