D.C. COMES CLOSER TO ENDING TENURE

As I have previously reported, D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee is aggressively moving to end tenure and bust the teachers’ union by awarding humongous salary increases and bonuses to employees willing to forego tenure. The August 14th Washington Post reports that the union is almost evenly split, with all the younger teachers enthusiastically embracing tenure’s demise, while the older teachers wish to retain job security. The younger teachers who want bonuses are even planning to picket the offices of the teachers’ union in an amazing march of the scabs, demanding right to work laws for educators. A thirty-four year veteran educator remarked, “Rhee wants to purge older teachers and that for instructors to sell out hard-won protections against arbitrary or unfair dismissal is unthinkable.”

Naïve youngsters are willing to sell their souls in pursuit of the almighty dollar. A second year novice said “she would have no problem with a system in which her pay and her job was tied to her students’ academic growth.” Another genius said, “I’m secure with my teaching practices and my pedagogy. I know that if the growth of my students was questioned, I feel I would have enough data and anecdotal data to back it up. Why is it that veterans are against rewarding teachers for improved test scores?” Even a thirteen year veteran said she agrees with Rhee’s objectives. “All of us know there needs to be a weeding out. She has the right idea to aggressively get new blood.” Yes, we just need a revolving door of warm bodies staffing our classrooms. The anti-unionists are often Teach for America missionaries who are brainwashed into believing that they will succeed where older teachers have failed. Even in college, education majors are often told that it is their destiny to save inner city school systems from collapse. (La Forza Del Destino.)

Older teachers have the option of opting out of tenure and taking bonuses designed to bring salaries up to $130,000, almost the highest in the nation. Under Rhee’s latest proposal, newcomers will automatically not have tenure; which does not seem to bother the new recruits. The rookies just want to take the money and run as many of them only see taking this job for a year or two. Other novices feel that if they are fired, so what. They can just find another job in another field. Rhee herself commented in June of 2007 that we should look at teaching as a field where people will only stay a few years before moving on. We should not view education as a life-long career.

The right to work educators are oblivious to the fact that the goings on in schools defy logic and common sense, with most administrators functioning as political hacks who care very little about real learning. These dedicated kids really believe that principals wear halos over their heads and take vows of chastity. They are merely the grunts for the chancellor’s hidden agenda of busting the union while ridding the system of higher paid educators.

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