E-mail avalanche saves tenure in Florida
April 22, 2010 by Jake SimmsPosted in: Internet
Near-bankrupt cities and states are pushing for fights with the teachers’ unions. But the unions may have an ace up their sleeves:
E-mail.
Two weeks ago, Florida Governor Charlie Crist supported ending tenure and making public school teachers work on one-year, renewable contracts. GOP lawmakers passed legislation that would do just that and sent it to Crist’s desk.
Then Crist declared he’d approve or veto the legislation according to the public’s wishes.
Well … teachers’ union members, livid about half their salaries depending on students’ standardized test scores, did just that.
They e-mailed tens of thousands of complaints. Crist’s office says 58,000 out of about 60,000 e-mail messages it read urged Crist to veto the legislation. Result: Crist folded and vetoed the law.
Next battleground: New York City?
Now some New York City school principals want tenure “tweaked” so they can fire underperforming veteran teachers instead of non-tenured ones. Two Democratic state lawmakers are sympathetic and are proposing legislation that would end seniority privilege for teachers.
At least 8,500 teachers could be laid off because the city’s in deep debt.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken on the teachers’ union before. But who knows if he’ll bend under pressure like Charlie Crist did?
Here’s one place Bloomberg should start cutting: the teachers in New York’s infamous Rubber Room.
We’d love to hear your opinion, sound off in the comments section.
Tags: Charlie Crist, e-mail, Florida, michael bloomberg, new york city, rubber room, teachers unions, tenure
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April 23rd, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Long Island teachers make 100k when they retire and that is nonsense. Our money is going to overpaid slackers for the most part that you can do nothing to. Get off your butts and teach. Make HW for HOME!!!! There are some that deserve to be paid and protected but there is no reason they should be protected if they aren’t teaching correctly.
April 23rd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
i DISAGREE WITH THE UNION ON THIS.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Unions do NOT protect poor quality instructors. They do, however, ensure a fair evaluation process is in place to prevent administrators from exacting a personal vendetta and making a capricious decision. If a principal wants to remove a teacher who is not doing his job, he must observe the inidividual and document the issue as well as any conversations.
The ability to fire a veteran teacher exists, but there are administrators who do not want to complete the work required to make it a reality.
I happen to work in a school corporation where the administration has no problem following the correct steps to oust an underperforming teacher. Sure, it takes more time, but it is a fair process.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I understand the desire to make teachers more accountable. However, like any job, the quality of pay and benefits determines the ability to recruit quality employees. Job security is one of the major draws for a teaching career. If tenure is taken away, something will have to be given back to the teachers to compensate (most likely, higher salary); otherwise, it will simply be impossible to recruit the same quality of teachers. Therefore, in the long run, removing tenure will require much higher teacher salaries. The public needs to decide whether it is willing to pay teachers more in exchange for the ability to more readily fire under-performing teachers.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I am a teacher. I promise you I don’t “sit on my butt”. I am a professional with years of experience, an advanced degree, and hours of professional development that I paid for out of pocket. I know there are bad teachers, tired teachers, burned out teachers, but most teachers are hard-working and dedicated. If you think we’re wimpy slackers, try doing our jobs in high-poverty schools. Try teaching students who come to school hungry, dirty, and frightened. Try teaching students who have a mom or dad or both in prison. Try teaching a student who has parents who have been for years cooking meth in the kitchen; the child has no long-term memory from the effects. Try teaching students who think they are entitled to everything with no effort. Try teaching students who have no manners. Most teachers I know come to school early and stay late. By the way, we don’t get paid for having summer vacation. We just get our 10 months salary stretched out over 12 months. By all means, reform the system that allows New York City to have its “rubber rooms.” That’s just ridiculous. However, give the rest of us some respect.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Doug is right that salary and job security are factors in attracting qualified applicants to any job including teaching. However, it may be that some benefits such as iron-clad job security might differentially attract those who lack confidenrc in their ability to teach well or those who are not overly fond of hard work. I teach in higher education with no job security in a job which I find highly rewarding, mostly because of the quality of the students, who are highly motivated and have great attitudes toward their own professional development and toward their patients. I am hired on a semester by semester basis and I have been asked back by my employers each semester. At one time I worked in the Food and Drug Administration and enjoyed civil service tenure. Most of my colleagues were competent, dedicated, and hard-working, doing important work rather well. A few of the people with whom I worked, however, ‘retired in place’ and were cheating the taxpayers by drawing a salary with out doing much work. When civil service tenure or teacher tenure systems protect workers (and the public) from political patronage, favoritism, and supervisors who act in arbitrary ways, then they are valauble. But there are disadvantages as well as advantages to these systems. When incompetent, or worse unwilling, workers are kept in their jobs, the mission of the school or ather agency is jeopardized, the reputation of the willing, competent workers is unfairly tarnished, and the students andtaxpayers are being cheated.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I am an administrator in a public school. In the media there are endless criticisms of teachers and claims of school failures. Schools and teachers are blamed for all of the ills in our society. But, I can tell you from the expereince of 37 years in public schools that today’s teachers are overall the best trained and the hardest working I have ever seen. The demands on them and the pressures they are under are also the worst I have ever seen. Schools are a reflection of society’s ills not the cause nor the cure for them. Parenting skills are the worst I have ever observed. A huge segment of today’s young parents do not have a clue as to what it takes to raise successful productive kids. They are often self-absorbed and absent so many kids have to raise themselves. We feed them twice a day and provide medical care to them – we provide extensive counseling services to help them overcome the problems caused by serious family problems – we buy them clothes to wear and eye glasses to help them see. And on top of that we provide the best education possible. I am not saying that we cannot improve, but I will say that our schools are doing about as good a job as we can in societal climate in which we find ourselves.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Jason:
I’m sure there are some teachers who go into teaching for free summers and other wrong reasons – but to generalize about most Long Island teachers (and, by extension, teachers across the country) is wrong.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I agree with Smitty’s response above. And I’ll add one more. The disrespect that teachers have to put up with is unbelievable. When I told my 8th grade students the other day that we were going to do a practice test for the upcoming State Exams, one boy threw his on the floor, telling me that this was stupid, boring, a waste of his time and he wasn’t doing it. When I explained (very patiently, I might add) why we do practice tests and why passing the state assessments in NY is very important, he told me that he didn’t care and his parents didn’t either.
So, my response to Jason is this. It’s parents like you who teach their kids to be so disrespecful. And I only have them for one year. You are going to be stuck for life with a rude insolent child. I feel sorry for you when you get old and need to get a helping hand from your child.
And speaking of homework, yes, homework should be done at home. But most of my students complain that they can’t get any help at home when they need it because their parents are too busy.
I was a single mom working full time with 3 kids and I ALWAYS sat with my children when they needed help. You just don’t get it Jason. Set a better example at home and make our job “teacher” again, not teacher and parent as well.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
There’s a bit more to this story. Crist was trying to please super-conservatives to get the GOP Senate nomination, and has discovered that nothing he does is enough to satisfy them. So now he is moving back toward the center so he can run as an independent. Many Floridans value teachers and are skeptical of the standardized-test fad.
There are lots of intermediate positions between lifetime tenure and one-year contracts. A typical one is to provide that a negative evaluation for one year (with reasons provided) puts the teacher on probation for the following year. If there is not sufficient improvement during the second year then the teacher has to leave at the end of the third year, giving them reasonable time to find a new job.
There are many other feasible variations, if a government or administration is competent enough to set up and use an evaluation process worthy of respect. If the Florida legislative majority had approached the issue that way, rather than as a poorly-thought-out attack on teachers, they could have contributed toward addressing a problem that almost all teachers acknowledge, even if they also think that poor administrative and political leadership are greater problems.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Stating that union member teachers fought this fight in Florida is deceptive. Many teachers in Fl are not part of the union as it is a choice and unions in Florida are only collective bargaining units as there is no right to strike in this state. If there are poor teachers in your classrooms blame administrators, politicians and low salaries. Nothing else will change teacher quality.
All teachers in Fl know they are underpaid and dealing with some difficult school environments. No one can pay me enough for what I do. But in country that pays extraordinary salaries in the business and entertainment industries – where they have their share of slackers – to not pay teachers adequately is a matter of getting what you pay for. Taxpayers are lucky that most teachers do this job as a vocation and not as a monetary choice. Very lucky.
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I have been teaching for over 30 years in two states. I am extremely educated and knowledgeable about my content and educational strategies. I have my master’s degree and over 60 additional hours in graduate and workshop classes. YET I have never worked harder, including my beginning years of teaching, because so much of my time that should go for planning and grading student work, has now been given to CYA jobs. Even though I update grades weekly on Edline, it is myresponsibility (not the parent’s) to make sure they are informed of their children’s progress. This means numerous emails and phone calls. Student attendance and effort is extremely poor in my school and parents often excuse and even justify their children’s absences, expecting teachers to stay after school and reteach lessons that the children miss. My failure rate is still very high because many students simply will not work. They don’t take standardized testing seriously. I dread the day that my salary is based on their achievement because so much of it is simply out of my control.
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I say we take kids who perform poorly on the tests away from their parents! That makes as much sense to me as firing the teachers for low scores. I think the decline of actual parenting in this country is at much greater fault than the quality or efforts of teachers. Kids come to school (those whose parents actually make sure they come) unprepared, without supplies, unrested, unfed, and unmotivated, but teachers are still expected to teach them and see an increase in test scores? And when they don’t see those increases, people want to fire them? Talk about treating a symptom in stead of curing the disease…apathetic parents! Ridiculous!
Of course I realize there are a lot of good parents out there, in fact I like to think I am one, but since we’re lumping all the teachers into one group, “overpaid slackers,” we should be fair and do the same to the parents, right?
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:06 pm
there should be no government employee unions—period!! It’s a nightmare! This issue will kill the Democrat Party
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:29 pm
One of my husband’s co-workers was quite vocal about his disdain for teachers — until he came to work at my high school as a security guard. He changed his tune pretty quickly when he started working with the students and listening to their stories. He visited me in my classroom and witnessed some of the disruptions to class from security, counselors, and parents. The disrepect and cussing from some of the kids was really shocking to him. Within one month, he told my husband and their other co-workers that teachers definitely do not get paid enough to deal with it.
When parents make negative comments, I generally ask them if they would like to spend a week with their child and 30 of their friends. I have never had any takers.
I agree that there are some teachers who are not shining examples of the profession, just as there are parents who are not helping their kids, and students who give less than their best. However, I try to believe that each of us will do the very best we can with what we have, and work to do better each day. I applaud and thank EVERYONE who works with kids and encourages them to dig deep and find their best.
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Certain professions should not be allowed forming unions–policemen, firemen, medical doctors and nurses, and teachers/professors, etc. If you want respect, you need to earn it. In general, parents and students do have respect for excellent teachers. However, they do not have respect for those lazy teachers who don’t teach or don’t know how to teach.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
It is one of the most outrageous slanders to decry the worth of teachers and their unions. Schools are microcosms of our society, representing the best and worst of our American way of life. Teachers who have a professional orientation and supportive working conditions give their best every day to children who come to school with the same mental, emotional and physical issues facing the larger society. How our students measure on standardized tests has more to do with the interference teachers must deal with from critical legislatures, ineffective parents, and the vast media attach on civiil discourse. I’ve been a teacher and administrator and now have the proud profession of preparing new teachers to make a difference in the lives of their students. I don’t know a single teacher who doesn’t give more than what is required by their contract. The disrespect that is rampant in our society now has more to do with eight years of failed governance and the squandering of national resources in two unsustainable wars, and an economic system that allowed the most greedy to make fools of people who tried to have a share of the pie.
It might be worthwhile to look at what teachers do everyday to inspire, support and educate the youth of this country despite the constant barrage of negative and accusatory rhetoric we have grown so accustomed to hearing we think it is the truth.
I say YAY to Governor Crist for blocking a most unfair attempt to further demean a noble profession.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
How about subbing for a week in any public school (walk in ones shoes) before passing judgement.
Public schools educate anyone and eveyone, K-12. Yes there are some very bad teachers. There are also some very bad students coming from some very bad homes where education is not a priority but drugs, alcohol, the latest fads, violence, apathy and entitlement reign. When we have law makers, athletes, musicians and entertainers making big bucks, while ignoring good character and behaving above the law, leading the youth to do the same, education becomes less desirable.
Let’s change our priorties in America and make education relevant and important again.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:50 pm
What does it mean “awaiting moderation?”
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:11 pm
37 years in the classroom, working my butt off 10 o 12 hours a day (all papers are graded after the school day is done), and experiencing inept administrators who play favorites (thank goodness I’ve been a favorite), I see tenure as a protection against those who want to take the quick and easy way out. One experienced teacher is paid more than twice as much as a new teacher (but isn’t that how it is outside of education as well?). To balance a budget a hundred years ago, Administrators would not hesitate to get rid of the higher paid teachers, those who had earned a place in the school. Today those teachers would seek employment in another district where their pay would be much less than what they had been paid, because schools will not, under any circumstance, hire a teacher at anything higher than level 6. My salary would drop from $89,000 per year to $44,000 per year. Outside of education workers generally seek employment opportunities with a higher wage. That is impossible in education. Tenure laws were developed because they needed to be in place. Heaven forbid the day we eliminate progress and take a step into the educational past.
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:15 pm
There is no job on the planet that requires one to jump through as many hoops as teaching. Most of us who teach do it because we feel like we are making a difference. Then we have to listen to people telling us how lazy we are every year a contract negotiation comes up or every time a budget discussion comes up. Most people would up and leave their jobs if they were under the microscope the way way teachers are. Do the math. Districts with more funding have higher test scores. Districts with extreme poverty have lower scores. We get it from students, from parents, from administrators, from the district, and from the public. Yet we stay. Because we love kids and believe in what we are doing.
April 23rd, 2010 at 10:34 pm
do away with No Child Left Behind! It beats our teachers into a comatose state and prevents them from “teaching.” They teach the standardized test…and cannot approach teaching anything of value that will remain with students. So many of our children are not conventional learners in this digital age. This approach is antiquated and it unfairly fails students, teachers and the schools they co-exist in.
All Teachers are NOT slackers! They need to be paid higher wages for the BS they have to endure on a daily basis. Look around the nation at those whose lives have been snuffed out as a result.
April 24th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I am a Florida teacher and not a big Crist fan. However, I do not like the terminology “Crist folded.” I have great admiration anytime a politician listens to the masses, which he/she is supposed to represent. His veto letter was right on target not just on the support of the education system, but also in the fallacies of the rushed proposed Senate Bill 6. So maybe it should not be written “Crist folded”, but “Crist listened to the people, did his homework, and made the right decision.”
April 24th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I’m a teacher who’s been in the profession for decades, and while I’m happy that Crist listened to the people on this one (great political move, btw), I wish the bill had passed. I hope they remove teacher tenure in all the states. As a matter of fact, I hope they pass all the legislation that ties teacher evaluations to test scores and up it from 51% to 75%. I can’t wait to see it all happen. Let’s make these changes and then let the state and federal governments deal with the fall out. Sure, we’ll graduate a few generations of messed up kids, but aren’t we doing that now? As an educator, I know that students learn best when they experience something firsthand, and until the legislators, parents, and students get to “enjoy” these educational reforms, they won’t appreciate teachers who have dedicated their lives to the profession for the good of society. Go on, let’s do this thing so the pendulum can swing back the other way.
April 26th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Having “one-year, renewable contracts” creates stress and lowers morale in most workplaces. It is only suitable for true “contract employees” and highly paid professional athletes.
April 27th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Lindy, I have heard this rhetoric before from teachers (if you really are a teacher). They usually work in private or charter schools because they can’t get a better paying job in a public school or they have never experienced a vindictive adminstrator or school board. They criticize those of us who are fortunate enough to work in public schools with good teacher unions that protect us from corrupt and incompetent administrators, school boards and politicians. They question our dedication in order to make themselves feel superior.