By Katharine B. Stevens | New York Daily News

“The two recently filed New York lawsuits claiming that teacher tenure laws violate children’s constitutional right to a “sound basic education” are finally dragging the long-obscure section 3020-a of the state’s education law into the spotlight.

This attention is badly overdue because that section has played a crucial and underrecognized role in the quality of New York’s teacher workforce for decades.

Written into state law in 1970, entitled “Disciplinary procedures and penalties,” 3020-a specifies that tenured teachers can be terminated only after just cause for dismissal has been established through particular state-run hearing procedures.

Reformers argue that the law shields the jobs of chronically ineffective and even dangerous teachers. Opponents of the recent lawsuits, on the other hand, maintain that it simply provides teachers with due process prior to termination, protecting competent teachers from arbitrary firings, nepotism and vindictive principals.”

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By Frank Bruni | New York Times

DENVER — Mike Johnston’s mother was a public-school teacher. So were her mother and father. And his godfather taught in both public and private schools.

So when he expresses the concern that we’re not getting the best teachers into classrooms or weeding out the worst performers, it’s not as someone who sees the profession from a cold, cynical distance.

What I hear in his voice when he talks about teaching is reverence, along with something else that public education could use more of: optimism.

He rightly calls teachers “the single most transformative force in education.”

But the current system doesn’t enable as many of them as possible to rise to that role, he says. And a prime culprit is tenure, at least as it still exists in most states.

“It provides no incentive for someone to improve their practice,” he told me last week. “It provides no accountability to actual student outcomes. It’s the classic driver of, ‘I taught it, they didn’t learn it, not my problem.’ It has a decimating impact on morale among staff, because some people can work hard, some can do nothing, and it doesn’t matter.”

I sat down with Johnston, a Democrat who represents a racially diverse chunk of this city in the State Senate, because he was the leading proponent of a 2010 law that essentially abolished tenure in Colorado. To earn what is now called “non-probationary status,” a new teacher must demonstrate student progress three years in a row, and any teacher whose students show no progress for two consecutive years loses his or her job protection.

The law is still being disputed and has not been fully implemented. But since its enactment, a growing number of states have chipped away at traditional tenure or forged stronger links between student performance and teacher evaluations. And the challenges to tenure have gathered considerable force, with many Democrats defying teachers unions and joining the movement.

After a California judge’s recent ruling that the state’s tenure protections violated the civil rights of children by trapping them with ineffective educators in a manner that “shocks the conscience,” Arne Duncan, the education secretary, praised the decision. Tenure even drew scrutiny from Whoopi Goldberg on the TV talk show “The View.” She repeatedly questioned the way it sometimes shielded bad teachers.

“Parents are not going to stand for it anymore,” she said. “And you teachers, in your union, you need to say, ‘These bad teachers are making us look bad.’ ”

Johnston spent two years with Teach for America in Mississippi in the late 1990s. Then, after getting a master’s in education from Harvard, he worked for six years as a principal in public schools in the Denver area, including one whose success drew so much attention that President Obama gave a major education speech there during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Johnston said that traditional tenure deprived principals of the team-building discretion they needed.

“Do you have people who all share the same vision and are willing to walk through the fire together?” he said. Principals with control over that coax better outcomes from students, he said, citing not only his own experience but also the test scores of kids in Harlem who attend the Success Academy Charter Schools.

“You saw that when you could hire for talent and release for talent, you could actually demonstrate amazing results in places where that was never thought possible,” he said. “Ah, so it’s not the kids who are the problem! It’s the system.”

When job protections are based disproportionately on time served, he said, they don’t adequately inspire and motivate. Referring to himself and other tenure critics, he said, “We want a tenure system that actually means something, that’s a badge of honor you wear as one of the best practitioners in the field and not just because you’re breathing.”

There are perils to the current tenure talk: that it fails to address the intense strains on many teachers; that it lays too much fault on their doorsteps, distracting people from other necessary reforms.

But the discussion is imperative, because there’s no sense in putting something as crucial as children’s education in the hands of a professional class with less accountability than others and with job protections that most Americans can only fantasize about.

We need to pay good teachers much more. We need to wrap the great ones in the highest esteem. But we also need to separate the good and the great from the bad.

Johnston frames it well.

“Our focus is not on teachers because they are the problem,” he said. “Our focus is on teachers because they are the solution.”

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/opinion/frank-bruni-the-trouble-with-tenure.html

By The Editors | New York Observer 

“There’s no question that New York’s public schools have shown signs of improvement over the last few years. It’s also true that former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his education team achieved important reforms, especially in the growth of charter schools.

But it is equally true that much more work needs to be done. The question is whether politicians, administrators and union bosses understand this simple fact.

An advocacy group called Families for Excellent Schools released a report the other day that should sadden any New Yorker who cares about quality public education. The report documents abysmal failures in 371 city schools, nearly 25 percent of the total. In that so-called “forgotten fourth,” more than 90 percent of students cannot read or do math at grade level.

As the group noted in its report, if a quarter of the city’s subway trains were chronically late, or if a quarter of the city’s police precincts failed to solve 90 percent of crimes, the outrage would be all-consuming.”

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By Valerie Strauss | Washington Post

I have recently published several posts about a new effort led by former CNN journalist Campbell Brown to eliminate or restrict teacher and other job protections for teachers. (You can see them here, here, here and here.) Brown has appeared on numerous television shows recently arguing that legal job protections for teachers have a negative impact on student achievement; critics say there is no research showing a connection between teacher tenure laws and lower rates of student achievement. In the following post, Brown responds to the posts I have published as well as other criticism of her activism. Readers, as always, are welcome to respond.

By Campbell Brown

“This blog has devoted considerable space lately to covering me, and while I believe in the value of opinion writing, I also think some sense of fairness still matters. I have been falsely accused of perpetuating racism, blaming teachers, opposing due process and manipulating public opinion – and that was just in one blog post alone.

To go point by point on it all would miss the point, because the debate that really matters is not about me or my critics. It is about the best ways to improve education.

What readers should know is that the effort of which I am a part is designed to ensure that all public school children in New York have access to a quality teacher. Period. That is the motivation of the parents who have sued the state. It is why my organization supports them. It is the foundation for challenging a state that constitutionally promises a sound education for all and yet does not provide it.

We want a system that supports, protects and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible, in a responsible, fair and timely way, to remove teachers judged to be incompetent. We also want to eliminate the scenario in which excellent teachers get lesser layoff protections than other teachers simply based on seniority.

Our approach, a lawsuit, is borne of years of parental frustration and based on a successful suit in California that tackled the same basic issues: tenure, teacher dismissal and seniority. The judge in that case found that the evidence about the harmful effects of “grossly ineffective teachers on students” was so compelling that “it shocks the conscience.” He rendered all the laws in question unconstitutional.

So was that ruling an attack on all teachers? Of course not. Was it a new way to help ensure that substandard teaching is never sanctioned in California schools? Yes.

That is what we want in New York. On tenure, we agree with the nation’s top school official, Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Due process is vital. But awarding added tenure protection to someone with no record of improving student achievement “doesn’t respect the craft of teaching, and it doesn’t serve children well.”

The idea of connecting quality on the job to whether teachers essentially get to keep their jobs indefinitely is hardly radical. Most professions consistently demand quality in return for employment. Why would we not expect that for our children?

What’s more, tenure is only one part of the case.

We think the state’s dismissal laws are flawed not because they provide due process, but because the process can be onerous to the point of absurdity. And we think that if budget cuts prompt schools to fire teachers, the criteria for who loses a job ought to be a little more thoughtful than simply who walked in the door last.

The parents who put their names and reputations on this suit know their schools have caring, dependable, inspiring teachers – and that is not their worry. What exasperates them is the other side of the story, the minority of educators who blatantly do not do their job and get away with it because the state allows it.

So here is the question for critics: What would you do if your child had those teachers in class? Nothing? Attack the motives of people trying to do something? Cast the effort as anti-teacher when in fact it is designed to get more good teachers?

A lawsuit is a serious matter, and we look forward to a fair, dispassionate review in the courts. We have never portrayed this, however, as a solution to everything.

This blog has done a good job of raising other issues that matter significantly to the quality of education and demand more attention: innovation, leadership, professional development, parental engagement, poverty. We agree in every case.

And finally, there has been the focus on me. My responsibility to take on questions is a legitimate part of this, as I am using my platform as a former television anchor to give lift to these concerns and to the case of the parents. I happen to think that is exactly what a person with a platform ought to do – to use it to draw attention to a problem and to ask for support with the solution. Criticism is part of any tough fight.

Anyone who really listens to me, though, hears my target: Laws that directly work against our ability to provide quality teachers to all our children. Anyone is entitled to care, and that includes me. When the clever Stephen Colbert made a joke that I was playing the “good-for-child card,” he was being funny. When the author of this blog picked up that Colbert line, she derisively added: “Which, of course, she was.”

Actually, no one is playing a card. No one is playing a game. This is for real. And if you are going to take a stand, perhaps the best one possible is the one good for the child.”

Full Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/13/campbell-brown-responds-to-critics-including-me/

Melissa Harris-Perry | MSNBC

The fight over teacher tenure is now raging coast to coast, and the latest battleground is the courtroom. Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, Dana Goldstein from The Marshall Project, Randi Weingarten from the American Federation of Teachers and Darrell Bradford from NY Campaign for Achievement Now discuss with Melissa Harris-Perry.

Full MSNBC Clip Here

By Rishawn Biddle | Dropout Nation

“There’s one thing that can be guaranteed when reformers and Parent Power activists take on the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — especially in opposing the near-lifetime employment laws and traditional teacher compensation regimes at the heart of their influence: They will go strike back with any weapon available.

wpid-threethoughslogoAt times, the two unions will engage in the nastiest of rhetoric (including quietly setting up Web sites such as the now-defunct RheeFirst) instead of addressing the facts. Other times, the unions will issue enemies’ lists, as the AFT and its president, Randi Weingarten, has done over the past two years with its reports on money managers that bankroll reform outfits. Occasionally, the NEA and AFT will even offer an honest defense for the policies and practices they support.”

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By Charles Stern | New York Charter Chatter

“The personal attacks on Campbell Brown are profound, and represent much more than the absence of good counter arguments to teacher tenure reform. My wife and I were the targets of ad hominem attacks for years while I served on the Board of Education in Mount Vernon, NY and here’s what I think is really going on:

Campbell Brown, in this role as the face of tenure reform in New York, is a Rorschach test on race. She has a leadership position in a civil rights battle. The vast majority of teachers are white women, and Brown looks like a teacher.

Citizen Stewart wrote a blog entry this week that crystallizes it:
“To earn this level hostility Ms. Brown only needed to take up the cause of poor black and brown mothers who want the same level of quality in their children’s classrooms as you’ll find in neighborhoods with the most demanding, affluent families.”

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