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human capital (updated)

August 17, 2012

Tenure rate holds steady, but just 42 teachers denied on first try

by Philissa Cramer, at 12:05 pm

Percentage of teachers who had tenure denied or extended, 2006-2012

The city’s two-year-old crackdown on “tenure as we know it” continued this past year with nearly half of the teachers up for tenure not receiving it.

Just under 4,000 teachers were up for tenure in the 2011-2012 school year, fewer than usual because hiring restrictions sharply cut the number of new teachers in 2009. Of them, 55 percent received tenure and 3 percent were denied it, effectively barring them from working in city schools. The remaining portion — 42 percent — had their probationary periods extended for another year.

The extension rate was slightly higher than in 2011, when 39 percent of teachers up for tenure had their decisions deferred under a revamped tenure evaluation process. But it is five times the extension rate from 2010, which was the first time that the city used the deferral option in large numbers.

Mayor Bloomberg vowed in 2010 to move toward on “ending tenure as we know it,” a change he favors because teachers who do not yet have tenure can more easily be fired.

Last year, Chancellor Dennis Walcott predicted that more teachers would be denied tenure this year.

UPDATE: But  the denial rate for teachers in the tenure pool for the first time actually fell. Last year, 104 teachers eligible for tenure for the first time were denied it, for a denial rate of 2.2 percent. This year, that rate was 1.9 percent, meaning that just 42 teachers up for tenure for the first time were told they could not continue to work in city schools.

The Department of Education’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said today that the department had no firm goals for how many teachers should receive or be denied tenure.

“This is not about hitting some numerical target at all,” he said during a call with reporters. “What we’re asking principals to do is treat this as a big decision about: Is this teacher ready for lifetime guarantee of employment?”

He added, “We are very pleased with the level of care and serious rigor that principals are applying as they make these decisions.”

Last year, department officials briefed reporters about the results in person and Bloomberg touted the numbers on his weekly radio show. Today, the city provided information to reporters in a press release that contained no statement from Bloomberg.

“I’d like to congratulate the teachers who were granted tenure this year, and commend principals who are demanding higher standards,” Walcott said in a statement. “Receiving tenure is no longer an automatic right, and our new approach ensures that teachers who are granted tenure have earned it.”

This year was the second in which principals had to justify tenure recommendations to their superintendents, who make the final determination about whether teachers receive tenure. Under the review process put in place in 2010, principals and superintendents consider each teacher’s student performance data, his “practice” as represented by a portfolio of work, and the way that he contributes to the school community.

The student performance subcomponent has been the most contentious change. Last year, some principals reported being told that they could not recommend tenure for teachers whose students had low test scores. And this year, some teachers said their tenure recommendations were rescinded — and then restored — even after their superintendent had signed off on them. Union officials said the tenure tug of war had taken place mostly at schools with many struggling students.

Poor student performance is one data point that might cause a teacher to be flagged in the department’s personnel system, Polakow-Suransky said today. He said low scores on the defunct Teacher Data Reports, ”value-added” assessments that were produced from 2008 to 2010 for reading and math teachers in grades 3 to 8, continued to flag teachers, as do previous unsatisfactory ratings.

Of the 95 teachers up for tenure who previously had received a U-rating, just 3 percent received tenure. Nearly a quarter were denied tenure while 74 percent were given an extra year of probation.

Next year, Polakow-Suransky said, principals would be encouraged to use “growth scores” that the state generated for some teachers for the first time this week, even if there is still no universal evaluation system in place that takes the scores into account.

“Every piece of data that we have, we give to principals,” he said.

But he said no single data point would trump a holistic assessment of teacher quality and that the department had not barred teachers at any schools from receiving tenure. He said teachers and principals agreed in 95 percent of teachers’ cases and that department officials sometimes stepped in to broker consensus.

In many cases, the resolution was that teachers should spend another year in the classroom before being reassessed for tenure. It makes sense to for teachers to spend four or more years on probation, rather than the minimum of three, because research suggests teachers do not reach their full capacity until they have been on the job for more than five years, Polakow-Suransky said.

Of the teachers who whose tenure decisions were deferred last year, 42 percent received tenure this year, meaning that 74 percent of the teachers up for tenure in 2011 have now received it. Four percent of those deferred last year were denied tenure this year, and another 12 percent left the city’s teaching corps.

“If teachers improve their practice and get to the point where they are ready to earn tenure, that’s a good thing,” Polakow-Suransky said.

In total, department officials said, 212 of the teachers up for tenure this year had already had their probations extended twice. Seven had already been deferred three times. Only about 40 percent of teachers deferred twice before received tenure this year, according to the department.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the teachers union supports “a rigorous but fair” system for awarding tenure. But he said the tenure crackdown masks the reality that the city loses many teachers well before they come up for tenure and suggested that if the Department of Education played a more active role in helping teachers improve, more would earn tenure.

“These numbers — combined with the fact that nearly one-third of the teachers hired for the 2008-2009 school year walked out the door before they were even eligible for tenure — demonstrate that the administration has yet to figure out how to provide new teachers with the proper supports that will help them become more successful,” Mulgrew said.

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  • http://nyceducator.com/ NYC Educator

    It would be very interesting to know how these figures compare with those of surrounding communities. Might that be something Gotham could share with us?

  • Tim

    It would be interesting to know, but I’m not sure how it relates. Surrounding districts are far, far smaller and can be much more selective about who they hire in the first place (including many teachers who’ve cut their teeth by working for the NYC DOE). I’d much rather see a piece on how many NYC DOE teachers are leaving every year to teach in suburban schools with higher pay and/or better working conditions.

    There’s something to please/annoy everyone here: teachers, for as long as I’ve read and commented on message boards, you have by and large claimed that if tenure was granted frivolously or incorrectly, it was the fault of the administrator making the call. Now administrators are being more choosy, which stinks for individual teachers in the short run, but in the long run doesn’t it make for a stronger teaching corps and weaken the argument that tenure is what’s ailing the system?

    And for the DOE, isn’t it time to look at the big picture in relation to turnover and lowered tenure rates and acknowledge that our schools with the highest percentages of potentially at-risk students need far more support than they are getting, and that the district model isn’t the problem?

  • guest

    Is there anybody out there naive enough not to think that Principals and Superintendents don’t have quotas?

  • JJ

    I think that the granting of tenure should be challenging and is indeed a milestone accomplishment for a teacher. Most teachers would agree that they want to work with competent colleagues and if teachers working toward tenure are successfully supported by their administration, tenure should be granted. The tenure process should be firm, fair, and consistent. The complaint that most teachers have is not that the tenure process is challenging, rather than the fact that it has become political/personal.The DOE wants control and power over teachers and what better way to control teachers than by keeping them in limbo by extending tenure year after year? 

  • Teacher

    Tim, It’s not that administrators are being more choosy. The administrators (principals and AP’s) are making arbitrary decisions about tenure to fulfill some mandate/quota handed to them from Bloomberg. It has nothing to do with teacher quality. As a matter of fact, less qualified teachers who can jump through more hoops get tenure over more qualified and better teachers. I see it plainly in my school. It’s really a shame and unfair.

  • burned

    DOE tenure is due process.   That is all it is.  Tenure only gives a teacher the right to due process.  Everyone deserves due process as protection from arbitrary and unfair loss of livelihood.  An untenured teacher can be fired (“discontinued”) at any time, for any reason, or no reason.  The decision of the “appeal process” is merely a recommendation to the DOE, and the DOE never overturns the discontinuation, regardless of the “recommendation.”  This mass denial of due process is shameful.

  • Philip Nobile

    My tenure story is a beaut. In 2007, my third probationary year, I was denied and discontinued. Five straight second term U-observations by Cobble Hill School of American Studies Principal Lennel George, AP Theresa Capra, and RIS Jill Bloomberg trashed my teaching. For emphasis George checked the “Unsatisfactory” box on eleven of the fifteen key performance measurements on my Annual Performance Review. I was a goner, deader than seniority transfer. But then a funny thing happened. Region 8 Superintendent Marcia Lyles stated under oath that “that there was not enough documentation in Nobile’s file to support George’s end of the year unsatisfactory rating of Nobile.” Not enough documentation? How much more did she need? Ignoring the collective judgment of her managers, the Superintendent granted me tenure. Crazy huh?
    Here’s the rest of the story: the U-obs were retaliation for my allegations of Regents tampering by Capra and cover-up by George who failed to  report my charges to OSI or SCI. Lyles, whose office was party to the cover-up, did not want to admit retaliation. So she Pinocchio-ed the nonsense about insufficient paperwork.  

  • Mike

    How about a FOIA for a school-by-school rate?

  • Philip Nobile

    correction above: “In 2007″ should read “In 2004.”

  • Anonymous

    “This is not about hitting some numerical target at all,” he said during a call with reporters. “What we’re asking principals to do is treat this as a big decision about: Is this teacher ready for lifetime guarantee of employment?”

    Really!?! A lifetime guarantee of employment!!
    REALLY!!! He said that?!

    These guys can’t even guarantee public education for the next decade or two!

    It defies satirization! It’s already a joke!

  • Anonymous

    I am a victim of Mayor bloomberg  machiavellian scheme. I was a teacher who received  3 consecutive years satisfactory on  annual performance review ( evaluation ). No tenure was granted to me , ( the principal or A.P never observed me for the past 3 years and half . I was forced to sign  a Probation extension letter. On my forth year I was terminated ( 2 U on observation). No mentor was  ever assigment to be.  Do not count on UFT . Do your own H.W ( paralegal work) and hire a good lawyer.  The principal from my school have received good remarks by her superintendent exceeds standards on  annual performance .( 87 percent of teachers were not observed by the principal or A.P in the last 10 years. The principal  average salary for the past 2 years  in my school 178.000 dollars ( small school)

  • BK

    I think most of you are missing the point of what is happening. Denying tenure is not about quotas nor it is about good teaching. It is about control and manipulation to achieve goals of everyone BUT the teachers and students. If you are not tenured, best believe you are coming in early and leaving at 6. Coming in on weekends with no pay. You better be young with no kids if you are not tenured because best believe you are not seeing your kids. Passing kids who do not deserve it in fear. Letting kids curse you and act unruly, but pretend its ok because you want tenure.  This is all about control. Problem is the union is doing nothing about this.

  • Tedmlewis

    Sadly, the NYC education system chases away so many talented teachers. Gotham should do a feature on the scandolous turnover rate. Getting rid of bad teachers? Try keeping the good ones. I was one.

  • Philip Nobile

    Perfectly said. Pass rate quotas are the moral equivalent of Regents tampering. Untenured as well as tenured teachers are intimidated by cowardly administrators to pass failing kids. I’d love to see an audit of course grades. You can be sure the same 65 bulge found in Regents scores is rampant on report cards. 

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/Y3F5V2NNLCCJRRBLNQKVPV56KM Tom (kemteach)

    A few months ago In the New York Teacher, the teacher attrition rates were published.  Among the teachers hired in the 2006-2007 school year (5 years ago), 39.9% were no longer in the NYC system.  The license with the highest attrition rate was Science (51.1%) closely followed by English.  When anyone suggests my job is easy, I simply mention that data and ask them to suggest any profession that has attrition rates anywhere near those numbers. 

    Just to correct a statement in the article, the phrase “lifetime guarantee of employment” is simply untrue and the D.O.E.’s chief academic officer (I wonder what he gets paid to do) should know better.  Tenure simply guarantees a teacher “due process”, meaning they can not be fired for frivolous reasons. 

  • guest

    Just another example of the union standing by and doing nothing to protect its members.  Yes, I get it that the union cannot do anything about individual tenure decisions but what about a class action suit as this is obviously a change in working conditions?  Even if they lose, at least they will have shown the membership they are trying to do something.  Instead, as with so much else that has been ddone to the teachers, it’s stand by and allow its members tro be marched like sheep to the slaughter.  What are the members’ dues being used for if not bread and butter issues like this?

  • http://excessedteachernyc.blogspot.com/ zeno

    Really, this is a howling joke.  I’m tenured, I’m now in the ATR – which is an exclusive club allowing only EXPERIENCED teachers to be removed from their position.  Why seek tenure? for job security? what job security, like the outlaws said in Treasure of Sierra Madre…”we don’t need no stinkin’ badges”.

  • Teacher

    Yes. B. Traven would have a field day with the DOE.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Class actions are aggregations of individual claims. If the individual claims aren’t valid, the class action isn’t valid.

  • Ed

    Why can’t the complaining teachers be subject to the same at-will termination as most employees? If you are terminated for an illegal reason, you always have the right to sue.

  • Guest

    because you have lost public opinion
    the public rejects tenure

  • guest

    Mf. F…..So what about something others have brought up here i.e. past practices.  The DOE has imposed a higher standard for the awarding of tenure without consultation as shown by the statisticsd.  I agree, it’s a stretch but you never know.  They used statistics to claim the Fire Department’s entrance exam was biased against certain groups.  Whether the chances are slim, given the role the union is supposed to play, the fact is they’ve done nothing to try to defend the best interests of the teachers.

    Now, believe me, I get it.  Randi has put the word out to Mulgrew the union cannot go against “educational reform.”  If the union is pictured as such, that would hurt her chances to become the next Arne Duncan if Obama can beat the tax evader, hardly a sure thing.  To do that, ever since the last contract, the union has given in time after time and done nothing while Bloomberg has systemaically gone about destroying the morale and getting rid of many good teachers.  And don’t think for one sec ond these tenure decisionis are based on a true analysis of the teachers.  The Principals are told they have quotas and if there are any brave Principals out there (of course given the way Principals are put in jobs today, there are very few), the Superitendnts are there to impose their own quotas.

    Hopefully when Bloomberg is gone, a new Mayor will work with the professionals, incloudng the teachers, to put the school system back together again but that’s a year and a half down the line.

  • JJ

    Do you have any idea how much it costs to hire a lawyer and sue in court for wrongful termination? The general public never complained about tenure until the economy went to Hell and tons of folks lost their jobs. Tenure is fine as is. Leave it alone.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Depends on whether the DOE has any obligation to “consult” the union about the standards by which it makes tenure decisions. I’m not aware of one. Are you?

  • Teacher

    Hi Ed,

    Come join the teaching profession and you’ll see why. What was your college major, by the way? Are you against Unions and Tenure and Job Protection in general, or is it something about Teachers that gets your goat?

  • burned

    Generally, a long-standing, bargaining unit-wide past practice cannot be unilaterally changed, i.e., cannot be changed w/o consultation.

  • burned

    The UFT has to do a big public education campaign to explain that tenure = due process.  The public believes in due process. 

  • burned

    Why can’t most employees aim to achieve due process rights?  Why does it have to be a “race to the bottom?”

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Have you been in a cryogenic sleep for the last 50 years?

  • Tim

    I’m picturing a “Trading Places”-era Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche reading burned’s comment and laughing uproariously for 30 seconds.

  • Guest!

    yo that chart looks like the loch ness monster all right peace

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