Principals Tighten the Reins on Tenure, Deny It to 164 Teachers

New Department of Education figures have revealed that the denial of Teacher tenure more than doubled compared to last year, as Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein continue to push for stricter evaluations of Teachers up for long-term job security.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Prompts tougher scrutiny.

In the 2006-2007 school year, 66 Teachers were denied tenure out of an estimated 6,250 applicants. Another 115 Teachers were put on probation for a year.

Seven Times the '06 Denials

In the recently concluded school year, after the Mayor announced his plans to increase Teacher job oversight, 164 were denied tenure and 246 were placed on probation, a one-year rise from 2.9 percent to 6.5 percent of Teachers not gaining tenure after three years on the job. Two years ago, less than 1 percent of Teachers up for tenure were denied it.

The one significant change to the tenure system was the addition of an e-mail notification system, in which Principals are reminded of which Teachers are up for tenure via e-mail. Principals must decide whether to grant tenure once a Teacher has worked for three years, and a current loophole in the system allows Teachers to be automatically granted tenure if the Principal does not make a decision. The e-mail notification was added in March 2007 in an effort to combat this problem.

Ernest Logan, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said that Principals should evaluate their Teachers more thoroughly throughout the year. "It's not about tenure decisions; it's about quality of instruction," he said in a statement. "Principals are truly holding people accountable by going into classrooms and looking at instruction."

Apart from the notification system, most of the Mayor's attempts to make the tenure process stricter have failed, with state lawmakers blocking his attempt to tie the granting of tenure to student test scores. The Mayor had lobbied for that change, but the budget passed in Albany in April 2008 prohibited them. Mr. Klein, who has broadly supported the Mayor's stance on tenure, called the barring of student performance data in determining tenure "anti-student and anti-parent."

UFT President Randi Weingarten opposed the Mayor's tougher tenure proposals in April, saying that "Teachers are not afraid of accountability, but ... there is no independent or conclusive research that shows you can accurately measure the impact of an individual teacher on a student's academic process."

Regarding the recent figures, Ms. Weingarten agreed that "the tenure process should be a rigorous one," and added that "the school system has tremendous latitude and managerial authority to make the process rigorous." She nonetheless seemed upbeat about the final result, saying, "This year the Department of Education pledged very publicly to make the tenure process more rigorous, and even when one includes all the tenure denials and extensions of probation, over 93 percent of eligible Teachers were awarded tenure."

But Ms. Weingarten was not without words of advice for the DOE. "Rather than focus strictly on the end of the process, the department should work with the union to develop a solid systemic induction model and provide the necessary supports to help new Teachers reach their full potential and be the best they can be," she said in a statement.