Roy Exum: How Tenure Destroys Kids

  • Wednesday, August 31, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

When the California Supreme Court announced last week that it would not hear a landmark case (Vergara v. California) you didn’t hear much about it, but when Hamilton County employs almost 30 percent of teachers that are deemed to be “the least effective” by any measure, it’s time for somebody outside our classrooms to start paying very close attention.

I was amazed that last year the Hamilton County Department of Education boasted that it was able to replace about half of what were called “the worst teachers.” Now we learn we still have three times the least effective teachers than the state average, and double the amount the metro districts of Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis do.

In the United States we spend roughly $12,500 to educate a high school student. That’s more than any other country in the world yet the USA ranks 35th in math – that’s behind Russia! Get this: from 1984 through 2014 the federal government has increased educational spending from $6.5 billion (with a ‘b’) to over $40 billion (with a ‘b’) after adjusting for inflation. That’s a 176-percent increase yet 80 percent of 8th graders from our entire nation’s low-income areas now read under grade level.

What makes the California Supreme Court decision so unnerving is that the ruling sets a legal precedent that makes it virtually impossible for school districts across the country to fire teachers who have no business teaching our young. The unions give the worst teachers the greatest protection with what is called ‘tenure’ and, as a Los Angeles judge said in 2014, “such twisted logic is unfathomable and inflicts harm so severe it shocks the conscience.”

In California a teacher gets tenure, also called ‘permanence,’ after two years so that’s why, between 2004 and 2014, only 19 teachers out of 300,000 in the entire state were dismissed for poor performance. In Mississippi you get tenure after the first year. In Tennessee the probation time is three years but due to the last-in, first-out dismissal sequence, the best-and-brightest younger teachers are disproportionately punished.

There is a growing sentiment – this nationwide – that the powerful teacher unions, like the National Education Association (NEA) or the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), play a huge role in the dumbing down of America. One estimate is that just one of every 500 teachers is dismissed for failure to perform.

Now consider the fact the NEA and the AFT have spent in excess of $185 million on lobbying and politics since 1990. Critics say that is exactly why children have no choice where to attend school and precisely why our politicians talk a good game but vote from their hips.

Really, 99 percent of schoolteacher money goes to Democrats and liberal types who staunchly oppose any type of much-needed education reform. The NEA, the top donor to Super PACs in the 2014 election, gave not a dime to Republicans or conservatives and – duh? -- every tenured teacher in America knows why.

In last week’s California case, the Wall Street Journal reported the state Supreme Court acknowledged the tenure laws are a “problem” and lead to “grossly-ineffective teachers being in the school system” yet sides with the union’s challenge to not hear the case. Go figure.

There has just been a suit filed in Connecticut (Martinez v. Malloy) that argues for a federal constitutional challenge to laws that force inner-city children to attend schools the state knows are failing to provide a minimally-acceptable education. Such a lawsuit in Chattanooga against our tragic iZone schools would be an absolute slam dunk.

I am certainly no lawyer but with five Hamilton County inner-city schools among the bottom five percent in the state, three of our iZone schools had more than 40 percent of our least-effective teachers — Orchard Knob Elementary, Dalewood Middle School and Orchard Knob Middle School. Of the other two, Woodmore Elementary had 17 percent and Brainerd High School had nine percent.

The most historic ruling in our nation’s history of education by the Supreme Court was in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education. The court ruled quite precisely that “the opportunity of an education … is a right which must be available on equal terms.” The decision also read, “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he or she is denied the opportunity of an education.”

So let’s connect the dots. The Chattanooga 2.0 report last December revealed 60 percent of our third graders cannot read at grade level, and that 65 percent of our graduating seniors were required to take remedial classes before they could begin curriculum classes at Chattanooga State. With nearly 30 percent of our teachers rated as substandard, is it any wonder over 40 percent of parents in one survey feel their children are subjected to poor teaching?

We still have the perfect storm of a recipe for failure right here in Hamilton County. When we turn over every rock, it is time for tenure to be dashed and for substandard teachers to be held accountable. Otherwise the dummies will keep teaching our most needy children and we can all see where that’s gotten us right now.

royexum@aol.com

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