Tenure & the Art of Revoking It

It needs to be suggested that there are problems with the public school system in America. Big problems. Our students are failing. Whose fault is it? Whose fault it is is not clear - which is concerning to me, since I am no expert logician and have very little experience in critically analyzing ideas. However, that said, I am going to make a good run of it and do my best at attempting to understand the problem.

The main problem: "More and more kids are 'not making it' in school" (Grodzinsky A9). Okay, Okay. So, in my head, I understand that as saying that 'students are not doing well in school'. I can agree with that. But why aren't students doing well in school? Do we need to throw more money at the public school system with the attitude that money will make the problem go away? I do not believe that throwing money at anything is a good answer. I really don't. But we will get to that idea later; my soap box isn't important just yet. What is the answer? What is it? What do we do with our teachers? Ultimately, they are the people responsible for teaching and caring for our children while they are in school, however unwilling to accept said responsibility they may be. They are praised incessantly, while our students fail miserably. That sounds suspicious to me. Whose fault is it that our students are failing? Are we right in praising our teachers constantly? Is it the parents' fault that students are failing? Does the task of learning fall solely on the shoulders of the students themselves? I would like to explore the reasons (and excuses) given by several different sources for why our students are failing.

In all reality, each and every one of us has our own opinion about why students are failing. I'm interested in finding out where those opinions come from (as I've heard many of them, but not one person I've spoken with could give me a reason that I considered appropriate for how they formed that opinion). So what are these opinions?

"It's the teachers' fault!"

Some people might say that the problem is that teachers are underpaid and over-worked and are simply giving up, because they don't have the resources to give every student the personal time that they need. "Privately, teachers and administrators readily admit that the staff includes instructors who are either burned out or never caught fire" (Landsberg A1). I'll call this the "poor teacher" opinion.

On the other side of that coin, there are those who believe that teachers are not underpaid. In fact,

"The 'throwing money at it' approach to educating children has been tried so often that teachers are now among the highest paid workers in America...[when] comparing hourly wages based on the teachers' self reports, teachers earn more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, biological and life scientists, atmospheric and space scientists, registered nurses, physical therapists, University level foreign language teachers, librarians, technical writers, musicians, artists and editors and reporters. Only lawyers, engineers and doctors make more. " (Coulter)

This opinion goes hand-in-hand with the aggressive opposition to teachers being allowed tenure ("the status of holding one's position on a permanent basis without periodic contract renewals," According to Dictionary.com) and the concern about the quality of such tenured teachers. I will call this the "darn the teacher" opinion. If we consider the two afore-mentioned opinions as being opposite ends of the spectrum, it is clear that there are several opinions that hover somewhere between the two and surely will bring up some very good points that I have missed thus far. I will not address these opinions in this rant, because I do not want to attach my unsubstantiated thoughts about these centrist opinions when I have no support to back up such thoughts (hence my acknowledgment that my imaginings may be unsubstantiated). So we will stick with addressing those two opinions for now. Coming back to the main problem, one thing is clear: Our students are failing and some people believe that it is purely the teachers' fault - whether it is an apologetic blaming, as the first opinion implies, or an aggressive finger-pointing as the second opinion implies.

It's the parents' fault!

"...At six years old, lower-income children have about half the vocabulary of more affluent children because their parents neither speak nor read to them enough" (Dickerson). Ok, so the first opinion here is that parents are to blame solely for the illiterate beginnings our children are getting. I will call this the "darn the parents" opinion. "I blame the parents, who have gone along with the mad obsession with exams and league tables that demand teachers spoon-feed children until every last drip of creativity is drained from them" (Moore FB4). And this side of the coin says "Yes, it's the parents fault, because they go along with those pesky teachers!". I'll call this the "darn the teachers AND the parents" opinion. I can't find it supported anywhere, but my instincts tell me that there will also be those who say that parents are not to blame in the slightest for their childrens' failings in academia. Since I can't find it supported anywhere, I - unfortunately - cannot address this opinion.

"It's the students' fault!"

Having recently written a length research paper on students who drop out of high school and the effect they have on our economy and class distinctions in the United States, I have a ton of information on this particular issue. It's hard to nail it down to just two separate opinions on the issue. A "survey of 470 dropouts reveals that nearly half say they quit because school is boring - two-thirds said school failed to challenge them and did not provide enough academic support...Some get pregnant" (Meadows A1). So it's the students fault for lack of self-motivation for education? I'll call this the "lazy, no good student" opinion. "Many leave school to care for sick relatives or hold down jobs to support the family" (Meadows A1). Ah, so it's that students are leaving school, because they are being forced to care for their families at a younger age? I will call this the "poor student" opinion. Then there's the last opinion that we will deal with and that opinion says, "It's everybody's fault. Everybody's. The school administrators, the government, the teachers, the students AND the parents." I will call this the "darn everybody" opinion. So we have three groups, as far I can see, that are being blamed for students' under achievment and lack of success in academia. They are the teachers, the parents and the students. There are six major opinions regarding these blamed groups. They are, "poor teachers," "poor students," "lazy, no good students," "darn the teachers," "darn the parents," "darn the teachers AND the parents" and last but not least, "darn everybody." We cannot forget that we've been fed the thought that more money would solve the problem. Strangely, the only opinion that supports the concept of throwing more money at public schools seems to come from the Teachers' Union...And that's it. Otherwise, the opinion I've found for throwing more money at public schools has been the opinion that says we need to stop doing it. Apparently, when more than "a million students are dropping out of high school every year," (Meadows A1) it is fair to say that it is a problem of epidemic proportions and that money isn't going to fix it. Take, for example, the amount of money we drop every year on public school students. "Every year, taxpayers write a $7,000 check, on average, to educate each of the state's 6.3 million public school students" (Tucker E1) Take it from somebody who knows first hand. Private school - with all the after school activities that go with it - costs about that much money.

So we're spending about the same (if not a little more in some cases) in California on public school students than we are on private school students - but it's the public school students who are failing. While the average graduation rate in the United States is 56.8% in public schools, it remains at around 98.1% in private secondary schools (Publications and Products). So... What are private schools doing that public schools are not? To tell you the truth, the difference is nearly laughable.

For starters, private schools are 80% teachers. Public schools are closer to 80% administrators. The student teacher ratio in private schools is about 12.5 students for each teacher. In public schools, the ratio is about 25 students to each teacher (Publications and Products). "Teacher tenure is nonexistent in the private schools" (Diggs B11).

We know full well what the "poor teacher" group would say about this. "It isn't the teachers' fault! In public schools, teachers have little or no control over what happens in the schools. It isn't their fault that the student teacher ratio is so high. It isn't their fault that public schools are chalk-full of administrators! And besides, the American public are the ones who have kept tenure around!" But that idea is childish and wrong. It's like saying that the American public has no control over the laws that are imposed upon them. We vote on the laws that are imposed upon us; We impose laws upon ourselves. We either make things happen, or we allow things to happen. Teachers are not victims of circumstance. Teachers are not victims at all, in fact. They are part of the American public and were certainly the major factor in the recent Californian tenure bill passing. And why shouldn't they, really? The law protects ALL teachers from being fired for nearly any reason. It allows our public schools to fill up with incompetent teachers who are not capable of teaching a darned thing to our students and it forces us, as tax payers, to support these incompetents while they cry and stamp their feet about not making enough money. It's funny. Firefighters don't get tenure. Police officers don't get tenure. Doctors don't get tenure. Why should teachers? Why are we protecting bad teachers from being fired? Are we so politically whipped that we would rather watch our public school children fail than force our teachers to compete for their jobs? Why don't we use tenure in other professions? Perhaps it's because if firefighters had tenure, fires would never go out. Perhaps it's because if police officers had tenure, they would be even more crooked and dangerous than most of us already believe them to be. Perhaps it's because if doctors had tenure, there would be no reason for them to be good doctors - and they would get paid two-hundred thousand dollars a year, regardless of their competency. Are we really that stupid? I mean, forgive me. Of course we are. We went to public school.

To be fair to everybody, it should be known that I understand that I shouldn't be up on my soap box now. But, I've been fair so far and it's unlike me to be quiet and fact listing for too long. It's time for my opinion to be known. I've decided to take my seat at the "darn the teachers and the parents" table, but I've taken my special interest option in teachers. Why should students have any desire to learn when their parents do not encourage them to learn? Why should students be responsible for learning what teachers are not teaching? Darn the teachers. And darn the parents. Why aren't they reading to their children? Is it too big a cost to drive down to the local garage sale and pick up 10 books for a dollar? Or is that these parents are as incompetent at reading as their children are becoming? The lack of education that permeates our schools is disgusting. Why are our teachers so elevated when the drop out rate is nearly 50%? We shouldn't be paying them more to satisfy their expensive tastes and to pay for their 3 month vacations in the summer time. We should be docking their pay and revoking their "right" to tenure. But God forbid, right? Then they might actually have to EARN their living. Wouldn't want that.

You know, in all honesty, teachers are on my angry list - and they've earned their right to be there. Drop out rates are nearly 50%. I'll say it a fourth time: Drop out rates are nearly 50%. I know that the popular thing to do is ignore this and allow students to enter college (if they drop out of high school) with only remedial reading and math skills and almost no science skills whatsoever. I know that the popular thing to do is ask colleges to deal with this on their own. But since state sponsored colleges are producing "dangerous professors" (not all of them, mind you), we have to do something about it. Professors must be held accountable for teaching students. That sounds obvious enough, but apparently professors themselves need to be reminded of this. In truth, there is a growing number of professors at State Universities who refuse, in one form or another, to do it. Either they "[do not] particularly care to help and shunt students off to teaching assistants" (Rose 196), or they simply refuse to teach the subject at hand. These latter professors are the most dangerous. Their teaching style includes:

"Promotion far beyond academic achievement; teaching subjects outside one's professional qualifications and expertise for the purpose of political propaganda; Making racist and ethnically disparaging remarks in public without eliciting reaction by university administrations, as long as those remarks are directed at unprotected groups.