Word: teacherly
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...Roughly 2.3 million public school teachers in the U.S. have tenure - a perk reserved for the noblest of professions (professors and judges also enjoy such rights). The problem with tenure, Rhee and other critics say, is that it inadvertently protects incompetent teachers from being fired. The Teach for America alumna, who oversees some 50,000 students and 5,000 teachers, has sparked controversy in the capital by proposing a new contract allowing teachers to earn as much as $130,000 a year if they forgo their tenure rights (a teacher's salary, on average, is less than $48,000; most...
...Though tenure doesn't guarantee lifetime employment, it does make firing teachers a difficult and costly process, one that involves the union, the school board, the principal, the judicial system and thousands of dollars in legal fees. In most states, a tenured teacher can't be dismisssed until charges are filed and months of evaluations, hearings and appeals have occurred. Meanwhile, school districts must shell out thousands of dollars for paid leave and subsitute instructors. The system is deliberately slow and cumbersome, in order to dissuade school boards and parents from ousting a teacher for personal or political motives...
...system also makes it extremely difficult to flunk a bad teacher. Each state has its own stories: A Connecticut teacher received a mere 30-day suspension for helping students cheat on a standardized test; one California school board spent $8,000 to fire an instructor who preferred using R-rated movies instead of books; a Florida teacher remained in the classroom for a year despite incidents in which she threw books at her students and demanded they referred...
...start of the tenure movement paralleled similar labor struggles during the late 19th century. Just as steel and auto workers fought against unsafe working conditions and unlivable wages, teachers too demanded protection from parents and administrators who would try to dictate lesson plans or exclude controversial materials like Huck Finn from reading lists. In 1887, nearly 10,000 teachers from across the country met in Chicago for the first-ever conference of the National Educator's Association, now one of the country's most powerful teachers' unions. The topic of "teacher's tenure" led the agenda. By the turn...
...Some school districts have resorted to separation agreements, buyouts that effectively pay a teacher to leave his or her job. The practice has evolved as a way to avoid the extensive hearings and appeals required by union contracts and state-labor laws in firing a tenured teacher. (Costs can run as high as $100,000). Other districts simply transfer inadequate teachers to other schools in what Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called "the dance of the lemons." Former Mass. Gov. William Weld tried to pass legislation requiring teachers to take competency tests every five years, a move that triggered...