Tricky Tenure

New York is often one of the first looked at cities when regarding school reform in urban environments, and tenure consistently remains in the center of reform controversy. What is the purpose of tenure? Is its main purpose to still protect teacher’s rights? Or is it working more to keep a steady flow of ineffective teachers responsible for educating our nation’s children? What rights do ineffective teachers deserve if they are not living up their professional expectations as educators?

In New York, tenure is changing. According to the New York Times, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the era of automatic tenure for teachers is over because of tougher evaluation guidelines put into place earlier this year.
Teachers are eligible for tenure in New York, once they have completed their third year teaching. This year only 58% percent of eligible teachers received tenure based on the evaluation system where teachers are rated as highly effective, effective, developing, or ineffective from student test-scores, classroom observations, feedback from parents, and other factors. Teachers who did not score in effective categories were deferred tenure, and three percent were denied tenure. Bloomberg says that teachers who continue to work a fourth year, with deferred tenure, will be helped with training, with hope that they will improve and earn tenure eventually.

Tenure becomes a very sticky subject between districts and unions. What should the policy be here in Baltimore? Does the extra “developing” category give new teachers the support they need to become the effective teachers that students deserve and who deserve to stay in the classroom. I think Baltimore could definitely benefit from this four-tiered evaluation system for both our teachers and our students. How will we get there, and who will decide?

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