Improve tenure with better measures of teacher effectiveness

The tide is turning against automatic tenure. But instead of eliminating it, we can make it more meaningful by improving how we develop and use measures of teacher effectiveness.

Few issues are so hotly debated in teacher policy as tenure. What all sides tend to agree on is that tenure was never meant to guarantee teachers a job for life. Tenure was instituted as a means to protect teachers from capricious firings without just cause.

Tenure proponents point out that job security is one of a few benefits a teacher can count on and that the practice is important for recruitment and retention in a field where turnover is high. In a profession where salary is still largely determined by years on the job, tenure is defended as protecting more veteran teachers from losing their jobs to lower-paid, novice teachers. Tenure supporters also argue that K-12 teachers wear so many hats and answer to so many bosses that they must be protected from the personal conflict and political fallout that necessarily ensue (Strauss, 2014).

The merits of tenure aside, few dispute that there are cumbersome, costly, and long due process practices associated with dismissing tenured teachers. For every story of a great and inspiring teacher lost from the classroom because of low pay and lack of job security, there are stories like the now legendary “rubber rooms,” where tenured New York City teachers, unfit for the classroom but too difficult to fire, passed their (paid) days on the job.

The right question is: How can states ensure that districts make good tenure decisions for teachers who are proven effective, while providing support and appropriate due process rights to ineffective teachers?

Just a few years ago, tenure appeared low on the reform list for state policy makers and district administrators, viewed as too hot an issue politically to challenge. But it was front and center in the 2014 landmark Vergara v. California lawsuit, which challenged teacher tenure and related policies. The court sided with the plaintiffs and found California’s teacher tenure laws to be unconstitutional based on the argument that tenure has had the effect of preventing poor students and students of color from having access to equal education. Tenure laws were found to protect some grossly ineffective teachers concentrated in lower income schools.

But whether to grant tenure is the wrong question. For too long and in too many states, teachers have been awarded tenure virtually automatically, based on very few years (usually three or fewer) on the job. But today, like never before in K-12 education, states and school districts have the capacity to make well-informed tenure decisions based on a wealth of information about teacher and student performance.

The right question is: How can states ensure that districts make good tenure decisions for teachers who are proven effective, while providing support and appropriate due process rights to ineffective teachers?

The critical policy shift that allows states and districts to address this question is the dramatic growth in the adoption of evaluations of teacher effectiveness. Like tenure, teacher evaluation had, in too many states and districts, become simply a bureaucratic exercise and a meaningless hoop to jump through. But that is changing. (See Figure 1.)

Being able to evaluate and differentiate teacher performance reliably and consistently with clear criteria that include measures of how well teachers move students forward academically marks an important shift in thinking. The change is significant because policy making around improving teacher quality to date has focused almost exclusively on teachers’ qualifications rather than on their effectiveness in the classroom and the results they get with students. Today, in order to measure teacher effectiveness, many states are requiring districts to use student growth models to determine student academic progress, collect data from multiple classroom observations (sometimes with multiple observers), and administer surveys of students, peers, and parents.

In 2009, when the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) examined teacher evaluation policy in the states, we found only 15 states that, in some way (even if only nominally) considered student outcomes in teacher evaluations. Six years later, in 2015, 43 states were requiring that student achievement be considered in teacher evaluations, and in 35 states, student outcomes are required to be a significant or preponderant criterion for teacher performance ratings. (See Figure 2.)

With large investments of time and resources dedicated to evaluations of teacher effectiveness, states also are recognizing that evaluation for evaluation’s sake isn’t enough. The implementation of teacher effectiveness policies also opens the door to making better decisions of consequence about teaching and learning, including ensuring that tenure is awarded to teachers who have demonstrated their instructional skills and have produced good academic results for their students.

When NCTQ started tracking state teacher policy a decade ago, not a single state awarded tenure based on teacher effectiveness, and the vast majority of states granted teachers tenure in three years or less, before teachers had much chance to prove their classroom skills. In defense of the status quo, states often have claimed that awarding tenure is a local decision over which they have no authority, but state laws establish the length of the probationary period in virtually all states, making this a dubious claim. And the recent sea changes in teacher effectiveness policy make clear that states can do much to make tenure a meaningful milestone for teachers.

By 2015, 23 had adopted requirements that tied tenure decisions to teacher performance. In nine states — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, and Tennessee — evidence of teacher effectiveness is required to be the most significant criterion for granting teachers tenure or teacher contracts.

States that have taken on tenure reform have approached it in different ways. Florida, for example, for all intents and purposes has done away with tenure. Teachers work under annual contracts and renewal of those contracts must be significantly informed by teacher evaluations.

In other states, including Colorado, tenure has been made nonpermanent. A tenured (nonprobationary) teacher who is rated ineffective for two consecutive years loses tenure. In addition, a nonprobationary teacher also loses that status if she or he receives a rating of partially effective followed by another partially effective or ineffective rating the following year. In Louisiana, tenure is reserved for only the highest-performing teachers. Only teachers rated highly effective for five out of six years may be granted tenure. All other teachers remain at-will employees. In Colorado and Louisiana, a tenured teacher who loses tenure can reacquire it by demonstrating effectiveness in the same manner as any other probationary teacher.

Other states also have tackled the issue of how long it takes for teachers to earn tenure. The driving logic of the policy is that longer probationary periods can allow more time for districts to gather the data required to assess teacher effectiveness and make better informed decisions about whether to give a teacher permanent status.

In Connecticut, for example, tenure is only awarded after four years and must be earned on the basis of effective practice as demonstrated in evaluation ratings. Michigan requires a five-year probationary period, with teachers having to earn a rating of effective or highly effective on their three most recent performance evaluations to earn tenure. Both states require that student growth be the preponderant criterion of teacher evaluations.

In Tennessee, the probationary period for new teachers is five years. To earn tenure, probationary teachers must receive an overall performance effectiveness rating of above expectations or significantly above expectations during the last two years of the probationary period. A tenured teacher who receives two overall ratings of below expectations or significantly below expectations may be reverted to probationary status until receiving two consecutive ratings of above expectations or significantly above expectations. (See Figure 3.)

The vast majority of states, however, continue to grant tenure quickly. Thirty-five states award tenure to teachers in three or fewer years. Just 11 states — Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee — have probationary periods of four to five or more years before a teacher is eligible for tenure. (See Figure 4.)

Reforming the tenure process and making the designation more meaningful requires state policy makers to address the issue of what to do when teachers do not make the cut. With the exception of Idaho and Tennessee, each state that ties tenure decisions to teacher performance also requires schools to develop improvement plans for ineffective teachers. However, in most states, the due process procedures remain cumbersome. Only Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have taken steps to streamline due process — limiting the number of appeals that can be made for teachers dismissed for ineffectiveness.

The jury is out on what tenure itself means to teacher quality. In defense of tenure, teacher organizations like to compare states with and without tenure and demonstrate that removing tenure for teachers makes no difference to student achievement. That is probably correct — but it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for keeping tenure either.

What we do know based on our study of state policy is that states are making tremendous policy progress on giving real meaning to the tenure designation. The fact that 23 states have adopted policies requiring districts to make informed tenure decisions is a major change for the better. Still, in 25 states tenure is granted automatically after a set period of employment and that process is wholly unconnected from teacher quality. With 43 states now working toward implementing evaluations of teacher effectiveness, this still leaves many states investing time and effort to discern who the effective (and ineffective) teachers are without using that potentially powerful data and information.

There is a tremendous focus across the states these days on building a better teacher workforce. As part of our work, NCTQ has chronicled the great strides states are making in adopting new teacher evaluation systems that factor student performance and classroom effectiveness into ratings. One of the strange ironies of education reformers’ attention to teacher effectiveness, however, has been the relative lack of attention to attacking the problem at the front end and getting it right from the start. How teacher candidates are prepared and mentored to be effective in the job in the first place is a critical issue. But so is tenure if the objective is to identify effective teachers in the classroom early on. And if retaining effective teachers in the profession for the long haul is the ultimate goal, then teacher compensation tied to effectiveness also is an important piece of the puzzle.

That’s why the debate about whether to grant teachers tenure isn’t as important as how tenure decisions are made. For that reason, NCTQ has long recommended that states:

Require that evidence of effectiveness, rather than number of years in the classroom, is the most significant factor when determining any leap in professional standing (or in renewing contracts in states that do not have teacher tenure) and
Require longer probationary periods before granting tenure, ideally four to five years, to allow sufficient time to collect data that adequately reflect teacher performance.

These recommendations are relevant to states that don’t have tenure laws as well. Regardless of tenure policies, any state or district must have means to assess teacher skills and make decisions about continuing employment. Teacher effectiveness policies offer states and districts an early shot at getting teacher quality right from the start.