The rumor mill in Tacoma has it that the district administration is pushing for significant change (I've heard the word "elimination") of the seniority clauses in the contract with teachers.
Rumors being what they are (and mills being what they are), I want to take care not to be too brazen with this. I do think it's safe to say that if the district is in fact standing on something so significant, this would have serious ramifications for schools and education.
The apparent logic behind such a change is to make evaluation and removal of "bad teachers" easier, and perhaps, to ultimately maneuver out older, more expensive teachers.
There are forces (read, local advocacy groups) in motion that seem favorable, at least implicitly, to both of these circumstances.
Just what sort of evaluation process would be implemented? (And, by the way, such a change would make every year a free for all. Evaluations that lead to removal could be delivered at the end of any and every school year.)
And who would execute the process? Would it be simply deterministic? (Test score performance increases of a certain size guarantee a teacher's spot next year? Some other mechanistic measure?)
Or would a person or panel give input? Who? Based on what? Such input could be really effective...in a high trust environment. Tacoma, unfortunately, is becoming a lower trust environment every day.
The seniority system (like tenure for university professors) is ripe for review and adjustment, no doubt. Swinging hard to the other side, 'blowing up' the current institutional arrangements without a robust replacement that all the stakeholders have bought into (sorry for the Ed-speak), isn't a good plan, though.
I'm sure somehow this is what's best for kids...I just haven't figured it out yet.
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