When L.A. schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said last week that he wants to weed out ineffective teachers because “we do not owe poor performers a job,” it sent a ray of hope to educators across California.
Hey, if it can happen in the huge, sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the lowest performing urban districts in the state, it can happen anywhere.
Now it’s up to Cortines to make his pledge more than a one-time sound bite.
Cortines make the comment in advance of a Los Angeles Times story Sunday that showed just how lousy a job the district does in evaluating beginning teachers, often giving them tenure – the ticket to a virtual lifetime job – without ensuring that those rookie instructors know what they’re doing in the classroom.
And once those teachers finish their two-year probationary period and get tenure, it’s a long, expensive project to fire even the worst, most ineffective instructor. In the Los Angeles district, which has 885 schools, 688,000 students and more than 36,000 classroom teachers, only about 21 tenured teachers are fired each year.
The key, then, is determining who can and who can’t do the job during their first two years in the classroom, when probationary teachers can be dismissed without a stated cause. But that requires that principals regularly evaluate and counsel those new instructors, which Cortines admits doesn’t happen.
By calling for a tough stand on incompetent teachers, “I’m just trying to enforce what we’re supposed to be doing,” Cortines said.
The whole question of tenure and dealing with teachers who don’t belong in the classroom extends way beyond Los Angeles. Administrators across California regularly complain about how hard it is to dump incompetent teachers, while union representatives argue that there is already a standard procedure for dismissing teachers for poor performance, but schools don’t want to follow it.
The whole tenure question went political in 2005, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed Prop. 74, which would have made it easier to fire teachers by increasing the probationary period to five years. Teacher unions went ballistic, calling it a political ploy by the governor, designed more to intimidate teachers than improve education. Plenty of union –- and Democrat — money helped ensure that the initiative went down to defeat, along with the other measures Schwarzenegger placed on the special election ballot.
But in a career that has included stints as superintendent of urban school districts in San Jose, Pasadena, San Francisco and, once before, Los Angeles, along with a time as head of the New York City school system, Cortines has shown a willingness to take on tough fights. At age 77, he also knows that his time in Los Angeles is likely his final chance to put his mark on California’s educational future.
Earlier this month, for example, Cortines announced that he would reconstitute Fremont High School, south of downtown Los Angeles. The controversial process involves dumping the entire staff and then requiring them to either reapply for their old jobs or accept a transfer to some other school.
The unions were unhappy, but Cortines argued that the 4,500-student school was failing, with less than 2 percent of the kids proficient in math and 14 percent meeting standards in English.
“There has to be a sense of urgency,” he said.
If Cortines can turn a sense of urgency into a source of action, the cheers will echo across the state.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.