Dear Editor, So here
’s the scenario. Two teachers enter the teaching profession
together at the same school. One gets fired after successfully
completing three years; the other continues working towards the
five-year probationary period hoping to achieve permanent
status.
Dear Editor,
So here’s the scenario. Two teachers enter the teaching profession together at the same school. One gets fired after successfully completing three years; the other continues working towards the five-year probationary period hoping to achieve permanent status.
The fired teacher immediately enters an administrative program, gets hired by the new superintendent as an administrator in the same district from which he was terminated, and begins to evaluate his former partner who is still working towards tenure. The new administrator, never having proven teaching competence, is now a full-fledged evaluating machine. That situation, though improbable, is possible if Proposition 74 passes.
All new teachers will have to be evaluated five consecutive years, and permanent teachers will be required to be evaluated every two years. When will administrators get time to administrate? Oh, that means hiring (you guessed it) more administrators.
Where’s the data to support the governor’s claim that Proposition 74 will “get rid of the bad teachers?” There is none. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford’s School of Education, said no studies have shown that extending the probation period improves teacher quality. Instead it discourages people from entering the profession and contributes to teacher shortages.
The second part of the proposition, that supposedly makes it easier to terminate permanent teachers with two consecutive bad evaluations, is opposed by the California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators. These are the people that hire, evaluate and fire employees. Didn’t the governor consult them prior to developing the language? I guess not.
If true education reform is wanted by the governor, he should work at all levels of education (administration, boards of education, superintendents) not the most important component of the education system, the disappearing teacher.
Vote NO on Proposition 74.
Dale Morejon, Gilroy
