Tenure – Speaking Up for Students
There’s more to being a teacher than just getting kids to pass “the test.”
Due process rights are important because they allow us to stand up for our students, through giving voice in supporting and protecting them. With due process, teachers can stand up for the student who we think may be unfairly suspended, especially when a parent is not available to defend the child. We can fight against rescinding support services of a special needs child because those services are too costly. Many times, parents may not be able attend their child’s CSE/IEP meeting. The only one in the room advocating for that child may well be the teacher.
PERMANENT STATUS
My 8th year of teaching was the 1983-84 school year. I taught “Reading Readiness.” For those who don’t remember it, “Reading Readiness” was a class for students who finished kindergarten but were not ready for first grade. It was, in essence, a second year of kindergarten. Let me be clear…I don’t believe that grade retention, in any form, has been shown to be an effective remediation technique. Studies have shown that retention, even in the earliest elementary grades, usually doesn’t work and often harmful. However, in 1983 I didn’t know what I know now.
In any case, I taught a modified first grade curriculum, and tried to fill in the gaps of learning the students missed the previous year.
With the recent national discussions over teacher tenure an incident that happened during this year came back to me.
When I began my career it took 5 years of positive evaluations before a teacher was granted “permanent status.” That meant that I had to be evaluated in each of my first 5 years. At any time during those years I could have been fired…for any reason. At the beginning of my 6th year I was given permanent status. This meant that, if an administrator wanted to fire me I was entitled to a hearing. It didn’t mean that I couldn’t be fired. It just meant (the same as it means today) that there had to be a legitimate reason for my firing…a reason supported by data presented by the administration. And I had the right to respond. That’s what tenure meant then. That’s what it means now for K-12 teachers.
BOBBY
One of my students during the 1983-84 school year was Bobby (not his real name). Bobby was a special education student. He had been identified in preschool as being a student with special needs and for the previous 2 or 3 years had been in the classroom designated for special needs preschoolers at our school system’s special education center.
At this time in our history, the school system did not have fully mainstreamed special education. We had two elementary special education classrooms for a system with 11 elementary schools. The “primary class” was for students in grades Kindergarten through 3, and the “intermediate class” was for students in grades 4 through 6. The year that Bobby entered my class the system had about a dozen identified elementary aged special education students. The youngest of those, aside from Bobby, was a fourth grader. My classroom was chosen as an alternative because I taught a flexible curriculum and the children in my class were Bobby’s age-peers. Alternatively he would have had to have been either alone in a classroom, returned to the preschool with much younger students, or in the designated special education classrooms with much older students. At least, that was my understanding at the time.
Our school system had too few special education teachers. We didn’t identify many special education students instead allowing them to sit in general Tenure – Speaking Up for Students | Live Long and Prosper: