Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Judge-teacher job protection violates constitution

I am a teacher and now a school administrator in CA. I have spent 13 years in a non-union charter school. Our school is WASC accredited and a "distinguished" school, not a fly by night pop up charter.

We primarily hire new teachers. Our school does not purchase any boxed curriculum, nothing scripted or "pre-made". Each teacher makes their own curriculum and lessons- from deciding what books to teach, to collaborating in cross-subject projects, to writing their own math problems. If we hire new teachers, they come in fresh, passionate and inspired in their subject area and ready to change the world. We can teach them our way to teaching, classroom management and excitement. My teachers start at $34K and top out, with a masters degree and 20 years experience at $70K. I don't think that's an unreasonable pay scale- few careers ask you to work 20 years with a masters to be inching your way up to $70K.

My teachers teach 188 days a year. That means this summer, they have four weeks off to revamp their curriculum, attend a mandatory (unpaid) tech conference, take their personal vacations and go to the doctor. We don't have vacation days and sick days are limited to keep subs out of the classroom. Our middle and high school teachers have 140 student contacts a day. Our elementary have 28, with no aide and no daily prep.

We get some duds- sure! But the benefit of being non-union is that every employee is at-will so we don't have to wait forever to let someone go.

I wouldn't want a brand new one either, but one with a few years' experience would be Ok. My kids had a teacher who was brand new to the district with 3 years experience and she tried a lot harder to differentiate than the teachers with 20+ years, was better about responding to concerns, etc. The teachers with 20+ years have their lesson plans that they use every year and they seem to resent anyone asking for something different. That being said, I think the best teacher we have dealt with was more experienced, and she was not burnt out. But I don't think that the best teachers necessarily have the most experience, or inexperienced teachers don't have what it takes. I think the ones who just have a couple years under their belt are still trying hard, they have more enthusiasm, and they don't have tenure yet so they are trying not to screw things up.

My mom works as a teachers aide in Illinois and her district has assigned her to the worst teachers a.few times, because they know that she will not tolerate the teacher mistreating the children and she will report it. Then they can document a case to get rid of the teacher. It takes horrible, gross violations for a teacher to be dismissed.
Part of her job is to accept all the inneffective strategies and laziness of some of these teachers, no one wants to hear about that. But whenthey physically or verbally hurt the children, she ends up documenting it. It's awful. (Actually, teachers must freak out when my mom gets assigned to their classroom)

When my son was in school,his best teachers were actually brand new ones. I love those teachers and appreciate their dedication and honesty.
My mom, being assigned to the worst teachers in her district, has a whole different viewpoint.

No grading papers or lesson plans in our school district for K, 1st and 2nd grades (the students either meet or do not meet requirements based on "observation" in the classroom) - they have a common lesson plan for the whole grade which presumably was made by the "lead teacher" many years ago - nothing new happening to their meager spelling lists, hand puppet making kits and single digit addition work sheets - no frequent updating of documents needed on that front! (I pulled DS out of the system, so I don't know if things are different for late elementary grades).

As the topic says, underprivileged kids had to sue the state and teachers in order to try to get a good education and a judge had to state that the situation "shocked the conscience" for people to take notice. It should not have come down to this. And I live in the highest performing school district in the state - I am horrified at what the underprivileged kids who depend on the school system to make or break their futures go through.

I've read that teacher effectiveness rises for the first few years (say 3 to 5) but then plateaus. Some studies confirming this are cited at

http://winginstitute.org/Graphs/Staff/What-effect-does-experience-have-on-teacher-effectiveness/
What effect does experience have on teacher effectiveness?

http://tntp.org/ideas-and-innovations/view/teacher-experience-what-does-the-research-say
Teacher Experience: What Does the Research Say?

If there is no evidence that teachers with 20 years experience are better than those with 5, the two sets of teachers should be paid about the same. Current salary structures negotiated by unions heavily reward seniority.

Our experience is mixed: in my DD's school, the only teacher in three years who tried to help her was teaching for the first time. The two with 30+ years experience did nothing (one tried to hold her back in math), and the one who'd been teaching for 5-10 years held her back in math until October. She was finally forced to move her to the fastest math group when DD took a pretest on long division and got everything correct. The mix has been pretty much the same with my eldest son's teachers. I think that a lot depends on personal qualities in the teacher and the attitude of the administration. Overall, US schools tend to be anti-acceleration, and this outlook trickles down into the classroom.

As for the OP's lawsuit, the problem is more than just tenure. This lawsuit came up because the students (and presumably their parents) got fed up with the schools for failing to provide enough instruction time by people who were even minimally qualified to instruct. The schools in Oakland are an example of what I mean:



This has absolutely been the case with my son at our local high school. His math teacher was injured over Christmas, and the subs did their knitting and told the kids to teach themselves. There was effectively NO instruction for the rest of the year. I wrote three emails about the problem to the vice-principal; he never answered. Other parents told me about teachers taping their morning lectures and playing the tapes for afternoon classes. Etc. And this school is "highly rated." As a result, I can easily believe the claims about the lower-rated schools in Oakland.

I can, as well.

The level of this kind of shenanigans at the secondary level is now pretty much MIND-BOGGLING.


All of those with primary kids-- you really can't imagine. I couldn't have, that is for sure.

From a cost/benefit perspective, an employer also factors in churn rate, cost/time for interviewing new employees, absorbing the initial skill ramp up within an organization along with training and time impact on other employees (aka resources when one has this sort of discussion.) There was some number like 40% of teachers leave within the first five years and that number goes down over time.

So the slow pay ramp from five to twenty could be some sorta amortization of the hiring costs and initial risks.

Someone with a financial or actuarial background could probably make a better explanation than I.

I am beginning to realize this - atleast, my child in elementary school had teachers in the class all the time!

From these accounts and lawsuits, it seems that not all secondary school kids in California have teachers and appropriate classes to keep them engaged for the hours that they spend in school. The kid can as well go home and help out with chores to gain "inside work experience". What kind of an education system is that?

I can certainly see why there is a healthy market for expensive private schools in California.

Um-- I don't live in CA. It's everywhere.

There have (also) been legal actions re: instructional time in Texas and in Oregon this spring alone. Try just using the search terms "instructional hours" and "legal action" in google news, and you'll see what I mean.

I can also tell you that for every one of those lawsuits, there are HUNDREDS of cases where administration does all that they can to obfuscate the reality sufficiently that there is no traction for such a suit, in spite of the reality being absolutely egregious.

My daughter, as I've reported elsewhere at length, got seven-and-a-half hours of instruction this year in her SECOND YEAR foreign language course. Which has no textbook.

In math, the situation was not much better-- there, she got LESS instructional time than that, but at least had textbooks and parents who could help.

We wound up using family friends who are fluent as tutors for the foreign language course. It's a shame, as DD seems to have a real gift for learning vie immersion-- but she never really had a chance under these conditions, frankly.