John Merrow, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, explains that "public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching." That's certainly the case in New York, where the state legislature recently passed a bill making it illegal for school districts to consider the performance of teachers' students when making tenure decisions. Merrow concludes:
Denying any connection between teaching and learning is a dangerous course for teacher unions to chart. It contradicts what experience teaches us. And it flies in the face of common sense. If unions are telling us that there's no connection between teaching and learning, why should we then support teachers, or public education?
Thankfully, the Empire State appears to be far outside the mainstream on this issue. Our recent Rick Hess/Coby Loup study of teachers union contracts found that most of the fifty largest districts in the country either had the explicit right to consider student performance in tenure decisions (that's the case for eight of them) or faced no specific restrictions against that course of action, either in their contracts or in state law and regulation. Here's hoping that when Randi Weingarten becomes AFT president, she doesn't try to export this ridiculous piece of policy to the rest of the country.
