Joe - Thanks for such a detailed and thoughtful response. I think you correctly highlight that evaluating teacher effectiveness is one of the keys to this issue (and ed reform generally), and that it’s not a simple thing to evaluate. But there is a body of emerging research suggesting that teacher effectiveness is the factor most dispositive to student outcomes, regardless of all the factors that make it hard to close the achievement gap.

I’m less persuaded by the argument that tenure protections are crucial to prevent chilling effects on teaching controversial topics. “Teacher disciplined for giving students X book” makes a good headline, but I don’t think that problem occurs on the same scale or with the same frequency and harm as the grossly ineffective teacher protected by “uber due process”. I wasn’t able to find any data on the phenomenon, but I think that story just fits a little too tidily into the progressive enlightenment via public education v. scopes monkey narrative..

Finally, I’m not sure why veteran teachers deserve a presumption of competence and good faith, but administrators do not. My view is that an administrator’s most important task is putting the best teachers possible in front of students. I agree with Ceci - it’s never a mystery who the grossly ineffective teachers are (I personally think student surveys are essential to any kind of comprehensive teacher evaluation.) I agree that test scores are a sometimes perverse incentive, but I think this problem too often is twisted to support the view that “holding teachers and administrators accountable for their results is messy and often unfair, so we better not even try.”

Miles, I agree that we have to consider this issue against the larger problem of at-will employment; you and I have both experienced the terror, I think, of a classroom observation in a high-stakes charter environment. But as Ceci points out, there is a balance between firing for no cause and prohibitive due process for removing flagrantly bad teachers. Ceci, I like your characterization of the “lemon dance”, and it’s not clear what would result from a victory from the Davids plaintiffs - my hope would be that it forces both sides to the table to negotiate a process for terminating teachers that does a better job balancing accountability with security.

Which leads to Ceci's “package deal” point. Right now, the deal is, low compensation, high security, zero accountability. I'd be willing to sacrifice security for higher compensation and accountability; this industry is, after all, unique in that the quality of the work product probably actually outweighs the interests of the workers, from a social justice perspective.

I think part of why I’m drawn to the tenure issue is that it seems like low-hanging fruit from a reform perspective: that is, I feel like even as a first-year law student I have a general sense of what words I would have to say to whom to make there be fewer really bad teachers in front of kids who need really good teachers. I also think one way to pressure governments into actually paying teachers more is to deny them the ability to dangle deferred or non-monetary benefits as bargaining chips.

But I also think that pro-union people seriously discount the harm of allowing grossly ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom. Joe, this partially gets to your point about the devaluing of the profession - why are we willing to tolerate gross incompetence from teachers, but not from lawyers, doctors, or accountants?

The harm that they do is, I think, at least as bad. It’s not that their interactions with students are a waste of time - they are actively harmful. You can maintain order in a classroom a lot of different ways, but if you’re not going to engage students in learning then your options are pretty much bullying the students yourself or tacitly encouraging them to bully each other. As my former principal once half-joked, teachers could expect to receive high ratings “as long as there’s no blood on the floor of the classroom.” Individual students sustain lasting psychological harm, and all of them internalize the same message: school is bullshit, and the powers that be think that I am not worth teaching. Really bad teachers are also toxic to schools and, I think, teacher unions in general, because they sap the morale of hardworking staff and are overrepresented in unions, hijacking their agendas to lock in their own benefits at the expense of students and non-veteran teachers and to insulate themselves from accountability.

At least, that's what I've witnessed. Reforming tenure is obviously not a panacea, but I think it’s something that people who want to improve education by improving teacher quality and compensation should not reflexively dismiss.

-- ZaneMuller - 18 Apr 2018