It’s no surprise the Colorado Education Association (CEA) is fighting the latest legislative attempt to reform tenure. Unions, by their nature, are foes of accountability and productivity. Their aversion to competition among their rank and file drives them to protect their least competent members from their most competent.
Teacher unions are no different. From restrictive work rules to collective compensation to knee-jerk job security, they act as if their members are unskilled laborers rather than the “professionals” they claim to be. What profession has less personal accountability and less of a connection between individual performance and compensation?
Senate Bill 191 is a bipartisan effort to evaluate teacher performance. Its chief sponsor is Michael Johnston, a Democrat and former school principal. Normally, Democrats shy away from confrontations with the CEA, the state’s most powerful union, which generously rewards compliant Democrats with campaign contributions and other support. A maverick Democrat who crosses the CEA may face a primary challenge from an opponent backed by the union.
An April 22 guest commentary appeared in The Denver Post by former Govs. Richard Lamm, Roy Romer and Bill Owens, along with Gov. Bill Ritter, in support of SB 191. Owens, of course, is a Republican who’s accustomed to CEA opposition. Democrats Lamm and Romer have retired from politics and Ritter is about to, so they needn’t worry about CEA retaliation. They just believe this is good public policy.
As for Democratic legislators supporting this bill, what’s different this year is the lure of Race to the Top education-reform funds for Colorado from the federal government. Tenure reform is fashionable in Washington this season. And there’s strength in numbers for Democrats defying the CEA on this issue. The union has no place else to go. It hates the GOP.
That would explain why SB 191 got seven out of eight votes in the Senate Education Committee, with all but one Democrat voting “yes.” The lone Democrat, Evie Hudak, is a former teacher, officially representing Colorado’s 19th District while unofficially representing the teacher union. Coincidentally, her predecessor was Sue Windels, another former teacher and CEA lackey.
Teacher tenure is an idea whose time has passed. Originally, it was justified to safeguard free expression and protect against cronyism and politics in firing. That was before the era of powerful teacher unions. Now tenure protection is redundant. The unions ensure that. Lifetime job security breeds complacency.
I have my doubts that SB 191 will produce substantive reform. After the bill is weakened with amendments written by teacher-legislators, it will be further undermined by the unions and the school boards they elect. We’ve been through this before. Technically, Colorado eliminated tenure in 1990. But that was in name only. It was replaced by iron-clad “due process” protections. In practice, the bureaucratic obstacles, time and cost of firing incompetent teachers for “cause” have made such attempts impractical.
In Denver, out of a workforce of 4,500, only four DPS teachers, less than one-tenth of 1 percent, were actually fired for poor performance in the 2007-08 school year, and that was the most in a decade. Do you know of any other field with such universal competence?
A letter to the editor in The Post opposing teacher accountability for student performance equated it with holding a dentist accountable for a patient’s cavities. This is a shop-worn, lame attempt to absolve teachers and shift the blame to bad parents. The quality of parents and students is a given, out of the control of legislators or teachers. When presented with a patient’s decayed tooth, a good dentist will make it better; a lousy one will make it worse. Dentists are evaluated on their performance in treating teeth as they come. Just like teachers, some are better than others.
If the CEA has its way, the Race to the Top will be a crawl to mediocrity.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
