Proposition 74 is simple enough. It changes tenure from 2 years to 5 years of employment. It also makes it easier for school districts to fire teachers after they have been tenured. Being no fan of tenure, my heart is sympathetic to this measure. That said, the more and more I think about this measure, the more and more I think that this measure falls short and is somewhat misdirected at what needs to be done. Tenure needs to be removed in public education (K-12). It doesn’t have a place there. If it were to remain, it needs to be changed to where it is granted to exceptional teachers after a number of years of service, instead of automatically envoked after a set number of years. That’s the way it is in colleges. A professor doesn’t just get tenure after a few years of work. No, the professor has to be recommended to the tenure committee and the committee must approve the tenure. (Along these lines, there was a teacher that was fired recently, not because she wasn’t acceptably good, but because it had now been two years and if she wasn’t fired, she would have been tenured and near impossible to let go if her acceptable performance deteriorated.)

With these thoughts in mind, I’ve decided I’m against prop. 74. If this measure passes, the state’s attention will turn elsewhere and real reform in teacher employment will not be examined. I’ll wait for a proposition that actually does something meaningful.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 74

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Politics, Politics - State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.