A response to PSS’ Website on tenure

The Board of Education has recently sent a memo to teachers asking for their comments on tenure and provided teachers the website location to review the Public School Systems’ position on tenure and for balanced reporting. I think it is important that teachers review the articles and papers that have been presented by PSS for teachers. But I would also like for teachers to hear the opposing arguments to these papers before they send their comments to the board or to me at Kagman High School. I already have the comments from the overwhelming majority of teachers at Kagman High School and San Vicente Elementary School. I hope that all teachers will submit their comments because this is their first and maybe the only chance they will get to address the board on their job security and matters facing the teacher workforce.

The “Diversifying Teacher Compensation” article is indeed a great new and novel approach to “salary compensation.” However salary compensation is only one component of a tenure plan or system. It should also be noted that this was only “one” article or paper written by only two people and it does not reflect any research that de-legitimizes tenure. There is also the fact that diversifying teacher compensation is still being debated and the research on this form of teacher compensation is still in its infancy. Furthermore, we are presently not financially able to fund a diversity compensation plan when its obvious we can’t give teachers a nominal salary increase. The proposal for Diversifying Teacher Compensation does have potential but without funds it is nothing more than “pie in the sky” that will only serve to distract teachers from wanting tenure.

The paper on “Research Illuminates the Nature and Cause of School Staffing Problems” covers two basis areas: The supply and demand for teachers and the hiring practices of various school districts. The focus of this paper is “how to retain or replace teachers. The article stated, “the problem of hiring enough teachers for our nation’s classrooms is like pouring water into a leaky bucket”—the recruiting challenge facing the CNMI is almost doubled compared to mainland schools when our location and pay scale is entered into the equation. The article calls for states, districts and unions to work together with school boards to create an accelerated hiring process.

The article does identify sources of staffing problems but like the first article the word “tenure” is not mentioned nor does the article de-legitimize tenure. The article explains why teachers with more options often leave schools systems for better positions, which causes school districts to loose their best recruits. A phenomenon we have been experiencing in the CNMI with our teacher academy recruits because more and more students are deferring to mainland upon graduation. In fact, I have a letter from 17 NMC students who plan to be and they don’t want to work for PSS simply because they can’t get a permanent contract and decent pay—these future teachers of the CNMI are headed to the mainland ASAP to teach. PSS would do well to incorporate some of the solutions offered in this paper to a tenure plan for PSS teachers.

The article “Teachers warn to idea of performance pay” is an article about one school district in La Crecent Minn. which does not represent an adequate sample of teachers or school districts of America for us to make a definitive decision. While there is a push for teachers to be paid on the level of achievement of their students, there are many factors that contribute to the classroom educational experience that are beyond the teachers capabilities and accountability.

These factors vary from child to child, parent to parent, classroom to classroom and school district to school district and to only assess teachers for quality and pay is clearly not a fair and appropriate approach when teachers aren’t being given all the necessary support in equal amounts. I’m confident that only a few teachers in school districts throughout America are not very excited about performance pay, especially when the teeth of this type of policy will only bite teachers.

The next article is from the Contra Costa Times Newspaper, which states, “Higher Pay no longer enough to make new teachers stay.” The article only relates to the conditions of new teachers and it refers to “mentoring and monitoring” as a means to help retain new teachers. PSS only recently implemented the mentoring program, which was taken from the tenure proposal I submitted for teachers. New teachers do need an additional support system but the support should be from within the school itself to be really affective. Presently, we have a “scatter brain approach” to address teacher relations, growth and concerns. The mentoring and monitoring should be apart of a teacher retention and growth “system” and the only system used by all the teachers and school districts in America is a tenure system.

The newspaper editorial form a small newspaper group in Illinois (with no name) speaks about “Hidden Cost of Tenure” is nothing more than complaints about the cost of law suites Illinois has encountered with firing teachers and complaints about the power of the unions that represent teachers. It should also be noted the article was “politically” motivated by representatives in the Illinois Legislature who have historically been against unions. PSS teachers don’t have a union and they only want a simple grievance process for firing, which makes PSS’ argument moot in regards to the cost of tenure.

The same newspaper group also published an article about “School Board lose[s] power to fire poor teachers.” This article blames the power of unions to persuade legislation that made it difficult to fire teachers in Illinois. PSS does not have to worry about the Legislature or the board making a law or policy that will make it extremely difficult to fire a teacher and the fact that teachers don’t have a union makes this phenomenon even less of a threat to the Board or the system.

PSS used a third article from this “single source” newspaper group against tenure with the article “Tenure frustrates drive for teacher accountability.” This article is clearly focused on unions and the formal grievance procedure that supports teachers, which merely gives teachers a stronger voice.

It was really insulting to read newspaper articles and editorials to compare against the real research that supports tenure. PSS administration is trying to destroy the idea of a tenure when we should be focusing on how to create a better or the best tenure system. I hope that teachers can see that PSS administration has offered them a whole lot of nothing based on magazine articles and newspaper reports from the Web. I gave the board proof that tenure is our best option based on research that has gain the support of numerous educational organizations including the National Association of State Boards (NASB). But the articles presented by PSS did prove that there is “No Genuine Research” that de-legitimizes tenure. Teachers should send their comments on this issue to me at KHS so I can present all the comments collectively, as they should be presented. Teachers will only get permanent contracts, a grievance procedure and a structured plan for individual growth under a tenure system and only if teachers ask for one. Teachers only need to say yes or not about tenure because there is no system in place to even comment on. All teachers, one direction for tenure.

Ambrose Bennett
Kagman