Dive Brief:
- On Tuesday, the United Federation of Teachers released an 8-page memo in response to a recent wave of anti-teacher tenure sentiment in New York City.
- The memo explains how tenure laws give teachers protection while also ensuring officials have ways to remove ineffective teachers.
- The UFT's move follows the highly polarizing Vergara v. California suit — which saw California's teacher tenure laws struck down — two New York parent groups have filed copycat lawsuits, arguing that teacher tenure impedes the promise of quality education for all students.
Dive Insight:
According to the UFT's lawyer Adam Ross, a major misconception surrounding teacher tenure is that once a teacher has tenure, they can never be removed. “The notion that there is permanent employment in city schools is incorrect,” Ross told the New York Times. “There is a process in place for removing teachers if necessary.”
Both Ross and the memo point out that 167 teachers who were deemed problematic by their schools either retired, resigned, or had their employment terminated. For the union, this indicates that nothing is permanent and that arguing that tenure locks teachers — specifically poor-performing ones — into their position is incorrect.
On the flip side, tenure critics argue that to actually remove a tenured teacher is difficult and time consuming. A commonly cited report from Columbia found that only 12 New York teachers were dismissed due to ineptitude between 1997 and 2007.
Some listening to both sides of the debate argue that instead of focusing on how teachers will be let go, we should be placing energy in better teacher training programs, ensuring prepared teachers make it to the classroom, and preventing incompetence from being such a pressing issue among educators.