Picture a school system with
hundreds of teachers. Some of the teachers have been with the system long
enough to be eligible for a special benefit: job security (tenure), upon
completing 24-60 months of high quality work. It’s a critical threshold to
achieve, because teachers who cannot demonstrate in all those months that they
are quality workers are immediately fired.
One year a new school
administrator comes on board, and one of his first tasks is to hire a teacher
to fill a vacancy.
The school administrator is
overwhelmed-- he has to make the hiring decision, and he knows it is among the
most important decisions he will make. He rifles through the resumes at his
desk. There are many resumes. He conducts interviews, and calls references, and
makes his decision—he hires Sandy. But he is terror stricken that he has made a
mistake. What if Sandy is a bad hire, and somehow is able to slip through the
system and ends up with job security? Rather than own up to the uncertainty of the hiring process, he makes a suggestion to the state department of education: let’s eliminate everyone’s job security, just
in case I have made a mistake by hiring Sandy.
The department of education
assures him that there are safe guards in place; everyone doesn't have to be
punished because his hire may be a poor one. For months and months and months
you can fire Sandy immediately if Sandy seems to be a bad hire.
The school administrator is in
charge of orienting, training, supervising, and evaluating Sandy. Months and
months go by. The school administrator is busy with many tasks. Sandy
approaches the time of being eligible for job security, and the school
administrator doesn't know for sure if Sandy is worthy of a long-term place in
the school. In the dozens of months Sandy has been working, the school
administrator has accumulated a fragmented set of evidence about Sandy’s
performance, even though they have been working in the same building the entire
time. The school administrator is terror-stricken again. He has no reason to
deny Sandy the job security. But what if
that would be a mistake?
The school administrator becomes
angry at Sandy. “If Sandy were really a good employee, after all these months I’d
not have any trouble knowing the quality of Sandy’s performance.” The school
administrator also becomes angry at his bosses: “If they’d only give me the
resources to really supervise and evaluate Sandy, I’d be confident in making my
decision.”
The school administrator again makes a suggestion
to the state department of education: let’s eliminate everyone’s job security,
because we can’t be sure if Sandy really deserves it.
The department of education again
assures him that there are safe guards in place; everyone doesn't have to be
punished if the school administrator made a mistake giving job security to Sandy.
He can still dismiss Sandy. Collecting
evidence about Sandy’s performance will remain the job of the school
administrator. Sandy is granted job security.
The school administrator wants to
be prepared to fire Sandy should he finally have a chance to do so, even though
he was the one who recommended Sandy to have job security. He reads the
language in the contract and he is stunned. The evidence he must collect now is
what he needed to do all along. He is terror stricken again that the
organization is stuck with Sandy.
He was supposed to have made a
good decision hiring Sandy in the first place, and he was supposed to have made
a good decision in recommending Sandy for job security after all their months
working together. The school
administrator can still evaluate Sandy, but he doesn't see how he can know
anything for sure. Rather than acknowledging his difficulty working with the
inadequate resources at his disposal, the school administrator again makes one
last suggestion to the state’s department of education: let’s eliminate
everyone’s job security, because I still can’t effectively evaluate Sandy.
The state’s department of
education considers three options: 1) get rid of the school administrator for
being unable to do his job; 2) provide the school administrator with the
resources he needs to do his job; 3) punish all the teachers by eliminating job
security for everyone so they won’t have to provide resources for the school
administrator.
The chair of the state’s
department of education says, “Let’s eliminate job security and we’ll blame it
on the teachers. “
**************
The issue of tenure is one of
under-resourced administrators in our schools. Why can’t
they be supported to do this critical job better? Administrators hire teachers
into the system; during the many months before teachers are eligible for tenure,
they can be fired almost instantly with minimal evidence; teachers can be
released when they are not recommended for tenure, and any time after tenure has been granted, when a teacher shows
reliable evidence of incompetence. Every collective bargaining agreement
between teachers and administration has a mechanism for releasing a tenured
teacher. Let’s not eliminate tenure and blame it on the teachers. Let’s tell
our departments of education to support their administrators in developing the
tools, the time, the skills, and the relationships that make their evaluations
robust, and their hard-working teachers secure.
