Posts Tagged ‘teacher tenure’

Some costs of teacher tenure

Citing a study by Stanford University researcher Eric Hanushek, Howard notes that bad teachers have a much greater negative effect on student performance than good teachers have a positive effect. Based on student-performance data, Hanushek’s study concluded that dismissing the worst 8 percent of American public school teachers would put American students on par with those of Finland, which has the highest-scoring students in the world. Yet it’s nearly impossible to fire tenured teachers. In Los Angeles, an effort to fire just seven notoriously bad instructors cost the city $3.5 million, and only got rid of four of the teachers.

Jonathan Leaf, City Journal, reviewing Philip K. Howard’s new book Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left.

Schools and childhood roundup

  • “California’s Absurd and Insidious ‘Bill of Rights for Children’ Invites Pernicious Meddling” [Jacob Sullum]
  • “1 in 4 U.S. teachers are chronically absent, missing more than 10 days of school,” and rate in some districts reaches 80+%; AFT chief Randi Weingarten cites “root causes” [Alejandra Matos, Washington Post]
  • Steve Horwitz reviews Abby Schachter’s book No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting [Law and Liberty, earlier] “Napping Child Left in Car While Parents Run Quick Errand, Everyone Loses Their Minds” [Lenore Skenazy; Valley Stream, Long Island]
  • Ex-teacher who passed out after showing up drunk to elementary school field trip gets $18,000 settlement to resign, then further $75,000 on argument town should not have released her blood alcohol results [Fox News; Janesville, Wisc.]
  • Employment complaint filed on behalf of assistant principal against Chappaqua, N.Y. school district makes unfortunate first impression by misspelling name of Horace Greeley High School [Taylor complaint via @TheSuburbanist; Examiner News, Chappaqua Voice]
  • “Youth hockey game leads to adult spectator fight — is the league liable?” [Eugene Volokh]

Schools roundup

Schools roundup

  • California appeals court says state’s teacher tenure law doesn’t violate Equal Protection Clause, similar suits pending in NY, Minn. [ABA Journal, Neal McCluskey/Cato, earlier on Vergara case]
  • Maryland to local school district: no, families can’t opt out from standardized tests, we might lose federal funds [Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Frederick News-Post]
  • Teachers fearful as disorder spreads in St. Paul, Minn. schools [Joanne Jacobs, background on feds’ role]
  • Somerset County, N.J.: “It’s ‘harassment’ for a sixth-grader to criticize vegetarianism to a vegetarian classmate” [Eugene Volokh]
  • UK agency reverses decision to downgrade rating of pre-school for not teaching cultural diversity [Guardian]
  • Schools have rules, but only up to a point: “NY moves to allow illegal immigrants to teach in public schools” [Malia Zimmerman, Fox News]

Schools roundup

Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights laws: time for reform

“I don’t understand how she [Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake] can continually say they’re not cooperating,” Michael E. Davey, an attorney for the police union, told The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday. “They are. They did. And they’re lucky they got those statements before I got involved.”

They’re lucky they got those statements before I got involved. That’s a little window into the adversarial relationship between the union representing six Baltimore officers under investigation and city officials charged with determining whether Freddie Gray’s fatal injuries in police custody might have been caused by foul play such as an unbelted “rough ride” in the back of a police van.

Newsweek, and before that the Foundation for Economic Education, have now reprinted a short Cato at Liberty piece in which I describe the operation of Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights (LEOBR or LEOBoR) laws, of which Maryland passed the first in the early 1970s, and which have spread to more than a dozen states; in many other localities union contract provisions accomplish some of the same goals. These laws sharply restrain how police forces can pursue misconduct investigations against suspected officers, and officials in Baltimore and elsewhere have repeatedly cited the law as an impediment to investigations of officer misconduct long predating the Freddie Gray incident, including the probe into the enormous scandal of employee misconduct at the state-run Baltimore jail. (I’ve got more at Free State Notes about the local Maryland angle, including the failure of efforts this year in the state legislature to reform the law.)

Radley Balko followed up with a post summarizing my argument and adding an important point, which is that these laws can provide a covert way for departments to sabotage investigations so as to help out fellow officers, by introducing seemingly inadvertent errors that ensure that charges will later have to be thrown out.

In my opinion, conservatives should no more defend LEOBRs than they should defend teacher tenure laws, and for much the same reasons. In response to rising criticism, which has intensified since Gray’s death in custody, police unions have begun a broad effort to shore up support for the laws. The version of my article at FEE, for example, drew a response from a Montgomery County Fraternal Order of Police official which you can read here together with my response.

One oft-heard claim that these laws merely give suspected cops the same rights as other suspected citizens. Don’t miss Ken White’s new post at Popehat blowing that argument to smithereens. Equally laughable is the suggestion from union brass that the laws merely put into effect Fifth Amendment or other constitutional rights. While a few cases from the Warren Court era did invent new constitutional constraints on public agencies’ handling of employee investigations, LEOBR laws go far beyond anything in those cases.

Further reading and listening: Ed Krayewski, Reason; Kojo Nnamdi show; New York Times “Room for Debate” roundtable with Prof. Paul Butler, my friend and former Manhattan Institute colleague Heather Mac Donald (the middle-of-the-roader, in this context) and FOP’s Chuck Canterbury. See also my coverage of correctional officers “bill of rights” laws in Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc. here, here, here, and here.

Schools roundup

  • “Teacher keeps job despite ‘unsatisfactory’ rating 6 years in a row” [New York Post; and one reaction that speaks volumes about attitudes at Media Matters for America]
  • Cathy Young interviewed the accused (cleared by university and police) in Columbia “mattress” case and reports on the message traffic between him and accuser [The Daily Beast; Daniel Garisto, Columbia Daily Spectator (“we, the members of the campus media, failed specifically with Sulkowicz’s story by not being thorough and impartial” in part because of social pressure against pro-due-process viewpoints)]
  • Redouble whippings till morale improves: Obama seeks big hike in Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) budget [Robby Soave, Chronicle of Higher Education, Hans Bader] Theory assigns big role to OCR: “the resurgence of P.C. has actually been orchestrated from the top down.” [Jason Willick, Stanford Political Journal]
  • Faculties have resigned governance questions to “University Life” bureaus, which often place less value on academic freedom [Todd Zywicki, Pope Center] “Graduate school eliminates use of titles like ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’ in salutations and correspondence” [Alexandra Zimmern, The College Fix on CUNY Graduate Center]
  • NLRB ropes religious institutions’ faculty into federal labor law regime [Joseph Knippenberg, Law and Liberty, parts one, two]
  • “Students of ‘predatory’ school to get loan forgiveness” [Miami Herald, Everest U.]
  • When researchers interview jihadis, should they get a “project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense” disclaimer/warning under human-subjects-protection rules? [IRB Blog]

Schools roundup

  • National Education Association has spent estimated $35 million on politics this year [Jason Hart, Watchdog]
  • Not everyone in academia admires the federal law entitling tenured professors to stay on “until they’re carried out of the classroom on a gurney” [Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Ed; my earlier]
  • Montgomery County, Md.: “The School Religious Holidays Problem is Really a Public Schooling Problem” [Neal McCluskey]
  • “Concussion Lawsuits Hit High School Level” [AP; Cook County, Ill.]
  • Reminder: much-quoted “one in five college women is raped” statistic is not real [Christina Sommers, Time; the Washington Post’s contribution (not to forget this); and a very important new piece by Emily Yoffe in Slate]
  • Ousting bad cops, ousting bad teachers: parallel obstacles [RiShawn Biddle, Dropout Nation]
  • George Leef on federal pressures behind Minneapolis school-discipline initiative [Forbes, earlier here and here]
  • DoJ “feigning concern about access for disabled children” in suit challenging Wisconsin school choice [George Will]

Public employment roundup

  • Cute: Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Patrick shifts 500 managers to union status, now incoming GOP successor can’t touch ’em [Fox Boston]
  • Despite opposition from police union, Montgomery County, Md. eventually managed to correct disability scam [Washington Post editorial, Ed Krayewski]
  • “Retired CUNY professor gets $560K a year pension” [New York Post]
  • “L.A. Cannot Afford Budget Busting Labor Agreements” [Jack Humphreville, CityWatch L.A.] Major changes needed to Nevada public collective bargaining laws [Las Vegas Review-Journal] “States And Cities Coming To Grips With Economic Reality” [Brett Joshpe, Forbes]
  • “Public-Sector Unions and Government Policy: Reexamining the Effects of Political Contributions and Collective Bargaining Rights” [George Crowley/Scott Beaulier, Mercatus, PDF]
  • “Newark forced to rehire tenured teacher despite new state law” [NJ.com]
  • Time Magazine says not-especially-controversial things about tenure system, gets attacked by teachers unions [Weekly Standard] Throwing their money and influence around in elections [RiShawn Biddle on Democracy Alliance, same on AFT]

Cato online forum, “Reviving Economic Growth”

The panel is packed with big names and many of them offer suggestions with a law or regulation angle, including Philip K. Howard (“Radically Simplify Law”), Derek Khanna (rethink patent and copyright law; related, Ramesh Ponnuru), Morris Kleiner (reform occupational licensure; related, Steven Teles), Arnold Kling (“Sidestep the FCC and the FDA”), Robert Litan (admit more high-skill immigrants and reform employment of teachers; similarly on immigration, Alex Nowrasteh), Adam Thierer (emphasize “permissionless innovation”), and Peter Van Doren (relax zoning so to ease movement of workers to high-wage cities).