How About A State Question
 

The so-called teacher tenure bill passed Florida legislature on Friday seeks to put new teachers on annual contracts, and to tie half of a teacher’s salary increases to the learning gains of students, removes the concept of teacher tenure so they could be fired for poor performance, and permits higher pay for teachers who do a demonstrably good job. If the state’s Republican lawmakers get their way, it would be the linchpin of a broader overhaul that includes two other bills passed in the Florida house — one that would expand a private school voucher program, another that would open the door to loosening class-size limits.

The teacher's unions have been putting a lot of pressure on Governor Crist to veto the bill. I haven't been able to determine where Crist's primary election opponent, Marco Rubio, stands on the bill although as a leading House Republican and former Speaker of the Florida House, presumably he voted for the bill.

The bill sounds like it has quite a few good ideas in it as far as I'm concerned. Will there be a disagreement between Crist and Rubio on political grounds, even though it would appear that both Republicans should be for the enactment of the bill into Florida law? Maybe a more important question might be, will the Governor veto the bill?

I applaud the principle but worry about the implementation of such a bill.

A good or excellent teacher does not necessarily equal good grades among his/her students.

The issue of tenure in the teaching profession and/or any civil service positions is significantly more complex than it appears on the surface. A fellow named Charles Guiteau arguably had more to do with the concept of "tenure" than any person or institution on earth. He was the assassin who shot President McKinley. The spoils system was in full bloom in 1881. All public employees served at the pleasure of incumbents and when leadership changed they were all swept out of office, "new broom clean sweep", regardless of talent, performance or qualifications. Guiteau had an overestimated opinion of some speeches he wrote for McKinley and largely credited himself with McKinley's election. He demanded an ambassadorship in Paris as a reward of the spoils and patronage system. When he was denied, he shot McKinley who ultimately died of his wounds and poor medical care.

Public outcries about patronage and the spoils system were ignited by the assassination. As an aside, interesting on its own merit, but, not relevant to your post is that up until this point in our history, political funding was largely dependant on patronage. As civil service materialized and expanded, funding shifted to business interests. Alas, the roots of campaign funding abuse.

While Guiteau's violent act was the catalyst for reform, it was the Pendleton Act specifically that started civil service and protective tenure laws that insulated public employees from dismissal without cause. Originally the law applied to only a limited number of federal employees but morphed over many years to what we have today including tenure in the teaching profession.

I probably lost most TOTV players with this boring, long of wind and possibly irrelevant background information so .......to the point.

I believe you have to understand the history of the past to understand and act on contemporary issues. I am not a fan of the status quo that protects lazy, incompetent teachers who game the system. However, I do not want to risk exposing the overwhelming number of dedicated professionals who could be unfairly targeted by a reversal of the system. Such a reversal may lead to manipulation of the system to the extent that it reverts back or exposes it to increased patronage consideration instead of performance. I do not believe an intelligent, definitive legislative action can be considered without factoring historical considerations into the equation less we resurrect the ghosts and mistakes of the past. To this end, the arbitrary "annual contract" clause in your post is troublesome and suspicious. If the issue is lazy incompetent teachers, I believe we are astute enough to target and evaluate them on a case by case basis without changing the way we hire them and by affording them reasonable job security.

To answer your question, I suspect whatever materializes in Florida will be a compromise of tenure protection and performance. I hope so anyway.

As a footnote for those have suffered this tedious posting effort to this point, there are considerable parallels with the development of Civil Service, the protections it offers and the development of unions. Abuses by business and industry in our early history, provided the spark that ignited the union movement in this country. I will spare you the details for now.

Have a great evening in The Villages.

Not a tedious post at all...GREAT POST and I thank you. I learned quite a bit from your brief history lesson :)

Actually, married to someone who taught for over 30 years and thus this issue has a personal meaning.

Over those 30 years I have met some bad teachers...good teachers and GREAT teachers. All protected by tenure. I also over the years got to know many of the children and parents. As a result I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND the reason for tenure but I also know that it does in fact protect some bad teachers.

Unfortunately, the performance of the students does not necessarily manifest the attitude, dedication or ability of the teacher.

As you know, I have often sharply disagreed with your political posts. I have found it hard to understand how someone could look at the world and see things so differently. So it is refreshing to see something from you which is logical, well stated, and even strongly grounded in history. But for just one thing - James Garfield was Guiteau's victim.

Great Info
 

Not tedious at all, Cabo. Great historical background as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know enough about the details of the bill. My summary was probably too terse, given my lack of detailed knowledge of the legislation. What I do know is that the bill is being used as grist for the political mill here. Notwithstanding Governor Crist's great performance (as far as I'm concerned anyway), he's not far enough to the right for some of the legislators who are backing his primary opponent. From news reports, the bill was passed and presented to the Governor for his ratification more because his decision could be used against him in the primary campaign than as the result of the immediate need for the legislation.

While Crist is a Republican, he is clearly a centrist Republican. Apparently, there are some things about the bill that he doesn't like--maybe the attack on tenure, as you described. But reports are the bill was passed so that, if he was going to veto it for whatever reasons he has, that decision would have to occur during the primary campaign and could be used against him politically by his primary opponent, who is farther to the right than the Governor.

What's sad about this is that the teachers will all be affected by whatever decision is made and whether this bill is good or bad, influenced more by politics than the desirability of the bill itself.

ijusluvit - Congratulations....I was just testing to see if anyone was paying attention. Really, thank you. I stand absolutely corrected. :bowdown: It was Garfield and I knew that. In an extemporaneous senior moment, I mixed up my assassinated presidents. My bad. We actually have a summer home not far from the oceanfront cottage where Garfield died of his wounds at the Jersey shore. In fact we have occasionally visited the site including very recently.

Regarding your reference to our differing political perspectives....I have tried to be logical, grounded in history and tempered with life experience in my posting style. My perspective, according to credible polling data seems to put me in the mainstream of current political thinking. Go figure.

VK - Once again your articulate and thought provoking post is appreciated. I also believe this legislation is influenced more for political considerations and only incidentally addresses meaningful improvements to educational processes.

Bucco - Thank you. I agree with your observation that the performance of students is not always a reflection on the quality of teachers. So many other factors enter the equation.

Cabo35: Not boring at all. It quite well articulated *why* we have the civil service system that we have today. It's morphed into something terrible these days and I'd like to see reform of the system without completely throwing it away. Tenure can be a great reward but also protects the incompetent.