So much happening in the school news world this past week, but I've chosen to write about a topic that I think is of interest to most people who have attended public schools in America: teacher tenure.

Before that, I just wanted to write a couple of quick notes about two SCOTUS decisions handed down today. First, in Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, the Court got the big part right easily voting 8-1 that when an Arizona school conducted a strip search on a 13 year old girl to find "contraband" ibuprofen pills, it violated the girl's 4th amendment privacy rights. The court also ruled, 7-2, on the more contentious issue of whether the individual school officials who conducted the search could be sued for their involvement. The court said no, which I think is difficult to believe (did they really think it was reasonable to strip search a middle school girl over ibuprofen??) but ultimately a decision that won't hurt too many kids. After all, most principals stop short of strip searching minor student offenses for lots of reasons other than constitutional one--and the punishment of public shame and likely firing should be sufficient.

On a second note, the Court remanded (i.e. sent back to the lower court for further fact finding) the question of whether Arizona's English Language Learner funding levels were sufficient in accordance with the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. The case is far too complex to explain here in brief, but the bottom line is the issue is far from settled.

Now to teacher tenure. Here's a cartoon to provide some context:

A new report from the Center for American Progress outlines some common sense considerations we should take into account when thinking about teacher tenure. First thing it points out is that teachers in America get tenure in a hodge podge fashion without any regard for what really matters: how much students are learning. If schools were granting tenure to teachers who were producing outstanding learning gains year-in and year-out, I don't think the complaints about the system would be quite so loud.

Second thing is that once teachers earn tenure, there is nothing wrong with providing them due process protection against arbitrary firings. If a teacher has proven their ability to produce excellent learning gains, it may actually be good for kids to stop a principal or other administrator from firing that teacher without showing good cause.

Third, tenure shouldn't be absolute--at some point if a teacher stops producing outstanding learning gains tenure should be revocable so that administrators have the freedom to move that teacher around and so that the teacher himself has incentive to keep performing at high levels.

Fourth, any discussion of tenure can't be separated from a discussion of teacher pay systems and data collection regarding objective measures of what makes a good teacher.

Anyhow, bottom line is, tenure isn't working for the benefit of children at all in the current education system, but that doesn't mean the whole idea is flawed. Good teachers, like any other good employees, should feel safe in their jobs so long as they keep performing at high levels. What remains is the policy structure to create that human capital system--specifically the data to show which teachers are "good" and which are "bad" in terms of student learning to begin with...