(This is a bit of technical issue, but I have tried to keep discussion brief; also I have added some lighter moments with pictures of teachers we all remember from television and film.)
Teacher tenure is a fundamental feature of the American education system. After proving herself or himself capable, the idea goes, a teacher receives an effective, permanent job guarantee. (All states allow for the removal of ineffective teachers in theory, but in fact this almost never happens.)
The arguments for tenure are based on fairness. Schools, like other work environments, have internal politics. Factions form and battle each other. Sometimes the most productive performer threatens the larger group and is pushed out. A bad principal can reward friends and punish perceived enemies.
The belief is that tenure promotes harmony in a school, which benefits the students.
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| Cameron Tucker in Modern Family |
California has one of the shortest teacher probation periods in the country -- until mid March of a new teacher's second year on the job, or after 16 months in the classroom. This does not allow the evaluation of even two full years of student learning results under a probationary teacher's care.
Most states require probationary periods of three full years, and the trend seems to be for longer probations still.
Both sides in Vergara seem to agree that good teachers grow in the job and often do not hit their professional strides until they have been at it for five to seven years.
The Vergara lawyers brought in one former superintendent, Jonathan Richmond, who ran the Sacramento school district from 2009 to 2013. He said the short probationary period did not allow a principal enough time to evaluate fully a teacher's in-classroom manner or to gather the impressions of other teachers and parents.
In Sacramento, Richmond said, "We had a number of inefficient or grossly inefficient teachers who had been given permanent status because of time limits under the statute."
On the other side, the defense called Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. He made an economic case for the California tenure law.
"Drawing out the decision longer...makes the job less attractive to potential teachers and so requires an offsetting increase in salary to hire the same number of teachers," Rothstein said.
This is the sort of position an economist would make, but I find it hard to credit. If California extended the tenure period, where would the teachers go? Few states offer better terms. In fact, most arguments put forward by teacher unions in any situation (and California's two teacher unions have joined the state in this case), boil down to demands for more money, lots more money, with no promise of better results. This is not so true of individual teachers.
Another defense witness, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond said a shorter probationary period was long enough to identify ineffective teachers and get them out of classrooms, thus protecting students.
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| Edna Krabappel in The Simpsons |
In the past, the Los Angeles school district (LAUSD) seems to have been overly casual about tenure. Only one percent of probationary teachers were denied tenure in any given year.
(I find this remarkable. If I were an employer deciding how many of 100 employees deserved permanent job status, I'm pretty sure I would choose fewer than the top 99.
Many businesses -- which never offer permanent status to anyone -- routinely fire the lowest-performing three percent to 10 percent of their employees every single year. And, when you think about it, teaching is a more important job than working for a big company.)
Since a new superintendent, John Deasy, arrived in 2011, Los Angeles has tightened up its tenure decisions. Now, about 50 percent of new teachers are asked to leave the district after one year or at the end of the pre-tenure period.
A big point: It seems possible that LAUSD has replaced a too-lenient tenure posture (that had bad results for children) with an excess of caution that, paired with the state's brief tenure statute, doesn't give new teachers much of chance.
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| Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love |
Tenure in New York City
In 2006, New York, like Los Angeles, awarded tenure to 99 percent of probationary teachers after three years in the classroom. Any teacher rated "satisfactory" was given tenure in the city.
Then the system changed. Probationary teachers were sorted into four categories: highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. To achieve tenure, teachers had to be rated effective or highly effective for two consecutive years.
The district also reserved the right to defer tenure decisions on any teacher for an extra year or years.
In 2010, 89 percent of probationary teachers were tenured after 3 years on the job. The percentage dropped to 58 percent in 2011 and 55 percent in 2012.
Most of the non-tenured teachers were deferred.
"It's not that they are bad," New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg said. "It's that they are not up to our standards yet."
As many as one third of the deferred-tenure teachers ultimately are dismissed.
Again, it seems as if a school district's wariness about tenure may be causing it to let go of promising new entrants in the teaching profession.
A seasoned teacher of my acquaintance says that today's education graduates are much better prepared than those in the past. If many of them are dismissed early, where will school districts find the excellent teachers of the future?
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