We have to do better: attacking teacher tenure is not the way to solve education inequity.

AuthorHenrion, Ellen
PositionLAW SUMMARY
  1. INTRODUCTION

    "[I]t is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." (1) In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down public school segregation laws and declared that equal access to education was a right that must be afforded to every student. (2) Sixty years after this landmark decision, significant education equity issues continue to plague the country's schools, which are still "disturbingly racially segregated." (3) Students who attend mostly white or low-poverty schools are much more likely to receive a quality education (4) than their peers who attend high-minority or high-poverty schools. (5) Today, Missouri students are left to wonder why, if education is a right that "must be made available to all on equal terms," such inequalities are so prevalent amongst their schools. (6)

    Missouri's leaders have been unable to create an effective solution to remedy these problems, though they have tried. Most recently, Missouri politicians and lobbyists have shifted their focus to the removal of teacher tenure laws. (7) The basis for these attacks is as follows: because teacher tenure laws presumably provide job security to inadequate teachers, and because inadequate teachers are more prevalent at high-poverty and high-minority schools, teacher tenure laws disproportionately affect poor and minority students. (8) This argument, which may be logical and well intentioned, is incredibly difficult to meaningfully analyze due to a lack of available data that suggests what, if any, causal effect tenure laws have on education inequity.

    Efforts to eliminate teacher tenure in the name of improving education equity neglect the fact that these education deficiencies exist for political and societal reasons. The efforts to sweepingly remove tenure in order to somehow fix education inequity are "based on the faulty assumption that if you treat everyone equally, then everyone is equal." (9) Importantly, little to no data exists that offers a tangible assessment regarding whether these tenure laws do indeed unfairly affect poor and minority students. (10) Rather, the act of removing tenure itself may disproportionately harm these students, as high-poverty schools already struggle to attract the best teachers and removing tenure may take away one of the profession's most attractive aspects. (11) This Note attempts to analyze whether the elimination of Missouri tenure laws is truly the key to promoting education equity, or whether there are other solutions more likely to produce real, tangible results that may improve equity in Missouri schools.

  2. LEGAL BACKGROUND

    Teacher tenure was first established in 1909. (12) New Jersey lawmakers were the first to institute teacher tenure laws, putting them in place to protect teachers against politically influenced appointments. (13) The laws additionally safeguarded teachers from being fired for activities they chose to participate in outside of work and from termination based on race or sex. (14) Tenure protections also allowed teachers academic freedom within the classroom (15) and provided an extra incentive to join the typically low-paying profession. (16) By the 1940s, approximately seventy percent of the nation's public school teachers had some tenure protections; by the 1950s, the numbers had risen to over eighty percent. (17) Despite the country's growing prevalence of tenure protections for teachers, it took sixty years from tenure's inception for the movement to make its way to Missouri. It was not until 1970 that Missouri teachers were afforded the tenure protections enjoyed by their out-of-state peers. (18) The Teacher Tenure Act, an extensive bundle of statutes aimed at protecting Missouri teachers, is still the law of the land today. (19)

    1. Missouri's Teacher Tenure Act

      The Teacher Tenure Act puts into place practical and contractual obligations for Missouri school boards in hiring, retaining, and firing teachers. Generally, once a teacher is hired by a school district, she is considered a "probationary teacher" (20) and will be up for re-hire by that district the following spring. (21) The authority to make contract renewal decisions is vested in the school board; however, such decisions are influenced heavily by the school's administration. (22) In Missouri, a teacher obtains tenure after five consecutive years of service. (23) This probationary period is a relatively long period of time compared to many other states, (24) and it is significantly longer than the one- or two-year periods found in states such as Hawaii and California. (25)

      Once a Missouri teacher has been re-hired by the school five times and given a sixth contract, she is tenured: a "permanent teacher" (26) under Missouri law. (27) The permanent teacher is no longer subject to annual contract renewal, but instead becomes a party to an "indefinite contract" with the school district. (28) The indefinite contract is subject only to compulsory or optional retirement, modification by a succeeding indefinite contract, revocation of the teacher's certification, or the teacher's resignation or termination. (29)

      The most significant--and controversial--method of educator contract termination is the firing of the teacher. Under Missouri law, a teacher may be terminated for only a limited number of causes. (30) Once termination procedures are underway, the teacher is afforded the right of due process. (31) When a school board decides that it is in the school's best interest to terminate a teacher, likely at the recommendation of the administration, (32) it must provide the teacher with adequate notice. (33) If the termination decision is based on incompetency, inefficiency, or insubordination, the school board must first provide the teacher with a written warning stating the specific causes that may, if not corrected, result in formal charges. (34) The teacher then has a thirty-day curative period in which she may make efforts to improve her performance. (35)

      If, after the curative period has lapsed, the teacher has not adequately addressed the school board's performance concerns, the school board must serve upon the teacher formal written charges "specifying with particularity the grounds alleged to exist for termination of [the] contract." (36) Upon the filing of formal charges, the school board has the authority to suspend the teacher from active duty until a termination decision is rendered, (37) and the teacher has the power to request a public hearing in which the teacher may call witnesses and cross-examine the school's witnesses. (38) At this hearing, the school board acts as the "jury," and the teacher may appeal the school board's charges to the school board itself. (39)

      If, at the end of the hearing, the school board elects to terminate the teacher, the teacher has the right to appeal the decision to the circuit court of the county in which the teacher works. (40) If the circuit court overturns the school board's ruling, the teacher is restored to permanent teacher status and receives compensation for the duration of the suspension. (41) If, however, the circuit court rules in favor of the school board, the teacher may appeal the decision as part of the regular judicial process. (42)

      This administrative process and possible subsequent judicial review inevitably cost the school district significant time and money. (43) Critics of teacher tenure have long argued that tenure protections make it impossible to fire under-qualified teachers due to the burdens the process places on schools. (44) Many Missouri superintendents feel that removing a tenured teacher on performance grounds is difficult and support "some type of teacher tenure reform." (45) Removing a tenured teacher can be costly, especially if the teacher exhausts all appeals. (46) This cost in both time and money may be an obstacle that some school boards will not, or cannot, take on. (47) Because of these difficulties, there has been a strong initiative over the past decade in several states to weaken teacher tenure laws in an effort to improve our country's public education system.

    2. Poor and Minority Students Have Been Consistently Shortchanged on Educator Quality

      Research continually demonstrates unequivocal patterns of lower quality education in high-minority and high-poverty schools. (48) The disparities are numerous. Students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are less likely to be taught by educators with a degree in their subjects of instruction. (49) These deficiencies are most significant in areas such as math and science. A 2006 survey of three states' public education systems showed that in high-poverty and high-minority middle schools, seventy percent of math classes were taught by a teacher who lacked even a minor in math or a math-related field. (50) Furthermore, these schools also experience much higher rates of teacher turnover than their more affluent counterparts; on average, high-poverty schools lose twenty percent of their faculty from year to year. (51) Dubbed by experts as "teaching's 'revolving door,'" this high turnover rate forces schools to quickly hire replacement teachers who may not be a good fit, subsequently leading to further turnover. (52) Because school districts incur significant costs in recruiting, hiring, and training teachers, this steady turnover diverts financial resources from the classroom and widens the gap between high- and low-poverty schools. (53) Finally, due to this level of turnover, high-poverty schools employ teachers with less experience on average. (54) Though effective and ineffective teachers exist at all experience levels, research shows that the first three years of a teacher's career are critical in elevating effectiveness. (55)...

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