A debate over teacher tenure erupted during state budget negotiations after the State School Boards Association, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and other big-city superintendents tried to derail plans to establish minimum state tenure requirements.

In the final days of budget talks, the school boards group and some city school leaders launched a call-in and fax campaign urging lawmakers to oppose proposed clarifications to a law passed last year to establish minimum standards for granting tenure. NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi said the school board representatives were being "alarmist," and that the proposed changes were being misrepresented and "blown out of proportion."

Contrary to an erroneous letter issued by the group, the amendments would not restrict local control or make it more difficult to deny tenure, Iannuzzi said. The tenure language simply clarifies what the Legislature and governor agreed to last year: teachers could be evaluated on their use of student test scores and other data and how they adjust their own teaching to help students improve.

"It is akin to doctors using tests, X-rays and the like to help prescribe a course of treatment," said United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "It is troubling that the chancellor, along with superintendents from other parts of the state, argues that this clarification amounts to taking away local control from school districts when in fact it merely reasserts what all parties agreed last year was a sensible means for using test scores in the tenure process."

Misinformation

To combat the misinformation, NYSUT members sent more than 12,000 faxes to lawmakers explaining that tenure determinations would continue to be made at the district level by administrators, superintendents and school boards. In fact, the proposed bill broadens — rather than limits — the tenure determination factors local districts may consider under collective bargaining agreements.

While administrators were pushing for the ability to use student test scores to evaluate teachers for tenure, Iannuzzi said these tests were not designed to evaluate individual teachers.

"Using student test scores as a blunt instrument to evaluate teachers would penalize educators who take on difficult teaching assignments and those who work in the neediest, most hard-to-staff schools," Iannuzzi said. The process set by the Legislature last year also calls for peer review when possible — one of the highest standards available.

Twice the pay

Interestingly, the tenure dialogue spurred an unusual verbal agreement about the need to increase pay for beginning teachers. During a radio show discussion on the issue between Iannuzzi and Tom Rogers, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, WAMC host Alan Chartock asked how much a beginning teacher should make.

"Double what they make now," Iannuzzi said.

"Dick is right," Rogers said. "But the state should pay for it, not the local school district."

The debate over tenure regulations was not resolved as quickly. As New York Teacher went to press, the amendments were still under discussion. Watch http://www.nysut.org/ for the latest developments.

— Sylvia Saunders