May 05 2009
LA officials, and some teachers, call for a new Education Code
The LA school district (LAUSD) and some of the teachers in the LAUSD are asking the state to let the current Education Code expire, and write a new one. Why? The people involved want to make it easier to fire bad teachers.
There are bad teachers that have tenure in the state public schools and cannot be removed. There are good teachers that get displaced to make room for bad teachers. Tenure isn’t needed for high school teachers, and certainly not for elementary teachers. Tenure was designed to provide a safety net for college professors who were teaching things that went against the establishment, or who presented views in their papers and research that went against the establishment. What high school, or elementary school, teacher needs the same protection? They don’t do research, instead they focus - as they should - on teaching their students the valuable facts needed to graduate. Some of these teachers have to focus on teaching children to read - what possible controversial views are they teaching, showing, or researching while doing that?
Tenure provides job security for teachers. It provides a way for teachers to maintain their job, even if they are not doing a good job. Once a teacher obtains tenure, it is near impossible to get rid of them. Some of these teachers are doing a horrible job. There are some good, tenured teachers, but there are also some bad ones. The schools should have a way to get rid of bad teachers.
The teacher’s union considers teacher tenure to be its sacred cow - nothing should touch it. The teacher’s union is also the group that puts up huge barriers to entry into the teacher’s profession. You must have a year of training - which the teaching candidate gets to pay for - a year of student teaching through an approved program - which the teaching candidate gets to pay for - and pass a bunch of exams. If you want to be an elementary teacher, you must pass the CSET - which means you have to know all subject for all grades, and be tested on them. It is ridiculous. No one knows all that information. Instead, teachers use textbooks to help them out. Making teachers memorize a bunch of facts before they can get their teaching credential is ridiculous. But these are the barriers to entry into the teaching profession. Many more people would like to teach, than can teach, because of these barriers.
The barriers, like tenure, need to be re-written and reconsidered.
