Friend claims that teacher tenure enables child abuse

[alp227]

On facebook a friend of mine who's a libertarian posted an NYT article about the Vergara v California lawsuit re teacher tenure and commented that teacher tenure enabled an epidemic of child abuse at the LAUSD. I looked it up and found this LA Daily News article from May 2013:

In the past, the misdeeds detailed in the teachers' files would likely have earned the offender a disciplinary memo, maybe a week's suspension, perhaps a transfer to another school.

Today, they're grounds for firing.

Under the zero-tolerance policy that Deasy enacted after the Miramonte Elementary sex-abuse scandal erupted in February 2012, the school board has voted to dismiss more than 100 teachers for misconduct, and accepted the resignations of at least 200 others who were about to be terminated. Nearly 300 additional teachers accused of inappropriate behavior remain "housed" in administrative offices while officials investigate the complaints.

In Jan. 2013, the LAUSD was sued over allegations that ADMINISTRATORS deliberately were dismissive of complaints about teachers abusing students.

What's really messed up is even in super progressive California, people are buying into the anti-teacher union myths no matter what party they're in. As someone who's been involved in education activism at the state university I go to, I know the reality is opposite of what the Bill Gates/Michelle Rhee/Joel Klein types have been putting out. I think it's an uphill battle to debunk the most common myths about teachers' unions or pretty much any labor union:
- Teachers unions cover up for teachers who abuse kids (in reality unions protect teachers the same way defense attorneys protect accused criminals...it's called due process!)
- Teacher tenure doesn't allow ineffective teachers to be fired
- Test scores are the final authority of how good a teacher is

[Demeter]

1. A felony is a felony, even if you have tenure

so that lie won't fly. Tenure takes such things into account, and has specific clauses to evict the tenured.

[Sancho]

2. Saying you can't fire a teacher who has tenure is BS....

go to any state records, and you can find teachers are non-renewed every year! In Florida, it averages over 2000 a year. If you commit a crime you are gone. Even if you are simply a bad teacher, you can be fired if the administration documents the problems.

"Tenure" (sometimes called continuing contracts) ensures that teachers have due process. In other words, you can't be fired arbitrarily and the teacher gets a fair hearing. There has to be a cause for the firing. Teachers still have to keep up their credentials and are evaluated annually. The vast majority of teachers are pretty good, but the ones who are not get played up by the media.

With college professors, it's similar except tenure also protects professors from being fired for political reasons, so they can include controversial topics in class without fear of retaliation (called academic freedom). Most teachers have a curriculum established by the school board, so academic freedom is not an issue for them.

Of course, the best protection is usually the local union, because without being organized and having a collective bargaining agreement, there is no real enforcement of tenure even if the state law allows it. The union will fight violations of the contract and represent teachers if they are in danger of being fired - and the primary reason for representation is simply fairness.

[Igel]

3. Can't tell.

Yes, a felony is a felony. What priests were doing in the '70s and the '80s were felonies. Somehow that minor detail didn't make a lot of difference. Why? Along the way the parents of the abused kids didn't press charges, the church didn't notify the authorities that one of the employees it would have to protect in court was doing anything wrong.

In other words, a felony isn't always a reported felony.

At my grad school one stu-gov appointee was working hard on sexual harrassment claims. He was told there were none. Period. On the other side was a survey saying there was a fair amount, and women who came forward and said they had been sexually harrassed. Finally he got an administrator to say that any sexual harrassment claim would have been settled out of court, the records and the amount of money paid in the settlement would have been sealed, a non-disclosure agreement would have been signed on both sides, and the records most likely would have been placed in a locked filing cabinet in the office of the administrator in charge of sexual harrassment. The administrator saying this *was* that administrator, and as he said it he was leaning against a locked filing cabinet. Not all communication needs to be verbal and context matters.

Same with teachers. There was a bit of a scandal perhaps 15 years ago. It was determined that out-of-court settlements had sealed records of child abuse by teachers. The incidents would not be reported to the state ed agency. The teacher's record would be clean. Rape and sodomy notwithstanding. Some teachers were serial victimizers--hence the scandal. In some cases the settlement required that the teacher move to another district or leave the field; if "leave the field" they could just be certified in another state.

The "union" tie-in is that states with strong unions with lots of lawyers for protecting teachers seemed to have had more of this. The teachers had better, more consistent protection--from the first minute the allegations were made. You can call this "due process." But due process is what you get in the courts, not in the district superintendant's office as a deal is reached to spare the district's reputation and not drag the 10-year-old boy or the 12-year-old girl through the mud by making him/her give testimony, making the case a big deal. Even if you don't release the kid's name, the other kids figure it out--then their parents know, and the community knows.

Does this go on today? Who can tell? Nobody could tell it was happening back then.

We still get the flurry of pregnancies that become obvious every spring from early fall teacher-student romances. When the father is made known (these days that's not so important in some schools).

We have laws making it a requirement that schools now report such things. But if they do and nobody wants to testify against the teacher, it goes precisely nowhere.

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Test scores are not the final authority on how good a teacher is. Low test scores don't show an ineffective teacher. But an ineffective teacher without independent, high-achieving students will have low test scores.

And in many cases tenure--or the more attenuated version that some states have--does prevent ineffective teachers from being fired. If a teacher is ineffective and still on probation, you just don't renew the contract. If the teacher isn't on probation then there's a process you need to follow to dispose of the teacher. That can be lengthy. The teacher can rise to the occasion and complete the process to be "highly effective" and then lapse again the following year. And then there's the kicker--if that ineffective teacher isn't being dealt with the same as every other equally ineffective teacher, the district has additional problems.