Easy Pickings - effects of teacher tenure

Washington Monthly, May, 1999 by James Heaney

Masiello describes the district's lack of management rights as "an obstacle" "Management needs to have the rights and flexibility to manage and hold people accountable," he said.

But the times are changing elsewhere. A growing number of states and school districts are holding principals and other school administrators more accountable by regularly evaluating their performance and in some cases eliminating tenure. While tenure for principals is embedded in New York state law, it is being challenged around the country. Massachusetts, Georgia, North Carolina and Oregon have stripped' their principals of tenure in recent years, reducing to 16 the number of states that provide principals with tenure.

The Chicago school system, considered one of the nation's most troubled districts in the '80s, has been the most aggressive in holding administrators accountable. Linking job security to student performance has been a cornerstone of efforts to improve the district, says G. Alfred Hess, director of the Center for Urban School Policy at Northwestern University and an observer to the Chicago reform movement. "We saw principals' lifetime tenure as one of the major problems in getting school improvement to happen," he says. "The leadership was not accountable for the performance of the kids,"

The Illinois State Legislature enacted reforms in 1988 and 1995. Councils consisting primarily of parents have gained greater control over school budgets and can hire and fire principals. The mayor appoints the school board and hires the top five central office administrators. The teachers union's power has been reduced and principals lost their tenure altogether. As a result, ineffective teachers and administrators at poorly performing schools can be fired. "The difference is night and day," Hess says. "Previously, principals understood their main job was to make sure their school didn't get into the news, except for something wonderful. And as long as they kept their school out of trouble, nobody cared what happened. Nobody ever got fired because the kids didn't learn. Now the primary question about the performance of school officials is whether their kids are learning or not."

The reforms are paying off. The percentage of students reading at national norms climbed from 24 to 35 percent from 1990 to 1998. "I would say 85 percent of the credit for changes in student achievement relate to the ability to change the principal at the school," Hess says. "Effective principals make or break improving schools."

"If you want to improve student achievement, you have to tie job security to whether kids are learning more. Otherwise educators' prejudice about the ability of low-income and minority kids to learn gets in the way of change," Hess says. "If you can say, `It's not my fault, it's the kids I have to teach,' you're not going to get much change in those schools. But if people say, `Your job security depends on whether kids in your classes are learning,' then you have a whole different lever for change."