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Ongoing NC GOP debacle thread

i think the new Berger plan passes constitutional muster. The teachers can choose to keep tenure or trade it in for higher pay. They are not being forced to give it up, and if they do give it up they get substantial compensation. the old plan was constitutionally ludicrous - everyone lost tenure, and the top 5% of teachers (arbitrarily determined) got a small raise.
 
To reward the best performing teachers with job security. In turn, that makes it less likely that they'll leave.
 
I would imagine it has a lot to do with not being fired for idea. For example, a teacher 60 years ago teaching about evolution.
 
Tenure is currently granted to every teacher after 4 years on the job, I believe. It basically is just a statute that says a teacher can be fired only for a specified list of offenses (which are pretty broad and include incompetence and insubordination), and has the right to notice and a hearing. Basic due process.

My personal feeling is that it's a relic and there's no real reason for it to remain in public schools. HOWEVER, I have an important caveat to that.

I generally feel that in urban school systems, there is a pretty high degree of administrative professionalism and plenty of opportunities for teacher to move to a different school but still close enough to her home if she has an irreconcilable conflict with her supervisors. If I was a teacher in most urban systems I'd probably give up tenure and take the higher pay.

the situation may be different in rural systems, which of course is most systems in NC (90 out of 100 counties probably). These systems are small and there may be an element of the good ol' boy system, with hiring and firing favoritism going to friends and family to the disadvantage of teachers who are outside the network. A teacher who is fired in a remote mountain county may not be able to find another job in that system at all, and might have to relocate or accept a really bad commute to get another job. If I was a teacher in a county like that, keeping the tenure for lower pay might be a rational decision.
 
I understand that academic freedom does not apply in public schools 'till college level. Seems to me there is no valid reason for tenure.
The community college system in NC has no tenure.
 
Tenure does prevent nutjob principals from attempting to turn over therir entire instruction staff and hiring a bunch of their friends, qualified or not.
 
BiffTannen said:
Tenure does prevent nutjob principals from attempting to turn over therir entire instruction staff and hiring a bunch of their friends, qualified or not.
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The answer is to hold principals accountable for their personnel decisions. My boss or your boss could do the same thing, but when his unqualified friends shit the bed, he knows he'll get fired. So he doesn't.
 
Deacon923 said:
The answer is to hold principals accountable for their personnel decisions. My boss or your boss could do the same thing, but when his unqualified friends shit the bed, he knows he'll get fired. So he doesn't.
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But getting back to your example of small county school systems with one or two high schools, two or three middle schools, and four or five elementary schools, you can't be so sure.
 
Deacon923 said:
The answer is to hold principals accountable for their personnel decisions. My boss or your boss could do the same thing, but when his unqualified friends shit the bed, he knows he'll get fired. So he doesn't.
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I'd rather not ruin a kid's school year with cronyism on the hopes that such a principal will get the message.
 
BiffTannen said:
But getting back to your example of small county school systems with one or two high schools, two or three middle schools, and four or five elementary schools, you can't be so sure.
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that's why i made it a caveat. Even in those situations I'm not sure that it's a very big threat these days. Good teachers don't grow on trees and principals and superintendents everywhere are under pressure to deliver test scores.
 
PhDeac said:
I'd rather not ruin a kid's school year with cronyism on the hopes that such a principal will get the message.
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The flip side of that is I'd rather not ruin a kid's school year because it's too hard to get rid of a roadblock teacher.
 
I think the unfortunate thing in a lot of those counties is that the only reason the teachers stick around despite the poor pay is their tenure and their retirement benefits.

Doesn't the proposed system ultimately reward the school system or principal for containing costs by sunsetting older teachers and replacing them with cheaper newer versions? What's to keep a school system from getting rid of its highest paid teachers in favor or recent college grads from UNC-Pembroke?
 
Deacon923 said:
The flip side of that is I'd rather not ruin a kid's school year because it's too hard to get rid of a roadblock teacher.
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You're talking about fewer kids than I'm talking about.

You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater by weakening job security for all teachers in order to get rid of the worst teachers, thus making the jobs less appealing. The standards by which teachers are fired should be clear and specific. How do you propose doing that?
 
"bad teachers" and voter fraud are both phantom political issues for conservative assholes to bitch about. Incompetence is still a firable offense for tenured school teachers, and there are still teaching and testing standards to measure competence.
 
Where is the evidence that cronyism is a bigger problem than bad teachers? Anecdotally, I think there may be some cronyism in small districts. Anecdotally, I also know that sorry teachers tend to get shuffled around school systems because it's a hassle to fire them, and principals would rather shuffle them off somewhere else than do the paperwork/go to a hearing. Hard to say which is the worse problem. Academic freedom is not the issue here; teachers acknowledge that it's about job security. Bottom line, they want to be harder to fire than people in the private sector. Why is that?
 
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