text: Print Article: Mark Takano: Our kids deserve much better
  Mark Takano: Our kids deserve much better
  By MARK TAKANO
  2014-03-12 15:03:50
  In his recent column about education in America, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was right about one thing – our kids deserve effective teachers, and they aren't always getting them ["Students assert right to effective teachers," Opinion, Feb. 22].
  However, rather than contemplate recruitment and retention strategies he joins a new group of conservative education partisans looking to undermine workers unions by pitting teachers against students in the public debate.
  Bush is also right that there are "relatively few ineffective [teachers]" that should be removed from the classroom. But it is naïve to believe that stripping away teachers' workforce protections is a panacea. The stories used by advocates for Bush's position are largely anecdotal and are supported by neither the academic data nor those who work in the classroom.
  Prior to being elected to Congress, I worked for 23 years as a teacher in the Rialto Unified School District where I taught predominantly low-income Latino and African American students. Even now, I am maintaining my teaching credentials and will always make teaching – in one way or another – part of what I do. Teachers are overworked and underpaid; the line is a bit cliché, but it is still true. For those of us who teach, it is more than a job; it's a calling, a career and a life-long commitment. It is the classroom teacher who is on the front-line, working to address the deep and complex issues our schools and student are facing. We do it because we want to give back to our communities and see future generations succeed.
  But even our best teachers sometimes come up short, often because we aren't providing the tools and training they need to get better. However, instead of moving to support educators, Gov. Bush and his allies advocate for a punitive response.
  It's just not true that teachers and their workforce protections are to blame for increased turnover and lower educational quality in our poorest schools.
  Rather, this is a systemwide teacher placement issue. Our schools, regardless of location, socioeconomic makeup, or other demographic, should strive for a balance of new teachers and veteran teachers, and it is up to administrators to make sure that is achieved.
  As a former community college trustee, I have also viewed teacher protections from an administrative perspective. While my experience was in higher education, California's K-12 disciplinary and tenure regulations are not all that different from those governing community colleges.
  I was involved in decisions to discipline tenured professors and to uphold recommendations to not grant tenure. I know that there are mechanisms we can incorporate into the system without abandoning workforce protections.
  Certainly, the issues brought forth by the Vergara v. the State of California trial regarding teacher tenure, the dismissal process, and the so-called "last-in, first-out" policy are worthy of examination.
  In fact, I believe it is critical to ensure that tenure is meaningful, not just a formality. If the current 18-month decision period to either grant or deny teacher tenure is ineffective, then we should change it. That does not mean throwing out tenure altogether. It is just one of many powerful tools used to recruit and retain teachers who may otherwise take their talents elsewhere. And it isn't just about job security. It's also about working conditions like class size, wraparound services, and general workplace morale that drive teacher recruitment and retention.
  Critics of teacher protections such as tenure need to realize what I discovered when I first entered the teaching profession – that great teachers develop over time with practice, hard work and support from administrators.
  That is why we need to invest in more complete teacher development and support systems that allow educators to grow and succeed. Research shows that the more experience teachers have, the more effective they are in the classroom.
  A system that does not allow for development and growth, but attempts to motivate with threatening ones job is setting itself up for failure.
  In a profession where the stakes are so high, these benefits are critical to ensuring a robust and effective teacher base. We must not do away with them.