Cali lawsuit overturns K-12 tenure in CA

Parent Cafe
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<p>Can you tell why not?</p>

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<p>I think the bright teachers can open the whole new world to students. The higher the better.</p>

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<p>I do not want my children to be taught by the best and brightest subject matter experts. I want my children to be taught by the brightest pedagogical experts with the solid knowledge of the subject matter they teach and enthusiasm for teaching. I bet it is the latter best and brightest that coolweather was talking about.</p>

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<p>^ Yes. Thanks for clarification.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately, more students majoring in education is partly what brought the slow but tangible decline in education. There is a place for pedagogical experts, but not throughout the K-12. Countries who have understood the need to reward the mastery of subjects and RESTRICT the access to the profession through only hiring qualified and well-trained teachers are now reaping the rewards. The US has simply gone in the opposite direction by culling its future educators from the worst students who graduate from the least performing colleges aka schools of education, and later pursue even worse graduate degrees. </p>

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<p>I would go one step further than banning tenure: outlaw all public employee unions. It’s a rigged system where the unions bribe (campaign contributions) the politicians in exchange for a variety of benefits like defined benefit pension plans and dysfunctional civil service rules. The politicians and the public employees are winners in this system while the taxpayers get the short end of the stick. </p>

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<p>Room For Debate topic today is teacher tenure. </p>

<p><a href=“Protections of Teacher Tenure Do Not Hurt Students - NYTimes.com”>http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/11/does-tenure-protect-bad-teachers-or-good-schools/protections-of-teacher-tenure-do-not-hurt-students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I’d rather them do research into how kids should be taught than do the teaching themselves. Seems like a waste to have them teach a class of 2nd graders when they can change the way all 2nd graders can be taught for the better. </p>

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<p>Can someone please explain to me how getting rid of tenure will bring in good teachers to poor schools? I just don’t get the logic. What would be the driving force?</p>

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<p>I am not talking about training PhD in Education here. We already have too many theorists in this country.</p>

<p>I am talking about 4-5 year teacher training program for students after HS or 2-3 year program for students with some years in college. I don’t want to see someone who does not have critical reasoning, creativity, and passion with some teaching credentials granted by some university extension program to teach the kids. My neighbor got some teaching credentials after she was laid off by a bank and became a teacher. She prefers to be a substitute teacher because she does not have to show any responsibility in the class room.</p>

<p>Some other countries have better teacher training.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-teacher-and-principal-quality/[/url]”>http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-teacher-and-principal-quality/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Well, it will make it possible to get rid of the slackers who show movies and just turn up every day for life because that’s the deal. Or, at least make those people (there are a lot of them) recognize that they have a job to do and performance matters in some way. It’s no different from what happens in the real world. In other words, a plumber cannot just make continuous house calls for life with guaranteed wage increases, benefits, and job security. He or she will also being expected to unclog the drains or find himself unemployed.</p>

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<p>Yes, there are lots of fat to trim: unions, school boards,…</p>

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<p>The PhD in Education are not your problem. The sea of regular teachers who graduated from awful colleges of education with generalists degrees is the issue. Schools reward pedagogy over subject mastery. </p>

<p>You pointed to the example of Finland. Their approach could not be more different from ours. All teachers have to master a subject and the selection in their advanced programs is highly competitive. The US in comparison looks at the lowest level of potential teachers with low scores in college and the lowest GRE. </p>

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<p>^ They why we need training reform in various disciplines: training contents, candidate selection,…</p>

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<p>We do indeed need a complete overhaul of the system with increased training of teachers culled from much better programs. This will take a long time as the entrance to the profession is a low hanging fruit for the least accomplished candidates. The current tenure system ensures --and needs-- the maintenance of a tiered wage system that underplays the young and overplays the most senior educators to balance the averages. </p>

<p>The system needs to be able to offer higher wages, treat educators as true professionals, and in exchange expect professional performances and an extended workload based on a full week and full year terms. Better qualifications, better pay, and … fewer teachers who work longer hours than the ridiculously low conditions extorted by the CBA over the past decades. </p>

<p>Tenure has encouraged the more money for less work conundrum that plagues the entire public education system. Until it goes completely, there are no real chances to improve the abysmal current situation. </p>

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<p>When a teacher shows movie day after day where is the administration? If they told the teacher not to show movies again and documented that in written form why would the teacher not be charged with insubordination if they showed movies again? That would be the initial step of progressive discipline. </p>

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<p>They are probably in a meeting to discuss the agenda for the offsite meeting they are planning to have on a topic that they haven’t figured out yet.</p>

<p>In some states, the administrators also have tenure.</p>

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<p>And yet some do give up all those benefits in order to teach our kids, and thank goodness for them. As their reward they are overworked, underpaid, and blamed for everything that’s wrong with our educational system. And they are resented for the one benefit they do have. And then you wonder why there’s a shortage of “good” teachers. </p>

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<p>While some of that maybe true, ‘underpaid’ sure does not fit the bill, at least in California.</p>

<p>Median income of teachers in our district is ~$100k. (Yes, many work long hours, but they have great benefits, PTO (holidays, vacation, sick), and pension, all of which far exceed private industry.)</p>

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<p>Right? This underpaid myth has always bugged me. When I volunteered at my kids elementary school the parents committee wanted to spend part of the budget to buy sandwich’s for the teachers. Well, that money was supposed to be spent on the students. Not to mention the teachers were easily making plenty more than most of the parent volunteers. My daughter’s best teacher by far freely admitted that she went into teaching because she was a stay-at-home mom who decided it was time she get a career. She put in 20 years between 40 or 60 and is retiring. Not a bad deal, really.</p>

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<p>Here is teacher salary stats:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp[/url]”>http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If we need to recruit brighter teachers then we need to pay more.</p>