We are talking about a contract and tenure. Both of these are legal matters. Tenure is a legal construct. Contracts are legal documents. You yourself cited various legal protections (e.g. Title VII), even if you didn’t do so by name. This aspect of our discussion was a technical and legal discussion. And you may not like it, but, it is a legal term — at least according to the lawyer I know who work in the field.

Now, obviously, not everyone knows or understands what these legal terms means, and therefore they are often misused or misapplied. We shouldn’t jump down anyone’s throats for a simple mistake like that. However, you did not merely misuse the word. Rather, you looked at my correct use and told me that I was wrong, and that’s a bit different. You didn’t ask me if I was sure, or what I meant, or why I was not taking legals barriers discrimination based on age, sex, race or some other protected class into account. You weren’t looking for clarity, common ground or even trying to independently make your own point. Rather, you were simply calling out my statement as “untrue” — despite the fact that was entirely accurate.

Where I am not clear, I seek to clarify. Where others are not clear — at least not to me — I ask for clarification. I even wrote that I would try to me more clear. I have never claimed to “crystal clear.” I *did* claim to be “quite clear,” referring to when I wrote (at 10:56am on 6/26), “Yes, more hard work and intelligence can make up for a great deal of experience and the judgement that comes with it.”

I would only make accusations of trickery or ill intent of someone repeatedly makes the same false claims about another, despite repeated requests that they stop — with explanation of why they should, of course. Rather than accusing you of making of false accusations against me to protect yourself, I will simply ask you to clarify. What is your basis for implying that I claim that I claim that all my statements are crystal clear? What is your basis for claiming that “job protections” is not a legal term (i.e. have you consulted with practices lawyers, legal scholars, or linguists?)

By the way is anyone besides me just a little suspicious that only teachers’ job security is so on the line. No one seems to be after police officers who so often beat and harass our black and hispanic youngsters. (just ask them if those things are not true) What about our correction officers who never correct anyone with the criminal justice system’s notoriously high recidivisim rate?

When all is said and done taking away tenure just makes teaching that much less attractive as a middle class job at a time when a big problem in this country is that middle class jops are evaroparating no matter where one went to school. Meanwhile the funding here goes into the hands of a very few who don’t even have to have taken a single education course. How that is good public policy is beyond my ken.

1) Actually, she’s a management-side attorney.

2) It’s not semantics; it’s accuracy. “Job protections” is a legal term. When we are talking about contracts and their provisions, we need to be very careful. These are technical matters, and accuracy counts.

3) You really ought to stop twisting my words and taking me out of context. I was pointing that that a problem with the tenure system was that inexperienced teachers have no job protections, and then they suddenly get the full set. I was contrasting that with the Green Dot system of giving everyone the same protections from day one.

So, let’s be clear here. I was accurate in my use of a legal term, and you decided on your own definition of the term with which to tell me that I was wrong — a trick you used more than once, actually. You also have consistently misrepresented what I have written, painting it to be the opposite of what I have actually written. The steadfastness with which you continue to insist on that maneuver is beginning to convince that it is intentional, which is really too bad.

The term “categorical” is commonly used to mean unconditional and absolute. I don’t understand the sense in which you were using it, but debating it further is pointless. I accept that whatever you meant, it apparenly was *not* that the “experienced” teacher possesses an absolute advantage over the “inexperienced.”

I’m afraid your experienced labor lawyer overstates things by insisting that the “untenured” have “no job protections.” (Who are you consulting anyway — Randi Weingarten? ) It is axiomatic that anti-discrimination laws constitute job protections, whether or not one is employed at-will. Only by semantics can that be denied. Furthermore, the “untenured” GDNYC teachers will have additional contractual job protections, namely, the just cause standard. So it really beyond any reasonable dispute that the statement, “Untenured teachers do not have any ‘job protections’”, is false in general and false under the particular contract under discussion here.

Folks who are confused here, don’t take my word for anything, just ask an experience labor lawyer, the more experienced the better

1) “Categorical: unambiguously explicit and direct.”

All else being equal, one category has an advantage over the old, one that is unambiguous and direct. Not necessarily overwhelming.

If you want to discuss or argue about whether or not “experience, and the opportunities to develop and refine their professional judgment that come with experience” constitutes a categorical advantage or not, I could respect that. However, twisting that explanation of what I termed a “categorical advantage” to be a defense of tenure is not appropriate. Redefining a sentence of mine — by ignoring the immediate subsequent sentence — so that you position it as a straw man to argue against is not appropriate.

2) I just double-checked with the labor and employment attorney sitting to my left — a smart, hard worked, well-educated and highly experienced professional — and she confirmed that my description is accurate. Untenured teachers do not have any “job protections.” The kinds of legal protections against certain “adverse discriminatory and retaliatory job actions” that are available even in at-will employment environments are not, legally speaking, “job protections.” In fact, she explains that job protections can be thought of as the elements and/or agreement that make it differ from employment at-will.

A “categorical advantage” would be a trait that is always and everywhere to be preferred over the contrary. I don’t believe “experience” can be so characterized. “Experience” in teaching is only an advantage if it translates into improvements in a teacher’s performance. So I don’t see how one can contend that “experience” is always and everywhere an advantage. Simply put, some people don’t learn from their experiences.

Your “all or nothing” comment was directed at untenured teachers and the claim that they have “no” job protections. Again, that’s untrue, not just in the unionized, “just cause” setting, but in non-unionized settings as well, in which many, many laws protect against adverse discriminatory and retaliatory job actions.

As for the problems of the ‘just cause’ standard, and whether it is really an improvement over tenure for those who are critical of the tenure system, it’s a worthwhile point (which is why I called it a “troubling” provision of the Green Dot contract way back near the start of this thread).

I’ll try to be more clear here.

* I did *not* write that all experienced teachers are better than all new teachers or all young teachers.

* I wrote that, as a category, experienced teachers have “an advantage” or inexperienced teachers. Are you suggesting that experience is not advantageous? Heck, I even defined what that advantage was. Let me quote myself, “the opportunities to develop and refine their professional judgment that come with experienced.” Is that not an advantage?

* Careful reading would reveal that I described it an “opportunity” to develop those things, not a guarantee. I did not write this explicitly, but I was intentionally implying that not all experienced teachers actually DO develop that those traits, thusly wasting their advantage.

* I’ve been quite clear that hard work and intelligence can make up for much of what is missing in an inexperienced teacher. Of course, that hard working and intelligent veteran teacher who *has* made good use of his/her experienced to develop professional judgment, etc. etc, is going to be better than the hard working and intelligent inexperienced teacher. That’s the categorical advantage at work.

* Not to get to political, but considering how many times in this thread I have written of hard work, intelligence and judgment, my decisions in presidential elections are kinda obvious. Of course, as the presidency is a position where most things are delegated, the ability to pick good advisors and appointees — and the ability take best advantage of their advice, of course — is of paramount importance. That’s where your comparison between presidents and teachers kinda breaks down. It happens that in that particular election, things all lined up — decisionwise — though.

* The tenure part really troubles me. What I wrote, the part you even quoted, points out a problem with tenure, “it’s kinda all or nothing.” What I wrote — and I’ve got to believe that understood this — is that once teachers have demonstrated for a few years, they do deserve SOME job protections. I have not defended tenure anywhere in this thread, nor said that I agree with it. In fact, I think that the fairest reading of what you quoted — though perhaps not quite an accurate reading of my thoughts on tenure — is as an attack on tenure, that it is given when only SOME job protections are warranted.

* The Green Dot contract does not have tenure. As you say, and as I have written in this thread, it has alternative protections. However, I think that the argument against the tenure system (i.e. the one I made above) can be made against this contract, only with more strength. It give the entire package of job protections to all teachers from day 1. I think that teachers should begin with some small amount of job protections, and earn more and more for a few years, until they’ve earned the entire complement available. As they show themselves more capable and productive, it should become harder to remove them (up to some level). I certainly hope that your wild distortion of my position was unintentional.

(I understand that what I am proposing here could make it quite hard for new principals. So long as the senior-most teachers are the hardest to remove, it will always be quite difficult for a new principal to change around the culture at a dysfunctional school. I understand that. However, I am uncertain about new principals, too. Perhaps they should gain greater abilities as they themselves demonstrate their ability and judgment? I have not worked this out.)

* Last, I have serious questions about whether the Green Dot contract provides more or less job protection for teachers than the NYC-DOE/UFT contract. It doesn’t have the word tenure, but a word does not a policy or set of procedures make. In practice, would experienced teachers really have less protections than in a DOE school? The fact that inexperienced (i.e. <3 years experience, for the purposes) have equal protection has got to be factored in, right? If a non-Green Dot principal followed all the things that a Green Dot principal must do to remove a teacher, would s/he be able to do it?

where to begin? I’ll cover just a couple of the most erroneous statements that jump out at me in your last post.

“Experienced teachers have a categorical advantage over inexperienced teachers.”

I guess such sweeping generalizations are essential to defending such a reflexively seniority-based system as tenure, but you may as well say that experienced Presidents have a categorical advantage over inexperienced Presidents. (Just curious, did you vote for Bush over Kerry in ’04?)

“by that point teachers have shown though all of their evaluations that they are not bad, and therefore merit some job protections. (A problem is that untenured teachers have none, so it’s kinda all or no nothing.)”

It’s a sorry state of affairs when a primary argument in defense of tenure is that tenured teachers are “not bad.” (Ask any kid whether they’d rather a good teacher or a “not bad” teacher.) And the all-or-nothing claim is utterly false, as demonstrated by the very contract that is under discussion on this thread — the GreenDot-UFT contract, which provides for “just cause” protection.

1) Perhaps you don’t recognize such claims because they so often use the word “veteran.” I have seen many claims that it is better to fill a school with inexperienced teachers than with veterans.

2) Defense of job protections (e.g. tenure) constitute a form of trashing young teachers? Can you explain your reasoning on that a bit more. I don’t follow what you are saying.

3) I think you might be contracting yourself a little bit. If teachers get tenure after three year — or even two, as they do in some places — how is defense of tenure an attack on young teachers. If you can get tenure before you’re out of your mid-20′s, tenure seems available to young teachers.

4) Experienced teachers have a categorical advantage over inexperienced teachers. They have experience, and the opportunities to develop and refine their professional judgment that come with experienced. On the other hand, work ethic and enthusiasm of some inexperienced teachers are also also found among many experienced teachers.

5) Actually, as I understand it, the research generally shows that it takes 5 years to become a master teacher. But the logic of the tenure tenure is that by that point teachers have shown though all of their evaluations that they are not bad, and therefore merit some job protections. (A problem is that untenured teachers have none, so it’s kinda all or no nothing.)

6) We need to be clear here that youth and inexperience are not he same thing. Yes, they are correlated, but many tenured and experienced teachers are under 30. A 28 year old, 5 years in is both young *and* experienced.

I think that that is a serious misreading of what I and others have written.

To say that experience allows teachers to develop mastery and judgment is not to trash those without it. Rather, it is to acknowledge what professions in every field know — that their earliest years are times of great learning and professional growth.

I actually pointed out that hard work and enthusiasm can help inexperienced teachers to make up much of the gap between them and their more experiences and less hard working colleagues. That doesn’t trash them.

I wonder if you understand why many feel that categorical claims that new teachers can do the job as well or better than experienced teacher trashes experienced teachers — and actually trashes the new teachers as well?

1. Denigrating experience and promoting the notion that inexperienced newcomers are inherently superior to experienced veterans is fallacious and harmful (and malicious).
2. It’s not workable to base a school system on the ability of energetic young adults to work superhuman hours and devote superhuman effort in perpetuity.

It wouldn’t by any chance be a mere 3 years, would it?

Here’s what Rethinking Schools has written about the bright-eyed young beginner teachers:

“Reforms are bound to fail if they rely on the voluntarism of idealistic, overworked teachers who burn out and leave the school once they decide to have a family or want any semblance of a meaningful personal life.”

The quotes is rom the introduction to the March 2008 book Keeping the Promise? The debate over charter schools, a collection of essays published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change. The introduction was written by education researcher/commentators Leigh Dingerson, Barbara Miner, Bob Peterson and Stephanie Walters.

That’s the quote. That’s the principle at work, or at least the theory. And in it we the limits, too. Yes, more hard work and intelligence can make up for a great deal of experience and the judgement that comes with it. But it does *not* outstrip it.

Let’s give the enthusiastic hard workers — especially the smart ones — credit for all they do. But let’s *not* confuse the greater effort that they lack of experience requires of them with better results or better teaching. They do the best they can — something that few people in any field can honesty claim. Other can do better, though, and the best of them actually do.

Unfortunately, the vision of the relatively young adults working all those hours is quite enticing to those who don’t understand what the work of teaching really entails, and how what mastery of this particular profession looks like.