Making It Tougher to Retain Good Teachers

In your March 21 editorial, “Rewards, Not Tenure,” The Times perpetuates two myths about teacher tenure. One is that once teachers achieve tenure, they have “a lifelong sinecure,” and can only be dislodged through heroic and expensive administrative effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tenure is simply the right to be terminated after a legal hearing, instead of remaining an at-will employee.

Similarly, many believe -- again, inaccurately -- that “once tenure is granted, unions tie principals into procedural knots before they can fire bad teachers.” Unions guarantee due process rights for members, just as our laws do for anyone accused in the judicial system. In a hearing before a three-person panel consisting of an administrative law judge, a peer chosen by the teacher and another chosen by the administration, the principal must show that the teacher deserves to be terminated based on incompetence or unprofessional conduct. If administrators (and students) get stuck with “a bad teacher,” it is because the administrator has failed to properly marshal the evidence to convince reasonable individuals the teacher should be fired.

Tenure and unions are not the problem. Nearly half our teachers leave our underfunded public education system before five years of employment due to the difficulty of their jobs and lack of support. The governor’s proposal to extend probation to five years from two would only make it harder to retain the quality teachers.

Mary Bergan

President, California

Federation of Teachers

Oakland