History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
The time is right for teacher-tenure reform
- 05-03-2010
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Commentary by Patrick McGuinn/Education Week
The Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative has begun a long-overdue debate on how to improve state systems of teacher evaluation and tenure. Instituted during the early part of the 20th century, tenure systems established a set of guidelines to protect teachers from the arbitrary, unfair, and often discriminatory dismissal practices that were common in local schools. While these due process protections remain necessary today, their expansion over time has made it so difficult and costly for districts to dismiss tenured teachers that they now rarely attempt to do so, even when serious concerns about a teacher’s effectiveness arise. Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey reveal that, on average, districts dismiss or decline to renew only 2.1 percent of teachers (tenured and nontenured) for poor performance each year. (more...)
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