The public schools' last hurrah? - a plan to save the school system: includes a related article on Nativity Preparatory School in Roxbury, Massachusetts - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, March, 1996 by Joshua Wolf Shenk

The first step toward a solution is to eliminate tenure. William Bosher, state superintendent of Virginia's public schools, wants to do just that. "This is something that polls show 70 percent of Americans support," he says. "As we talk about student accountability, accountability for schools, then we need to look at every aspect." Bosher would offer new teachers a year-long contract, then, if they do well, a three-year contract, and after that, five-year contracts.

Throughout the country, unions use their formidable political clout to perpetuate the status quo. In 1994, the National Education Association (NEA) gave $2.27 million to Democratic candidates for Congress, out-spending even the National Rifle Association. More to the point, the donations flow generously in state politics where the laws that matter get written. The Virginia Education Association killed Bosher's reform in the state legislature. In a number of states, from California to Kentucky, reformers are moving to reform tenure laws and are meeting the same resistance.

No one knows unions' fearsome power better than Bill Clinton who, as Arkansas governor in 1983, proposed that teachers pass a simple competency test as a condition of recertification. The Arkansas Education Association was enraged, calling tests "insulting and degrading." They lobbied the legislature, staged candlelight vigils, and closed down the schools to hold a massive rally in Little Rock. Considering how basic the test was, the furor is mystifying. One math question was as follows:

In preparation for the sixth grade graduation ceremony, the school custodian determines that the school has 1,200 folding chairs. However, the kindergarten classes will use 240 of those chairs for their graduation. How many chairs will be left over for the sixth graders? A: 950; B: 960; C: 1060; D: 1,440. (By the way, teachers who failed the test could take it again - multiple times.)

Unions, of course, have won many deserved benefits for teachers who are generally overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. And the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has shown more willingness than the larger NEA to tackle once taboo issues - such as the importance of discipline in the classroom. But even the AFT continues to defend incompetents. For groups that are supposed to be teachers' advocates, this makes no sense. Bad teachers make for more work and less respect for the good ones.

Teachers do have a legitimate worry about principals abusing their power to hire and fire; so why not involve teachers in personnel decisions? There's also no question that some job security for teachers encourages academic freedom. But a five year contract gives considerable security. Or make it six - then teachers would have the same job guarantee as United States senators, who have the longest tenure of any elected federal official and among whom there is no shortage of the spirited disagreement that academic freedom is meant to stimulate.

III. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Gertrude Williams, the principal of the Barclay School in Baltimore, had an idea: She wanted to adopt the rigorous curriculum and methodology of a nearby private academy, the Calvert School, for her inner-city public school students. The city superintendent, Richard Hunter, resisted, calling it a "rich man's curriculum." Presumably, Hunter meant that Barclay's students - 90 percent of whom are black, 82 percent of whom are poor enough to receive free school lunches - wouldn't respond to a rigorous program in math, science, history, literature, and art.