Over the summer, the Arizona Daily Star implied that certain Arizona legislators were taking orders from Grover Norquist on the issue of not raising taxes “Are no-new-tax lawmakers merely puppets?” (an editorial so error-ridden that the Star had to correct themselves not once but twice)

Now the Star published a guest opinion critical of state Rep. Frank Antenori for his vote on Speaker Kirk Adams’ bill eliminating tenure for Arizona public school teachers.

I don’t understand the big backlash here.  Wasn’t it President Barack Obama himself who called for more charter schools and expanded merit pay for higher performing teachers?  Another “ideologue from more than 2000 miles away”, right, Star editors? 

“It’s time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones,” Mr. Obama said. “If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching.”

Mr. Obama said that teachers who are rewarded for excellence should help their schools improve.  The Wall Street Journal Mar 11 2009

In their guest opinion, authors Sheila Tobais and David Sadker state “Few would argue with the fact that weak teachers who cannot improve should be removed from the classroom with all due haste.” and two paragraphs later they state ”in too many cases, due process has become so litigious and cumbersome that many school districts avoid it, and weak teachers stay on.”  Oh, so we’d like to get rid of them but we can’t because it’s hard. 

I wonder how many times Tobias and Sadker visited Antenori to speak with him about a plan to get rid of under-performing teachers.  How many bills did the Democrats put forward in this session to “streamline the removal of under-performing teachers.”  Doesn’t seem like it was on the front burner with the Dems.  The only thing much on their front burner was complaining that there wasn’t enough money, during a severe recession, to give more money to a K-12 system that has 20,000 fewer students.

Ran across a four year old article at Gallup about a 2005 proposal in California to extend the tenure probationary period to five years.  One interesting quote was from California Federation of Teachers communications director Fred Glass:  “According to our attorney, 99% of cases in which a teacher should be fired but is not, it’s because the administration has not documented the grievance properly — it’s not the fault of tenure or the teacher’s union.”  Well, why isn’t it the fault of the teachers union…they didn’t get fired did they, even the union says that they should have been.  There’s your trouble. 

We’re looking to improve the results of the public school system, retain and advance the better teachers while getting rid of the ineffective few.  For improvement, we have a choice between representatives that we elect–neighbors with kids in the public school system, such as Antenori–vs an editorial board stacked with public school teachers acting as an informational gate keeper.  I’ll side with the consumer on this debate.  Parents know what’s working and what’s not working in their kid’s schools.