My governor wants to bundle teacher raises next year with policy that makes it easier for under-performing teachers to be fired. A raise would be grand, say teachers, but anything that challenges tenure is a no-go.
This response by teachers devalues our profession.
If teachers think the work we do is important enough to society to deserve more compensation–and think this we do, believe me–we must accept the fact that our role is also important enough to receive a little critical oversight that can snuff out ineffectiveness when merited.
Societal respect for and recognition of a profession is perhaps best reflected in high salaries. Teachers want that respect, but not at the cost of job security. Trouble is, the societal payoff for increased salaries is boosted competition for coveted jobs. That’s an easy okay for new hires, but holds limited impact if employers are not enabled to glean good faculty from the general educator base and let the rest move along.
The influence we teachers think we wield over our nation’s youngsters is notable. I face my sixty students for nearly ninety minutes every day for 180 days, thereby reigning over more than 16,000 childhood hours each year. If I do less than foster growth in each of my students during each of those hours, I have let down the kids and society–and myself.
Whether or not teachers are paid more, we’d better be good at what we do, and when a teacher’s work is sub par, worthless, or detrimental, that teacher needs to do some reinventing or find a road to hit. I’d prefer my car’s safety belts were manufactured and installed by someone who was good at doing that rather than by someone who was keeping their job only by paying union dues; mine is no trivial preference that my children sit under the tutelage of someone who teaches passionately and effectively rather than someone who is merely counting the days until summer break.
Certainly teachers need protection from inept or mis-motivated higher ups who might fire them unjustly, but the idea that teachers deserve unchallenged tenure is as misguided as the resistance teachers often grumble about being evaluated. Teachers in general dread classroom and walk-through observations by principals, and I admit that they still make me nervous, even though I’ve chosen to welcome them as–and have never experienced them as anything other than–opportunities to receive helpful suggestions and affirmation.
But more important than just reminding me that I’m not self employed is the underlying value that ongoing evaluation places on the work I do: for the sake of all, I am worth professional scrutiny.
