Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Arthur Goldstein: Let's Fire Miss Crabtree

Arthur Goldstein: Let's Fire Miss Crabtree
Arthur Goldstein

Arthur Goldstein

Posted: October 27, 2010 01:32 AM

Let's Fire Miss Crabtree

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Poor Miss Crabtree. She's getting married, and she has to leave her job. Such things happened back in the day, before anyone thought of equal rights for women, tenure, or indoor plumbing.

Nowadays we no longer insist teachers take chastity vows, remain unmarried, fill the inkwells, clean the coal boilers, or do whatever else they did in the good old days. Still, without tenure Miss Crabtree could now be fired for some more contemporary reason. Perhaps she told her colleagues how much UFT teachers earn. Or maybe she insisted they provide services mandated for special education students. Maybe she didn't do anything and they took the word of an angry student over hers. Perhaps they posted her scores (despite an explicit agreement not to -- how can anyone trust these folks?) and decided to discontinue her, rendering her license useless in NYC. These things happen when teachers don't have tenure.

Yet, I keep hearing, tenure is evil. Why? Because there are bad teachers out there! If you watchWaiting for Superman, you may walk out thinking they all hide behind the skirts of evil AFT