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
[remarks prepared for General Assembly Education Committee hearing 12-3-09]
Wayne Eastman
South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education
430 Meeker Street
(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
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
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
At this point, I want to address the comparison between K-12 education in
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
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
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
Q. Aren’t the problems with corruption and politicization in some
A. The overall answer to the question is no. The reality that some school districts in
V. Conclusion
The fact that the elected school board of South Orange and
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)
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
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:
PRINCIPAL TENURE
States that grant tenure to principals:
NJSA 18A: 28-5
Education Law § 3012 (1) (b) Tenure: certain school districts.
http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS
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
States with some protection for principals:
- 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
http://www.legis.nd.gov/cencode/t151c15.pdf