How To Gain Tenure

The new changes No Child Left Behind laws were passed earlier in 2010 stresses the importance of education has to be our main concern to ensure that our children are getting quality education. The legislation is called “Performance Counts,” It reevaluates tenure laws and evaluation. This means that teachers are evaluated and being laid off because of their performance in the classrooms. No matter how long the teacher has been in his/her position that still wouldn’t keep them in their position because of their low performance. Over the next 10 years the focus will be to prepare hundreds of new teachers in STEM science, technology, engineering, and math (Mclatchy, 2010). The program is to encourage students in the STEM field or alternative teacher certification programs to switch their careers if they choose to. For

This paper will effectively detail the issues surrounding policy as it pertains to teacher reform for New Jersey Tenure Laws. I will discuss why this new reform has made it impossible to terminate non-effective teachers because of the protection that TEACHNJ provides. I will also discuss inaccuracies as it pertains to accountability and transparency under the new tenure laws. Lastly, I will discuss the teacher rating system and evaluation system that rates teachers in four categories, from highly effective to ineffective. Teacher evaluations would be based on measures of student learning, such as improvement of state test scores, student work, and other practices linked to student achievement. The New Jersey Education Association has proposed streamlining the legal process for removing teachers, but has adamantly defended the basic job protection of tenure, saying it prevents unfair dismissal, favoritism and attempts to save money by firing expensive veterans. The state’s largest teacher’s union also vehemently opposes judging teachers largely on test scores, saying that doing so penalizes teachers with the most difficult students, and that the data is unreliable. Teachers are fearful of losing their jobs if they don’t raise test scores, teachers will redouble their test-preparation efforts, and quality instruction will be sacrificed,” NJEA President Barbara Keshishian said in a statement. “Parents should be alarmed and dismayed at this proposal.” (Brody)

The No Child Left Behind act emerged as a result of a massive increase in the costs of schools, while failing to show an improvement in their students performances. (Paterson 32) Since these standardized test have been in effect teachers have been judged off them. The problem is that

Likewise in my introduction, Teachers Union Exposed, a special project of Center for Union Facts, reports, “In many major cities, only one out of 1000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. Why? Tenure. Tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher their job.” Because the teachers have guaranteed jobs, they cannot be fired, despite their teaching performance. Thus, teachers with bad performance have the tenure as their back: they cannot be fired because of it. The problem with bad teachers not being fired arises from this, but through finding the cause, now we can find a solution to the

In 2013, the average annual salary of a teacher in the United States was 56,383 dollars. This is for all grades before college. it varies from an average of 75,279 dollars in New York, to an average of 39,580 in South Dakota (How Much Teachers Get Paid — State by State). That is a huge difference in pay for the exact same job. If the test results of students were equal to the teacher’s pay, we would have a much more concrete way of paying the teachers. If the state’s economy is struggling nowadays, they don’t have the money to pay the teachers what they deserve, but in this new way, they will be required to give the teachers their hard earned money. In every other job in the United States, you get paid based on your performance. With teachers, the principal does not have enough time to evaluate every teacher and pay them based on how well they did. If the teachers were paid based on the tests, there would finally be a way to evaluate how well they taught the students. The less effective teachers will be pushed out of the system, while the strong ones

Standardized tests are categorizing teachers based upon how their students are performing on a standardized test. The way that teachers are trying to teach is controlled by standardized tests in order to provide the student with as much help as possible to guide the student to succeed as well as the teacher. As a result, the teachers are put upon a great amount of pressure in order to meet the needs to guide students for a standardized test so that both the teacher and students is able to be successful. For those teachers who wish to teach differently, it is more of a struggle for them to receive an exemplary label due to the fact that standardized tests judge them unfairly. Standardized tests are measuring many people in an unfair manner all over the United States. “In the United States, standardized testing is one of the primary methods used to measure the performance of educational institutions (and often teachers) and to make decisions about the distribution of funding” (Issitt). Many schools and teachers are being judged primarily as to how well their students perform on a standardized test. As a result, this can negatively impact many teachers who are able to teach really well

The list of failing schools in Arkansas was released and not one actual teacher had any comments on the release. Fixing public education always begins from the top and then works its way down to the bottom, where the actual results come from. The school itself has to prove to everyone about them that they are improving. However, every child is different, which is why grades don’t necessarily reflect accurately what children have learned nor does it reflect the real progress they have made. All students are different and all teachers grade differently, along with several other variables than come into play during the grading process. Education reform has already hit a dead end and they are trying to fix it with standardized testing. Standardized

America is dependent on teachers; good, well educated teachers who dispense their knowledge onto their students without prejudice. History has shown us that teachers have had to go to great lengths to gain equal rights in the work place. Teachers used to have to follow strict and sometimes outrageous rules to keep their job. A female teacher could be fired from her job by getting pregnant or even by just wearing jeans to work or staying out too late. Teacher tenure was introduced in the early 1900s and protected teachers from being fired without due reason. Although the majority of teachers do great work in teaching their students in effective ways teacher tenure bring a sour taste to some of Americas tongues. Teacher tenure is an important part of Americas educational system, but it is in need of some changes which will help ineffective teachers become better educators and award teachers who do well in teaching their students.

For some students, even though they can get high scores in exam, but that’s all they can do. They just memorize the solution and don’t try to understand and absorb the real knowledge behind the exam, for these kinds of students we can’t say that their teachers do well. Comparing with this, some students have really penetrating understanding to the knowledge, their know how to use them even though it can’t reflect on their exam scores sometimes, but their teachers still deserve higher paid. There is no doubt that we can’t tolerate keeping low-performing teachers in classrooms because it hurts everyone, but the method used to evaluate teacher performance should be sophisticated enough to consider all factors that can affect a child’s success in classroom before they can be used to as a standard to punish or award teachers. Chicago strike also evokes a debate toward salary problem. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits, compared with the median household income in Chicago is $46,000 (BBC News: para 4). So many people couldn’t understand that teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase when most occupations are not getting and raises and many people are under unemployment. There are two reasons that CTU still raise salary debate even though teachers already get enough paid. Firstly, CTU considered the law aspect. According to Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act, it is illegal for teachers to strike on all

A crucial flaw with Common Core is the use of Common Core test scores from students to evaluate teachers. Evaluating teachers in this way encourages teachers to only teach what is on the tests, and urge students to do well, which causes a moderate increase in student stress levels coupled with drastic increase in teacher stress levels. Another negative result of Common Core evaluation is teachers with lower performing classes will have a disadvantage, and students could sabotage teachers they dislike by purposefully flunking the tests. As teacher salary and employment is partially based on test results, in addition to teachers having little control over what students are in their class, it causes decent teachers to not get the salary they deserve, or teachers lacking skill to earn more than they deserve, or continue teaching when dismissal is appropriate.

Tenure should not be completely eliminated from school systems becasue it does in fact protect teachers that are teaching students well and improving test scores. As of now there is not an incentive of being a good teacher. In order to protect teachers and produce well educated students tenure laws need to change. Tenure should not be for life, tenure contracts should meet certain requirements in which a teacher is evaluated by how well students do on tests, how well the teachers lesson plans are and how well a teacher can relate to students in a way that they can learn. In order to protect teachers that are effective tenure contracts should still be put in place, but length of contract should be considered different. Instead of a teacher being gauranteed for life after completing the probationary period a teacher should have to pass a teaching exam each year in order to keep tenure. In order to decide if a teacher is succesfully doing his/her job and pre-course exam shall be given at the start of the year on the materials that should be covered throughout the year; a post-course exam should then be given at the end of the course to determine how much students have learned. Test scores are only one of the things a teacher should be evaluated on, other criteria that teachers should be evaluated on are how well the teachers lessons are planned out and how well the teachers interacts with his/her students. After

I respect your opinions on teacher tenure and merit pay. However, teacher tenure is not always a good thing. Yes, job security is important but sometimes teachers will not put in the effort needed to be successful teachers because they know they will not lose their jobs. It is almost impossible to fire teachers with tenure and sometimes those teachers should be fired. As teachers we should always strive to be the best for our students but it is human nature to cut corners or slack off if we feel we can get away with it. Tenure makes it possible for teachers to feel secure enough to slack off or cut corners.

Political movements like the “No child left behind”, have in turn placed political pressures on teachers. This is largely impart because teachers are intimately integrated into a larger political fight, that of educational reform. When considering educational reform, teacher tenure reform becomes the hot topic under scrutiny. According to Greenwald (2010), “…teacher tenure represents all that is wrong with the system – protecting ineffective and unprofessional teachers” (p.20). However, statements like this take a one size fits all approach, which is generally a path of ignorance. Teacher tenure was created from a fight for First Amendment protections and freed teachers from harsh administrators, protected teachers from principals who could simply hire and fire at their own whim (Greenwald, 2010). Schools that are located in areas with high poverty and crime are usually underfunded and good teachers are not attracted by what they are being paid for those positions. Should teachers get special treatment and pay, because they are educators? The recruitment efforts of hiring new teachers into bad impoverished areas should be offset by higher salaries and combat pay to compensate for the risk of working in that type of environment. Teacher tenure was created from a fight for First Amendment protections and freed teachers from harsh administrators, protected teachers from principals who could simply hire and fire at their own whim (Greenwald, 2010).

Standardized testing is an unfair assessment of teachers in America. Every year, teachers have to hand out standardized tests to their students. These tests measure how well a teacher is teaching his students, and if he successful or not. This is unfair because there will always be a few students in every class that do not try very hard because they do not like school. This hurts the teachers’ scores when they receive their evaluations, and because of this, we feel that there should be an alternative solution to assessing the success of teachers.

Going back to the tenure and teacher union issues, I agree that everyone has the right to unionize in order to protect their self-interests, but the idea surrounding tenure is something that needs to be re-evaluated, and the teacher’s union needs to jump on board in order to get the education system moving in the right direction. The writers hint at a way in which tenure can be changed, and that is by offering rewards for high student grades instead of the current rule of once tenure is reached, a teacher can keep their position regardless of their efforts in the classroom. The way the movie presents this alternative method is by showing a challenge between the teachers of the school to earn the highest student grades on the state test; winner earning a bonus of $5,700. This type of evaluation based on student grades can also be taken to the opposite end of the spectrum, and teachers who have unacceptable student scores should be evaluated on their teaching methods, and if seen