{"id":3233,"date":"2008-12-17T09:56:44","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T09:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/17\/tenure-is-not-the-problem\/"},"modified":"2008-12-17T09:56:44","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T09:56:44","slug":"tenure-is-not-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/17\/tenure-is-not-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenure Is Not the Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Hsu has a nice post on teaching<\/a>, following up on the Malcolm Gladwell piece<\/a> that everyone is talking about. Steve took the time to track down the Brookings Institute report<\/a> mentioned in the piece, and highlights two graphs:<\/p>\n

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The top figure shows that certification has no impact on teaching effectiveness. The second shows that effectiveness measured in the years 1 and 2 is predictive of effectiveness in the subsequent year. In this case effectiveness is defined by the average change in percentile ranking of students in the teacher’s class. Good teachers help their students to improve their mastery, hence percentile ranking, relative to the average student studying the same material.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The bottom figure is here:<\/p>\n

\"i-ed45a533f4e4ed4f3f62e2780fd7650c-Picture<\/p>\n

This highlights one of the problems I have with the blogospheric response to the Gladwell article. Far too many people are taking the article as evidence that we need to enact all the favorite union-busting “reform” measures that have been proposed, starting with the elimination of tenure for teachers.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The problem is, that’s not the right message to take away from the article. The point of the article is that it’s hard to know in advance<\/strong> who’s going to be a good teacher. It’s actually not that hard to tell who’s good and who isn’t once they get in the classroom, though.<\/p>\n

In addition to the quantitative test score method suggested by the graphs Steve highlights, there’s the film room method described in the actual article. The bulk of the article is based on comparing the evaluation of quarterbacks to the evaluation of teachers, describing an educational expert looking at videotape of several different teachers and identifying what they’re doing wrong, and what they’re doing right.<\/p>\n

And this is why tenure is a red herring. Teacher tenure, contrary to myth, is not<\/strong> supposed to be awarded for just showing up. There’s a probationary period of several years, during which a newly hired teacher can be fired with ease. During that time, they are supposed to be evaluated on the quality of their teaching, through classroom observation and other methods.<\/p>\n

If they’re demonstrably incompetent, they shouldn’t be given tenure. To the degree that the existing teacher tenure system has turned into a prize for regular attendance, that’s a failure of the system. Specifically, it’s a failure on the part of school administrators to do their job.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t be happy with using standardized test scores as the sole determinant of teacher quality– I think it leads to teaching-to-the-test distortions of the curriculum– but as the graph shows, it is a way of sorting out who’s doing a good job. As part of a package of evaluations, including classroom observation and interviews with colleagues, I think it would be a fine thing to add in to the tenure-granting process. There’s no need to eliminate tenure to institute higher standards.<\/p>\n

Now, you can argue that the fact that school administrators have failed at their jobs for so many years has led to a large number of total incompetents in the nation’s schools, and tenure needs to be eliminated in order to fire them. This is sort of the educational administration version of the Wall Street bailout– we’ve been so incompetent for years that the only solution is to give us a lot more power to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

But that’s not really necessary, either– most tenure systems of which I am aware allow firing for cause, and demonstrable incompetence is a valid cause. Yes, it’s a time-consuming process to document incompetence well enough to fire somebody, but that’s why you ought to do it before you grant idiots tenure.<\/p>\n

You wouldn’t even need to go through the firing process to get rid of a lot of incompetent older teachers– most of them can probably be bought out with early retirement offers. Granted, this runs the risk of getting rid of the good older teachers, as well, but it’s an option.<\/p>\n

Calls for the elimination of teacher tenure are less about reform than they are about union-busting. Nothing in the Gladwell article changes that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Hsu has a nice post on teaching, following up on the Malcolm Gladwell piece that everyone is talking about. Steve took the time to track down the Brookings Institute report mentioned in the piece, and highlights two graphs: The top figure shows that certification has no impact on teaching effectiveness. The second shows that… Continue reading Tenure Is Not the Problem<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}