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JehovahsWitlessMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 4:18pm
Where does students matter $$ come from? A direct attack on tenure of teachers instead of the distribution of the teachers and funding seem like a strange move for a group hoping to make schools better
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  The Noble RenardJehovahsWitless
  4/15/16 4:23pm
  Oh look! It’s a random rich white Silicon Valley guy!
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  purplesuadeshoesThe Noble Renard
  4/15/16 4:28pm
  And I see absolutely nothing that addresses one of the main sources of inequality in schools— taxes. I’m shocked.
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devilsadvocateMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 4:15pm
I work in education and I’ve watched the effects of these “rights” for tenured faculty. They act like entitled asses, they say inappropriate things to both students and staff, they know they have this magical shield that protects them and the education system as a whole suffers. The students were correct and no... to any professors reading this. You aren’t special, if you’ve started dialing it in at work or are inappropriate with students there should be consequences.
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  NonServiam's Ghostdevilsadvocate
  4/15/16 4:18pm
  Ok. Are you willing to pay teachers 30k extra per year then? Remove tenure as one of the attractive features of this profession, and you make it even more precarious and low-rent than it already is.
  
  ETA: I also smell manipulation here. Let’s look at what (right wing?) groups have started and financed this lawsuit. I’m 99% sure the lawyer fees did not come out of the pockets of poor minority students.
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  purplesuadeshoesdevilsadvocate
  4/15/16 4:21pm
  But I’ve also seen that these protections help protect deserving teachers where a school board has taken aim at anyone who isn’t on the “correct” side. Frankly, I’m always skeptical of any group that wants to reduce the tenure rights for those in education. There can be a balance reached, but if (and fingers crossed on this one) salaries ever start rising in the education field— tenure protections are absolutely going to be important.
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stoprobbersMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 5:45pm
I’m 100% with the unions on this one. Unions provide teachers with due process and protections. The “tenure makes teachers lazy” bullshit is exactly that: bullshit. This is just another right wing attack on public education.

Truly, who I feel worst for are the students who have been manipulated by rich right-wingers looking to profit of education into thinking their public school system is against them.

Frankly, I consider K-12 education significantly more important than college. Public school is a right.
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  Das, evil rabbit and obnoxious (half)germanstoprobbers
  4/15/16 6:22pm
  My mom was a teacher for a long time in an affluent school district. Once one of these kids who’s never heard the word “no” accused her of hitting him because she wouldn’t tolerate his bullshit. The union stood behind her until supported her she was proven innocent. Without the teacher’s union that little rich brat would have ruined my mom’s career and reputation. Unions are so, SO important and they do so much good.
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  purplesuadeshoesDas, evil rabbit and obnoxious (half)german
  4/15/16 6:33pm
  Hell, my dad was just involved in the unionization of the support staff and then all of the sudden, he was getting all sorts of evaluations, members of the community/school board dropping by his classroom, and escalating to constant phone calls in the middle of the night. The union was key in providing support— emotionally and legally— so that he could keep his job and get the school board to back off.
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asirenthatcallsailorstotheirdeathMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 4:29pm
I can see both sides of this issue. Most of my older family members all work in union professions. My mom taught in inner-city schools for 32 years and I watched her fight with her union (she was a rep) to keep classroom aides; janitors; general health/retirement benefits; budgets; and prep periods because she knew having all those things helped the teachers actually better support and teach the kids. So when I see an article like this I picture my mother coming home and sitting on the couch with her eyes closed telling me how, once again, “they” are trying to make it harder for her to do her job and easier for them to get rid of her or her benefits without consequences. BUT...I can also see how getting saddled with an asshole that you can’t get rid of because of such protections would be super-frustrating. I still don’t think the answer is getting rid of tenure or union protections—that’s only going to continue to drive the good ones away.
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  purplesuadeshoesasirenthatcallsailorstotheirdeath
  4/15/16 4:34pm
  I have the same experience— my dad was the union rep in his district and fought to unionize the support staff over the protests of the school board. Because of peculiarities of the school district, they basically made his life a living hell and he was forced to take a mental health absence and never truly had the same passion for teaching that he once did. Other colleagues of his just quit instead. I recognize there can be abuse, but tenure protections just make it more difficult—not impossible— to remove a bad apple, but can really help protect those teachers that need it.
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  beep beep i'm a jeepasirenthatcallsailorstotheirdeath
  4/15/16 4:59pm
  Yeah. A race to the bottom is the last thing that public schools need, but it’s exactly what for-profit schools want.
  
  Bringing prestige back to public schools is what I think the healthiest outcome would look like. Tax dollars need to get spent; good schools don’t just randomly happen, and you don’t see well-funded schools tank on their performance.
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CaliforlifeMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 4:55pm
As pointed out elsewhere.... all this goes away when public schools receive the money they need to teach all kids who aren’t in fucking private schools. All those workers you and I depend on every fucking day... the vast majority went to public schools that our taxes pay for... and not enough taxes and not enough rich assholes pay into the system and as a result... public schools are fucked all over the land.. Hey, here’s and idea: All those fucking multi-BILLION dollar college endowments? Make those fuckers pay for public schools... Shit, Stanford, USC, and other Cali colleges alone have 100's of BILLIONS that they sit on while their administrators sit around and hire fucking football coaches to millions, build shit, invest in goldman sach crap.. and... there’s plenty of money, just redistribute it.
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actually_callieMadeleine Davies
4/15/16 5:04pm
“It’s so hard to fire teachers because THE UNION”

Okay, let me be perfectly blunt. I taught for over ten years in a southern state with no public sector unions. So, our teachers weren’t unionized. I was a peer evaluator, which meant that I was on teams with administrators to evaulate new teachers and those deemed in need of improvement. You had to go into classrooms multiple times and observe and actually write down what you see. I was on two teams where crappy teachers got to hang on to their jobs because the PRINCIPAL couldn’t be bothered to take his ass into a classroom and document what was happening, even though I did my part. Frankly, if you can’t take yourself into a classroom two or three days out of a hundred and eighty, you don’t have any business firing anyone. It SHOULD take more effort than simply not liking someone to be able to fire them. If lazy principals would get off their asses (or overworked principals provided more support), and do some paperwork, they might be able to “get rid of” teachers that need it and shut up about the ones that don’t.

I had one principal who HATED me because I would not kiss her ass and I refused to do things that I knew were not in students’ best interest, and she wanted to get rid of me but she couldn’t because I was always doing my job and she couldn’t document a reason I needed to be fired other than “I don’t like her.” I was able to stick around until long after she retired.

ALL tenure means in the K-12 system is that you get due process (a hearing, evidence, etc) and can’t be fired on a whim. It doesn’t mean anything like what it means in college, which is why I wish they would stop calling it tenure.
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