Earlier this morning Rick Snyder spoke about his ideas for improving education. Among the topics he discussed were early childhood education, merit pay, and tenure.
While support for early childhood education is a welcome change given that research shows this to be a very valuable tool, the push for merit pay and against tenure are more troubling.
I spoke with a top school official in my home town about merit pay and he stated "It is just going to be very difficult for districts to put together a system that is fair and really works. In the end, the goal is to reward high performing teachers. I am not convinced that a merit pay system will do that." By in large the teachers I have spoken with are fine with getting paid for performance but have yet to see a system that will do this in a fair and accurate way.
For months now we have been told that Rick Snyder can fix Michigan's economy because he is a successful businessman. The implication is that being a businessman gives him a better understanding of economics than a typical politician and he is better equipped to come up with the best solutions. If this is true then his support of merit pay is puzzling since Teachers and groups like the National Education Association oppose merit pay. If the logic is that businessman have the best solutions for business then it follows that educators have the best solutions for education. Merit pay is a businessman's solution to an education problem. It is a square peg for a round hole solution which is why studies show that merit pay doesn't work.
The fight to end teacher tenure is equally perplexing. The arguments against it usually start with the false claim that teachers can't be fired. Tenure is the "right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause." not a guarantee of a job for life. That is usually followed up with the excuse that it is expensive to fire a tenured teacher. While it can be costly and require documentation to get separation from a tenured teacher the same is true in the private sector. Most any handbook on firing an employee suggests that good documentation is paramount to avoiding a lawsuit and wrongful termination lawsuits tend to be as expensive if not more expensive than firing a tenured teacher. To some extent tenure actually benefits the schools.
Given that these are such weak arguments supporters of eliminating tenure usually state some statistics to show how few tenured teachers are fired each year. While it is true that very few tenured teachers are fired each year compared to other professions, this is a very apples to oranges argument. For Saline, Michigan a teacher doesn't get tenured until their fifth year. When you consider that 46% of all new teachers are out of the profession within 5 years it should come as no surprise that tenured teachers have a low turnover rate. Attrition for any profession is much more likely to happen in the first few years so comparing only tenured teacher that get fired to all firings in other professions proves nothing.
If you look at the overall turnover rates teachers are around 16.8% per year which compares to rates for other professionals including private school teachers. Blaming tenure for poor teachers is an excuse. As a Businessman Governor Snyder should know that you don't completely scrap a good set of rules simply because of a few bad apples. This is a throw the baby out with the bath water solution to improving education.
I would also point out a few other things regarding the claims against tenure and the push towards vouchers. If tenure is so bad the why would any for profit private schools offer it to their teachers? If private schools are so superior why are their student performance results no different than public schools. If public teachers are so over paid then why do they receive the same compensation as private school teachers with lower qualifications? If private schools are so good at controlling costs why do private school administrators get paid more than public school administrators to oversee much smaller schools while only handling a fractional of the special education students that cost schools the most money?
Our public schools already spend a lot of time figuring out the best methods for teaching and improving the education system. While the current system may not be perfect I would prefer that education reform come from educators than from the lawyers and businessmen that make up the Michigan Legislature.
Derek Jeter Hater says:
ReplyDeleteYou have to know (or at least your brother would know) I would take exception to this:
"Most any handbook on firing an employee suggests that good documentation is paramount to avoiding a lawsuit and wrongful termination lawsuits tend to be as expensive if not more expensive than firing a tenured teacher."
It's bollocks!! As long as there is no union contract involved, you can fire someone for any reason you want short of the protected reasons (age, sex, religion, etc). But what I took from Business Law in college is you can fire someone if you don't like their shirt or don't like their hair or whatever silly reason you want as long it's not in that protected group. (And, of course, it means you pay unemployment - but there is no grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit).