Value Competition

Administrative Tenure

This blog is about the analysis of values, including left and right values, and is not intended to be a forum for the expression of my own or other people's left and right values.  Accordingly, I'm a bit reluctant to include the following post, which consists of my testimony in Trenton last Thursday against tenure for principals, assistant superintendents, and other public school administrators.  The post does hook into the one I did a little while ago on how both parties have supporters (unions for the the Democrats, religious exclusivists for the Republicans) who are useful for the party and arguably the polity in enhancing voice for lower status people, but are also detrimental in policy terms.  Also, this post and my general interest in the administrative tenure issue could be regarded as an outgrowth or application of the value competition program--of course, the causality might actually run the other way, with my experiences with the school board, the Community Coalition on Race, etc. driving the program.

Since I find the left-of-center case for job security for bosses much more elusive than the left-of-center case for security for lower-ranking, lower-status workers, I think the administrative tenure issue is one on which liberals and Democrats as well as conservatives and Republicans may see a need for reform.  I'll be working with other South Orange-Maplewood school board members to push this issue forward--it'll be interesting to see what if any success we have. 

Why New Jersey Should End Administrative Tenure

[remarks prepared for General Assembly Education Committee hearing 12-3-09]

Wayne Eastman

South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education

430 Meeker Street

South Orange, NJ 07079    

weastman@business.rutgers.edu 

(973) 353-1001     

Good afternoon.  I’m Wayne Eastman, a member of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education, elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2009.  My background, briefly: I’m a professor in the Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences Department at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick who was formerly a practicing lawyer in New York and New Jersey and who teaches business law and business ethics.  As acting director in 2007 of the Prudential Business Ethics Center at Rutgers, I organized a Rutgers Ethics Initiative on ethics in New Jersey government that led to a report covering pay-to-play, dual office-holding, and other matters.   Today I am speaking on behalf of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education in one respect, in that we have agreed as a body that administrative tenure as it now exists in New Jersey public schools should not be continued, and have established a Lobbying Committee to advance that position and other positions we hold collectively.  On the specifics of what I’m saying, though, I note that the words and arguments I’m using are my own rather than a collective position of the Board.

I want to begin by expressing my appreciation to Assemblyman Cryan.  I and three other members of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education—our President, Mark Gleason, the chair of our Lobbying Committee, Rowland Bennett, and another member of that committee, Beth Daugherty, along with our lawyer, Jessica deKoninck--had an excellent meeting back in mid-October in which the four of us on the Board expressed our opposition to administrative tenure.  The Asemblyman expressed strong interest in the topic and told us he would hold a hearing in the form of a round-table discussion in the lame-duck session.   A few weeks later, though, the Governor’s race turned out rather differently from what Assemblyman Cryan said he expected.  I would not have blamed the Assemblyman or anyone else if he had regarded his October statement to us as having an implicit contingency clause that his favored candidate for Governor win, given the understandable depth of his commitment to that candidate.  But Assemblyman Cryan went ahead with this hearing, and for that I strongly thank him.  I also want to express optimism about what I think this hearing can lead to.  Much as some issues--such as teacher tenure—are difficult or impossible to get a consensus on across partisan and ideological lines as of December 2009, I believe that the issue of ending administrative tenure while at the same time providing reasonable protection for current and new educational administrators is one that a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor can come together on right now.  The people of New Jersey need to see that their newly-elected leaders can work together to advance accountability and effectiveness in public education.  There is no better issue for that than administrative tenure, and I regard Assemblyman Cryan’s decision to proceed with this hearing as a highly hopeful sign that we can move forward together on this issue in New Jersey soon. 

Now, on to the substance of my remarks.  I have three main points to make.  First, based on my on-the-ground experience as a school board member for four years, I believe that administrative tenure is not a minor or abstract issue.  Rather, I believe it is a very serious obstacle to accountability and effectiveness in public education.  Second, administrative tenure is fundamentally contrary to the logic of having administrators be accountable to a school district’s top manager, the school superintendent. Finally, the tide of reform in the states and nationally is running against administrative tenure.  In the remainder of my written statement I will expand on these three points.  In the last part, I will then respond to three concerns about the abolition of administrative tenure and explain how abolition can be done in a way that is fair to current and new administrators.  At the end, I include a few links that may be helpful. 

I.  Administrative Tenure Is a Big Problem

Based on my experience on the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education, administrative tenure is a central obstacle to a superintendent running a school district sensibly, not a minor or peripheral issue.  What I’m going to say in this section is somewhat cryptic, given that both our able board attorney and my own background as a lawyer counsel me to avoid unnecessary references to pending or potential litigation or to individuals.   In making these remarks, I also want to stress that I regard my district’s administrators, past and present, as a highly skilled and dedicated group.

Now, the blunt part of what I have to say.  Many hours of board discussion and many thousands of dollars have been wasted in our district because of administrative tenure and litigation it spawned.  Without administrative tenure, it is possible that litigation would have occurred anyway, given that government employees have—and in my view should have—due process rights.  But without administrative tenure, any such litigation would have merely been a nuisance suit, rather than the significant drain on time and money that we have actually experienced.

In my experience, the requirement that a superintendent and a board make a decision within a limited number of years—frequently less than three because of shorter clocks for administrators with certain kinds of previous experience--on whether someone should have what amounts to a lifetime job as a high-level manager like a principal or assistant superintendent is a terrible one.  Even when nothing goes dramatically wrong, tenure plays a central, deforming role in high-level personnel decisions. I have found myself supporting tenure for principals where I thought that there was very limited evidence on progress in student achievement and building a strong school culture.  Even in cases where I thought there was good evidence of progress, I have never felt confident in what amounts to tying the hands of future superintendents.  The problem goes beyond the length of the tenure clock.  What the superintendent and the board know about a candidate is necessarily time-bound.  To ask a superintendent and a board to proscribe the judgment of all future superintendents and boards by granting tenure to an administrator is to ask them to engage in a fool’s mission.

On the other side of the ledger, I have also found myself troubled by my support for denying administrative tenure.  Absent tenure for administrators, superintendents and boards would be more willing to renew third year candidates who should not be given tenure, but who might prove to be very good if renewed for a year or another contractual period of time.  I’m not claiming that the main reason to end administrative tenure is to avoid firing administrators—but I do believe that some firings of third year administrators that now occur can and should be avoided by ending administrative tenure.

II.  Imagine if Christie (or Corzine) Couldn’t Change His Cabinet…

    As a result of an earlier reform, superintendents in New Jersey no longer gain tenure.  But all other administrators do, including the principals responsible for buildings and the central administrators who work closely with the superintendent.  Let me speak bluntly again.  For important administrators like assistant superintendents and principals not to be accountable to the superintendent they report to is absurd, judging not only by the standards of the business world but also by the standards that apply at the top of our state and federal government.  Anyone who proposed that the top staff who implement the vision of a CEO or the cabinet of a Governor or a President should have iron-clad job security would be considered completely out of bounds—but that is in fact the system we have in New Jersey public education. 

    At this point, I want to address the comparison between K-12 education in New Jersey and higher education, the sector in which I work at Rutgers.  There are major parallels between the two sectors.  As one who has tenure myself as a professor and whose wife is a tenured English teacher in a New Jersey high school, I feel those parallels keenly, all the more so because I am also an educational administrator myself as vice chair of my department.  Unlike my faculty position, my administrative position has no job security.  I have a one-year contract and otherwise serve at the pleasure of my chair and my Dean, as do other faculty and non-faculty administrators at Rutgers, who likewise are covered by contracts of differing lengths.  In other words, higher education in New Jersey already has the situation that should apply as well to K-12 education.

I see significant arguments for as well as against the faculty tenure that I and my wife have.  But I see no good reason for administrators whose job is to be accountable to a chair or a Dean or a superintendent to have tenure that makes it next to impossible for that chair or Dean or superintendent to remove them.  Whatever the ultimate merits of teacher or professor tenure, there is a serious case for it that there simply is not for educational administrators, who need to be accountable to the superintendent or dean who hires and evaluates them.

III.  The Trend is Against Administrative Tenure

Administrative tenure as it exists in New Jersey has been a minority position for a long time.  A 1983 survey by the National Association of Secondary School Principals found that only seventeen states had full-scale principal tenure, with the remainder having lesser protection or no principal tenure at all.  Since then, there has been a definite trend toward eliminating administrative tenure.  The best information I have been able to locate on the current situation comes from a document from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the relevant parts of which I have included in the sources section at the end of this statement, and which suggests that New Jersey is one of a small number of states with full-scale administrative tenure.  We may even have the dubious distinction of being the state with the most iron-clad system of administrative tenure, given that New York, which the NCSL document highlights as being similar to New Jersey, has a more limited mandate than we do, in that it does not include assistant superintendents and has been limited further in New York City. 

We should eliminate administrative tenure because it is the right thing to do, not just because we’re worried that Arne Duncan’s next speech or the latest federal regulations for Race to the Top eligibility will include administrative tenure here along with laws in California and New York prohibiting the use of student performance data in teacher tenure decisions as examples of reactionary, unjustifiable state laws.  But that concern about being out of step is another good reason for us to move away from administrative tenure in New Jersey.

IV.  But What About…?

    There are a number of concerns that can be raised about the elimination of administrative tenure.  In this section, I give responses to what I believe are the three biggest legitimate concerns and suggest ways in which the elimination of tenure can be accomplished in a way that is fair to current and new administrators.

Q. Isn’t it unfair to take away tenure from administrators who have already gained it?

A. Given the equity issue raised by the question, it makes sense for the elimination of tenure to be prospective rather than retroactive, which is to my knowledge the path followed in states that have eliminated tenure for administrators.  (Also, I would recommend that a provision be added to the legislation to make it clear that is is lawful for districts to offer a package in which a current administrator can voluntarily agree to forgo his or her tenure rights.  Further, it would be reasonable to include a provision stating that nothing in the legislation shall be construed to deny the right of an administrator under state public employment law and the state and federal constitutions as interpreted by the courts to due process in connection with a termination of employment.)

Q.    Isn’t it unduly harsh to fire an administrator who is not up to par as an administrator but was a perfectly good teacher before becoming an administrator?

A. Opinions on this may differ, since one can reasonably say that a teacher who chooses to become an administrator should simply accept the additional risk, just as a teacher does in giving up tenure when moving from one district to another.  In the interest of reaching agreement on legislation and given my own Rutgers experience, I personally believe it would be fine to have an teacher turned administrator retain tenure that he or she possesses in a given district as a teacher.

Q.    Aren’t the problems with corruption and politicization in some New Jersey school districts a good reason to retain administrative tenure?

A.   The overall answer to the question is no.  The reality that some school districts in New Jersey have past and present difficulties with corruption, poor personnel management, and failure to focus on student learning is not a good reason to hold back progress in the large majority of districts that are run professionally.  Instead, a better approach would be to recognize that problems exist in certain districts and to deal with that specific issue.  One reasonable way to do that would be a provision that requires school districts below a certain administratively determined level of performance on the state’s QSAC accountability monitoring to have their terminations of administrators with more than three years experience reviewed by the State Department of Education. 

V.  Conclusion

    The fact that the elected school board of South Orange and Maplewood, two of the deepest blue suburbs in New Jersey, supports the elimination of administrative tenure as we do is significant.  On some issues, my towns aren’t a bellwether.  But on the issue of administrative tenure, we are a very important indicator.  If we are against it, what part of New Jersey is for it?  Republican suburbs or rural areas in Morris County, Sussex County, Monmouth County, and Ocean County?  I think not.  I believe school boards and voters in those solidly Republican areas are with us in rock-ribbed Democratic South Orange-Maplewood in supporting change.  To the extent there are special issues in certain school districts, especially in our cities, they can be dealt with through enhanced state monitoring for these districts, as I’ve suggested.  Across party lines, let’s move forward in New Jersey to join the strong national majority of states and the strong national trend by eliminating administrative tenure and enhancing accountability in our schools.

VI.  Some sources:

1.   The National Association of Secondary School Principals (2000) and (1983): Although their material has some tilt toward the pro-tenure position (for instance, it repeats the frequently made but misleading claim that tenure simply guarantees a hearing and due process, which ignores the reality, clear in my experience as a board member, that it is in fact extremely difficult to remove a subpar tenured public school employee in New Jersey), it also includes an acknowledgement that many principals favor ending principal tenure, and has useful information on trends and the law:

http://www.principals.org/s_nassp/bin.asp?CID=680&DID=50140&DOC=FILE.PDF (2000)

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED238149&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED238149 (1983)

2.  Education Week: The title of this 1998 article--“Tenured Principals: An Endangered Species”--indicates its theme:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1998/03/04/25tenure.h17.html

3.  KPMG Peat Marwick report for North Carolina General Assembly: This 1992 report to the legislature advocates elimination of administrative tenure in North Carolina and notes various ways in which administrators without tenure can be protected from unfair discharge:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/GPAC/issue/e/GPACEDU071.pdf

4.  National Conference of State Legislatures document: This undated document, which appears to be a draft, contains information on state tenure laws, which is reproduced below:

 

 

 

7700 East First Place, Denver, Colorado, 80230, 303-364-7700

 

 

PRINCIPAL TENURE

 

 

States that grant tenure to principals:

New Jersey

NJSA 18A: 28-5

http://lis.njleg.state.nj.us/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?clientID=478476&Depth=2&depth=2&expandheadings=on&headingswithhits=on&hitsperheading=on&infobase=statutes.nfo&record={7D76}&softpage=Doc_Frame_PG42

 

New York

Education Law § 3012 (1) (b) Tenure: certain school districts.

http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS

 

Utah

Utah Code Title 53A, Chapter 8, Utah Orderly School Termination Procedures Act

http://le.utah.gov/~code/TITLE53A/53A08.htm

Tenure for school employees is provided by school district policies or an agreement with an employee association. The Utah Orderly School Termination Act specifies procedures for the termination of tenured employees who have worked a minimum of three years for their employer. Termination Act procedures apply to licensed principals. In Utah, a principal can be hired without having an administrative license, but the person is an at-will employee.

 

States with some protection for principals:

Hawaii - Principals are union employees and enjoy all of the civil service privileges due to their bargaining unit. 

 

Nebraska - Principals are under the same continuing contracts as teachers. Under the group of statutes that are labeled "Tenure" in the codified statutes, teachers and administrators (other than superintendents) are protected from termination after their first 3 years in a district by continuing contracts and may generally only be removed for just cause as defined in the statutes or as part of a reduction in force.

 

Nevada - The Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) do not use the term "tenure" with regard to teacher and administrator employment.  Instead the terms "probationary" and "postprobationary" are used.  These are defined in NRS 391.311.  The following sections provide for employment of teachers and administrators. 

• NRS 391.3197 provides that a probationary employee is someone in his or her first 2 years of employment with the school district.  Receiving notice of employment for the third year entitles the individual to be a postprobationary employee. 
• NRS 391.3196 provides that postprobationary employees have an expectation of reemployment. 
• NRS 391.3197 provides that an administrator who has completed his or her probationary period and is promoted to the position of principal must serve an additional probationary year as a principal.  After that, he or she is a postprobationary employee in the position of principal.
• NRS 391.110 provides for the employment of superintendents.  An initial contract term may not exceed four years.  The term of any subsequent employment may be for any length of time. 
• NRS 391.312  lists grounds for suspension, demotion, dismissal and refusal to reemploy teachers and administrators.

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-391.html#NRS391Sec311

 

North Dakota - Principals are under continuing contracts, which includes due process.

http://www.legis.nd.gov/cencode/t151c15.pdf

 

West Virginia - Does not refer to it as "tenure", principals are awarded a  "continuing contract" under West Virginia Code §18A-2-2 after their  first three years of employment.  If you look at that code section,  although this statute refers to "teachers", §18A-1-1 says that   "professional educator" is synonymous with "teacher" and includes  "principals".  The statutes are not clear on the rights of probationary verses continuing contract employees. However, a legislative staff member, after looking at several grievance decisions and supreme  court cases, says that it appears that continuing contract employees are given more rights in terms of the reasons for which they can be dismissed, use  of seniority when a reduction in force occurs, and being placed on a  preferred recall list.  A probationary employee simply can be let go by not renewing his or her contract. 

 

Egoism, Altruism, and Political Ideology in Suburban New Jersey

A basic value competition proposition is that useful political ideology cuts across the believer's other interests or preferences rather than consistently reinforcing them or consistently countering them.  What follows is an application of that proposition as applied to certain aspects of my individual situation, which I'll relate to a center-right pro-market ideology and a center-left "correct for market failure" ideology:

1.  Tenure--As a tenured professor at Rutgers, a pro-market position pushes me in an altruistic direction all else equal, while a market-correcting position (reflected in New Jersey law, under which fourth year K-12 teachers automatically receive tenure) reinforces my job security interests; 

2.  Land-use regulation--As a homeowner in a quite plush New Jersey suburb, I'm a beneficiary of an elaborate web of regulation (no commuter parking on my street, which is right next to a train station; single-family zoning, minimum lot sizes) that makes it more costly for outsiders to join me in becoming homeowners but that allows me to be something of an inner suburban squire.   A pro-market position on land-use regulation like that taken by Ed Glaeser pushes me in an altruistic direction, while a market-correcting one reinforces my interest in upholding my current way of life;

3.  Exclusive support for public education--As a faculty member at New Jersey's major state university, as a school board member, and as a parent whose children go to public schools now and may well go to Rutgers in the future, a pro-market voucherization position on education like that taken by Milton Friedman is contrary to my interests, while a market-correcting position in favor of government-provided education reinforces them;

4.  Where to live--As a New Jersey resident for most of my life, I've faced a series of choices about which city or suburb to live in.  Particularly for whites such as myself, a market-correcting position that criticizes laissez-faire in housing markets for leading to segregation and the decline of majority-minority communities pushes me in an altruistic direction in regard to choice of community of residence, while a pro-market position supports my interest in maximizing the value of my housing investment.  On the other hand, once I've chosen to live in an integrated inner suburb, it is the market-correcting position that supports my interests;

5.  Tax rates--This category is trickier than some others.  The fact that both my wife and I work for public educational institutions gives us an interest in high state and local taxation, while the fact that our family income is high gives us an interest in federal tax cuts for high earners;

6.  Social welfare spending on health care, etc. for low-income people--Here, unlike in the case of education, the market-correcting position pushes me in an altruistic direction, while the pro-market one reinforces my interests.

The overall count of egoistic rather than altruistic interests for me winds up at  4.5-1.5 in favor of the market-correcting position, treating taxes as a wash and further treating market-correcting interventions in favor of inner suburbs as in my interest given my residence in such a suburb.  The obvious point is that given that tilt, it would be reasonable to guess that my sympathies will lie on the liberal side of the political spectrum more than the conservative one, absent feelings on culture or foreign policy that would tilt me the other way.  Three points of broader interest : a) The exercise helps show some of the difficulties in assessing altruistic and egoistic tendencies within ideologies (for example, support for tenure could be described, contrary to the way I've done it, as a pro-market position to the extent it is freely negotiated for by employees and employers rather than fostered by the state), but overall supports the possibility of making such assessments; b) people who believe in a side that heavily reinforces their interests are a "dangerous class" to the degree they lack the level of internal checks and balances present in those who are more cross-pressured, but are valuable to the degree that their egoistic values can lead them to a high level of effort in coming up with value-enhancing ideas and actions; and c) whether the ideas generated by members of the "dangerous class" are value-enhancing depends on whether they are aligned with victory-oriented politics in which victory depends not on either side's dangerous class but on swing voters who are cross-pressured.

18th-Century England and New Jersey

In a departmental get-together, a new colleague of mine who has taught in the San Francisco and Minneapolis metro areas noted some deficiencies of NJ and the Newark metro area compared to CA and MN, including poor road signs, endemic local corruption, and seriously decayed city neighborhoods.  I'm a strong NJ loyalist who's been here most of the years since 1964--that said, he's right.  One story as to why that also explains some appealing features of NJ, such as its strong localist, village-oriented spirit of self-government: NJ has considerably more 18th century (and earlier) English localism and inefficiency than the more recently settled and rationally planned Upper Midwest and West do.  Just as the US as a whole clings to an obsolete English system of measure abandoned in the UK and the rest of the world, NJ (and other Atlantic seaboard states) cling to a broader set of colonial-era English folkways largely left behind in the old country and never adopted in newer parts of the US.

The value competition take?  A pro-NJ story would be that the state is better run than newer parts of the US because it features more of a fruitful competition between traditionalism and modernity (pharm, affluent commuter suburbs, etc.).  A pro-MN or CA story, which I find more persuasive, is that those states are better run than NJ, partly because their relative modernity itself involves an enhanced level of usefully competing values on matters like efficiency and equity in government.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz's novel http://www.junotdiaz.com/ didn't work for me most of the way through, and then did.  I didn't find the narrator's incessant n-word references to Dominicans--perhaps another post on that theme--or his gangsta, babe-magnet persona persuasive, and the equally incessant Tolkien and other fantasy/sci fi references and analogies--Trujillo as Sauron, etc.-- seemed peripheral, distracting, and/or politically confused for a few hundred pages.  The story coalesced for me with the return of Oscar, the love-obsessed, fantasy/sci-fi-obsessed New Jersey Dominican-born hero, to the DR to meet his doom.  A semi-VC line on why: In New Jersey, the heroic quest of Frodo Baggins and the chivalry of Sir Galahad, and the aspirations of Oscar Wao to follow in their footsteps, are casualties of modernity and its rational culture of efficiency and democracy.  In the more traditional culture of the DR, on the other hand, Oscar in his fatal quest for the love of a prostitute with a vicious police officer boyfriend is more akin to Frodo and Sir Gawain.  Diaz does not make the lot of immigrants from the DR in New Jersey, or the possibility of the DR's becoming a modern, highly productive state like Japan, Norway, or New Jersey, nearly as sad as Tolkien made the passing of the age of the elves and Sauron--hurrah for that possibility, I should say, and I suspect Diaz might agree--but he did in the end make me believe emotionally in the analogy between beauty and brutality intertwined in a traditionalist, fatalist DR and evil and virtue bound together by rings and deeper forces of fate in Middle Earth before the Age of Man.