Reform, don’t end, tenure

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Is tenure undermining American education? New York Times columnist Frank Bruni thinks so. 

Basing a recent opinion piece, “The Trouble With Tenure,” largely upon an interview he conducted with an outspoken tenure critic, Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston, the otherwise liberal Mr. Bruni accused tenure of sheltering bad teachers and thereby undermining the American educational system.  

While some of their observations may occasionally hold true, Mr. Johnston, Mr. Bruni and other tenure-haters ignore the fact that the system actually possesses the capacity to protect America’s greatest teachers — a potential that must be weighed in any final evaluation of its legitimacy.

Mr. Bruni’s writing has been characterized by its openness (not only did the Times’ first openly gay op-ed columnist disclose his sexuality, but he has also written about his own struggles with bulimia) and by his embrace of left-leaning causes such as the legalization of same-sex marriage.  

These qualities are exactly what make his rejection of tenure all the more disappointing.  In “The Trouble With Tenure,” Mr. Bruni rests his opinion largely on the shoulders of a politician who spent a whopping two years in front of a classroom as a Teach for America volunteer during the late 1990s.  

To be fair, Mr. Bruni also cites Mr. Johnston’s Master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, his six years as a Denver public schools principal, and his provenance as the son and grandson of public schoolteachers as reasons why his attacks on tenure are not motivated by a “cold… distan[t]” view of the teaching profession.  

Rather, Mr. Bruni quotes Johnston as arguing, “’[tenure] provides no incentive for someone to improve their practice’” and “deprive[s] principals of the team-building discretion they need…” 

Once principals can fire inadequate teachers, Mr. Johnston claims, citing his own experiences in racially diverse Denver public schools as well as the Harlem Success Academy, student learning skyrockets.

As a frequent admirer of Bruni’s writing, I found myself both incredulous and miffed after reading this piece. Mr. Bruni and Mr. Johnston attribute positive student results to their teachers’ lack of tenure, a principle that guarantees only due process — not lifetime job security as many believe — to teachers and professors.  But Mr. Bruni and Mr. Johnston fail to suggest myriad other potential causes behind the achievement of students of teachers without tenure.

For example, do Success Academy’s students succeed because their teachers have no tenure, or because the students there spend more hours away from possibly deleterious urban environments?  Or because they have parents who fight to secure all types of promising opportunities for their children? Do teachers at Success Academy work harder and longer because they have no job security, or because many of them are fresh out of college and don’t yet have families of their own?  

Others aren’t so quick to embrace Johnston’s opinions. Mr. Bruni failed to mention that just this spring, students, alumni and faculty at Harvard’s GSE publicly requested that the school’s administrators rescind their invitation to Mr. Johnston to deliver a convocation speech.

“Senator Johnston embraces a vision of education reform that relies heavily on test-based accountability while weakening the due process protections of teachers,” the 151 signatories attested, “a vision that we believe ultimately harms students and communities.” 

Unfortunately, by relying on Mr. Johnston and that other noted educational reform advocate, Whoopi Goldberg, Mr. Bruni not only uses his important platform to denigrate teachers and their unions, but also tarnishes his own reputation as a journalist. Times readers, along with the nation’s teachers and their students, deserve better.  

Moreover, in failing to consider the manifold ways in which tenure protects good teachers — for example, by sheltering them from politically motivated attacks by administrators who view open dialogue among smart, idealistic teachers as a threat to their authority — Mr. Bruni lends undeserved legitimacy to those who scapegoat teachers as the source of all of education’s ills.  

Tenure is not perfect, but surely it deserves more reasoned analysis than it got in Mr. Bruni’s column. Only by weighing the system’s strengths along with its weaknesses, can educators and policymakers (rather than TV talk show hosts like Ms. Goldberg) hope to reform tenure in order to ensure the best outcomes for all of our nation’s students.

Dominique Padurano, Ph.D.. is a Riverdalian and founder of Crimson Coaching, a tutoring service. Visit her at www.dominiquepadurano.com or www.facebook.com/crimsoncoaching, or follow her on twitter @CrimsonCoaching.

tenure, education, Dominique Padurano

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