Teacher tenure upheld in California

Teacher tenure is a complex issue that deserves serious discussion.

But this is SJ.com, so ... DON'T HATE TEACHERS BECAUSE THEY HAVE UNIONS! And ... CLOSE ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND LET THE PRIVATE SECTOR EDUCATE CHILDREN!

#deepdiscussion

 

Holy shit, it's uncanny.

 

And your response--where you concede the theory is weak--is precisely what I was attempting to elicit.

 

I wish teachers would show the same benevolence and selflessness found in droves throughout the rest of the American economy.

 

The union is there to protect teacher's jobs. That doesn't mean it is all they care about, but how exactly do you protect only good teachers' jobs given that we don't really have a good set of criteria for determining who fits that description?

If the union isn't going to protect its membership, it has no reason to exist. I doubt anybody with a clue thinks that will raise the quality of education in this country. And yes, I know exactly what I am insinuating by making the statement that way.

As Cran pointed out, unions also push for teachers to have the support necessary to do their jobs well. This means funding for educational programs and materials and it also means things such as prep time and class sizes.

 

Said nobody on this thread.

 

Actually, "said everyone who supports tenure for teachers" would be 100% accurate.

 

Public education suffers from underfunding, particularly in the poorest districts that need the most resources, and an across-the-board shortage of teachers.

But the biggest reason public school students aren't performing as well as we'd all like is plain old poverty.

Blaming teachers solves none of these problems, but it does help shift more public money into the hands of the hedge fund folks who are betting on privatization.

 

The righties are becoming less and less reluctant to expose their real agenda: to get rid of public education completely.

 

Find one example. I certainly have never said such a thing. There is a hell of a lot of room between ditching the entire system, which is what you seem to want, and trying to make necessary improvements.

 

That there's a trade off -- between the risk of not protecting good teachers enough and that of protecting the bad ones too much -- is pretty much the only reasonable answer. Your intellectual honesty is appreciated.

I might offer (and I hope this is clever enough for cranberry's rarefied palate) that the real risk involves the difference between the bad and the merely not-bad. Hash that up and you really do run up against some existential staffing questions, because we absolutely need the merely not-bad in there doing their thing.

 

Believe it or not, there should be a place for a 50-year-old 25-year teacher doing a C+ job.

Not every single teacher can do an A+++ job every year.