"Stockwell on the Hub" :What’s wrong with teacher tenure?

 

What’s wrong with teacher tenure?

Variations to this are questions like:  Is ANYTHING wrong with teacher tenure? Why do we need teacher tenure?  How did the unions get so powerful?   Well, you get the idea. 

The questions go on and on but at the heart of every one of them is an assumption: poor teachers are the reason why American students are at the bottom of the educational heap .

What else could it be?  Kids in Japan, South Korea, China, Europe—everywhere--are out-performing American kids.  And why is that?  It’s because we have classrooms across the nation loaded with incompetent teachers.  And why are they there?  Because tenure protects them from getting fired, of course.  For Pete’s sake, haven’t you been paying attention!?!

Look at this from a logical point of view.   If  we believe what various print and online media sites are saying, read what bloggers have to say and listen to governors like Connecticut’s  Daniel Malloy and New Jersey’s Chris Christie and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and dozens of other politicians trying to score points, you can’t help but arrive at the conclusion that if we get rid  of tenure, then we get rid of all those awful teachers and replace them with younger, more competent people (oh, and did I mention cheaper people too?), PRESTO, test scores go through the roof and American students are back in the pink. 

What other explanation could there be? 

What, indeed!  Let me present an alternate hypothesis if you will.  First, forget this whole discussion about tenure.  It’s a bunch of BS by a bunch of politicians who are saying what they think you want to hear.  You could completely eliminate tenure and it wouldn’t change a thing.  Yes, of course there are incompetent teachers in classrooms but do you really think there are THAT many that it affects the world rankings of American schools?  That’s ridiculous.   OK, so what is the problem? 

To answer that here are some points to consider:

1. There are a significant number of children in this country who go to school hungry.
2. There are a significant number of children who walk past drug dealers or who have to dodge bullets on their way to school.
3. There are a significant number of children for whom English is a second language (cozy little upscale Newtown is no exception).
4. There are a significant number of children who live in households of a single parent or of violent parents (again, Newtown is no exception). 
5. There are a significant number of children whose parents are uneducated and who have no particular interest in education.
6. In fact as a follow up to number 5 there are all together too many people in American society in general who simply do not value education—at least not to the extent of those of other countries.

In other words to quote the words of that famous little opossum in Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen and politicians and journalists and bloggers and pundits, is what you need to be worrying about.  Not tenure.

In other words this whole issue is not an educational one—it’s cultural and it’s only on that level that we’ll find solutions to these problem. 

But what do you want to bet that all this bluff and bluster about tenure isn’t going away any time soon?  It makes too many headlines.