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You are absolutely right. At what point do these policy proposals cross the line into age discrimination?

This is a huge question because the difficulty of firing teachers and principals that are clearly ineffective often traces back to disability law, not collective bargaining. As one union leader used to tell me, national health insurance would be the best possible teacher quality intitiative. He would have had so much more power to broker deals if the result wasn't dumping an older person with no option for getting health care.

Respectfully, I think you miss the point of those who push against the "last hired, first fired" method of staff selection. Experience is mostly irrelevant and age certainly is. Its about retaining the most effective teacher, regardless of age, and doing what's best for kids ahead of what's best for adults.

To your point that the rationale of changing seniority rules is motivated by cost savings, you couldn't be more wrong. I'd like to pay the best teachers double what they make now. Its not about trying to pay teachers less at all - let's pay them more.

I'm 100% for great teachers making it a lifetime commitment. I am 0% for making lifetime commitments to people who are not great teachers.

Consider that there is just as much ageism in saying young teachers should go, as there is in saying older teachers must be protected, regardless of there qualities as professionals.

Jason Glass
Eagle, CO

Jason,

Good point, except you apparently didn't read the articles Claus links to, which back up his thesis and refute yours.

I'm busted Tom! I'm reading it on my BB and those pages didn't display. I'll get to a regular screen and make the effort. In any case, I think there may be some agreement here that layoffs based on experience or inexperience may not be a good idea.

I'm almost certain that all of us wish we weren't having to do layoffs at all.

Thanks for reading my responses all.

JG

Juniority, seniority--in the cities, at least, it seems like we're just moving toward everyone being at will.

Ok now you've got Junior Senior stuck in my head.

So I had a chance to read the attached articles (thanks for correcting me on that issue Tom!) and I still think the underling argument here isn't to remove "older" teachers, its for schools to be able to move their human capital strategically.

As a working HR Director, I can tell you one of the greatest organizational challenges schools have is the relative inability to move human capital to meet strategic needs. The "last hired, first fired" rules are a further symptom of this problem.

We've put in place rules, policies, and in some cases laws to protect the well being of adults and frequently these are in conflict with the well being of kids.

When I have to lay off a hard-working, effective, less experienced teacher because I am obligated to provide a job to someone who has the opposite qualities then I am being forced to make an illogical human capital decision.

Again, its not about experience or lack thereof - its about effectiveness. We need to be making staffing decisions on what's going to be best for the students. Protecting the ineffective but more experienced teacher (rare as they may be) is not in line with that philosophy.

I look forward to a continued respectful dialog on this interesting topic - thanks much to Claus for raising it.

Jason Glass
Eagle, CO

Jason,

You are a HR director and you don't have a respect for contracts? Sustainable improvements require a respect for the rule of law.

Also, what is the legal definition of agism and the law against agism? Age discrimination is a defined legal concept.

I think we're getting to the source of our disagreements. You just want your beliefs, which you see as logical, to win. I want America to remain "a nation of laws, not men."

Yeah, I'd like you to have a more respectful attitude towards teachers and those who have different opinions. More importantly, you need to have more respect for our Constitutional Democracy.

Also, I don't think there should be any place in public education for Blackberries.

JUST KIDDING!

Dear John Thompson,

I, like you, have the utmost respect for this nation and its laws and as an HR Director I probably interact more closely with legal situations than anyone in the organization.

However, perhaps unlike you, I despise the status quo when it comes to education reform and I am (for better or worse) extremely impatient for dramatic and transformative change.

So, it is not inconsistent to live under and abide by the current laws of the land, while at the same time disagreeing with them and working through reasonable channels to make change. All of these "last in, first out" laws are statutory and not constitutional in nature - meaning they were designed to be changed.

You read too much into my comments by assuming I do not respect teachers, the country, or other opinions.

Come on now... be nice.

Jason Glass
Eagle, CO

JV--"Junior Senior"? You learn something new every day.

John--I'll confess I don't know enough about age discrimination and the law to comment wisely, but my first reaction to some of the rhetoric out there is that age discrimination could be a real issue if gray hair becomes the sole cause for dismissal. It reminds me of a family friend who got laid off from his job in marketing with an explanation that he was getting long in the tooth and therefore wasn't what they needed. He walked away with a nice stack of cash after they lost the age discrimination suit. He also walked away with many of his old company's clients.

By the way, I think Jason's comments were--and always are--very respectful.

Jason--I'm not really qualified to address the seniority issue per se. But I am concerned by statements like these from the sourced I cited:
* "Maybe we should become more comfortable with turnover in education.... We would rely on a large number of bright, young, and enthusiastic teachers, most of whom would leave after a few years."
* In support of "First In, First Out" policies: "The unions often say disdainfully that this is a plan to replace expensive teachers with lower-salaried teachers. And they are exactly correct."

Newsweek recently ran an article speculating that urban schools districts will probably have to rely on young short-termers.

The strong implication, or rather outright assertion, as that older teachers are by definition a drag on the system, and that we'd do better to remove them and deal with high turnover of young folk. I don't know how we can sustain an entire system that way over the long term, and I worry that the message we send to people young and old is that teaching isn't a career. I'm pretty confident that you're not sending that message to your teachers in Colorado. That seems very clear.

So while I'm not well qualified to address the seniority issue, I am very worried by the damage some pundits can do, and are doing, with their rhetoric. It doesn't help. And I suspect John has a point when he warns about age discrimination suits if people act too aggressively on that rhetoric.

Jason,

There are some bad, old teachers, everyone admits. But they are a small problem in the grand scheme of things. We have graver problems. Before you launch an audacious crusade to smash the status quo, consider the possibility that even if you abolish tenure and seniority rights, the system will be, at best, only minimally better --and possibly worse, since really, old teachers are on average more effective.

Here are more useful reforms:
1. Deploy a core knowledge curriculum.
2. Crack down on discipline. Make it easier for teachers/schools to place disruptive students in alternative settings.
3. Motivate the hoardes of lackadasical American students to work harder by having high-stakes end-of-year tests in each subject. If they flunk, they repeat the grade/class, or endure boot-camp summer school.
4. Inaugurate a well-funded, brilliantly-staffed teacher training program that is tailored to particular subjects and courses, not the generic pablum we get now.

I'm mostly looking for respect for the process. Staements like the following don't help

"I am 0% for making lifetime commitments to people who are not great teachers."

Leave aside the illogical substance of that exhortation/soundbite. Teachers are used to spoken to that way.

HR should be 100% committed to the law. And the law should shine equally on ineffective, satisfactory, effective, proficient, or great teachers.

We'd be better off to listen to Ben F, for instance, and create systems where good, solid, caring teachers can be effective and it doesn't take greatness to survive.

And since we should all agree that the law should be updated, we should all listen to the lessons of history regarding seniority. Reform yes. But remove the expectation that contracts will be honored, create evaluation systems that can't identify greatness much less effectiveness, and continue to speak to teachers in soundbites,as we create incentives for even more nonstop test prep and manipulating of numbers, and watch "reforms" backfire as self-respecting teachers throw in the towel.

Jason, You are right on the money (and the more efficient use of it).

In this economic climate, when school systems have policies and procedures, like tenure and "last hired, first fired," that differ from the "at will" world the rest of us live in, there had better be some sound reasoning behind it--the public will demand it.

All employers have to be able to evaluate their employees' effectiveness, and make decisions based on those evaluations, including school systems.

Jason,

"Whatever it Tales," has a nice ring, not unlike "No Excuses!," "Failure is not an Option!," and "By any means necessary."

I come from the Old School model of sustainable improvement, "Do't go off rootin' and tootin' and there won't be no cuttin or shootin."

My point was and is that you have a right to your opinions but when you are on the clock you don't have the right to bring those cliches into evaluations and other property rights.

It saddens me that young teachers are being socialized into this latest incarnation of the Power of Positive thinking!, "Dare to be Rich!," and "something good is going to happen today!" You guys don't realize that Billy Sunday sermons don't work unless you put your hand on the radio as you shout "I believe!"

Those great young dedicated teachers who are being sacrificed to the gospel of Whatever it Takes are only hurting their own health. That's why I'm afraid the current batch will follow their equally talented forerunners, get burned out and then leave the toughest schools.

But I hope my point is clear. When you are on the clock, you don't have the legal authority to act on your opinions. I hope evaluators are trained accordingly.

I've been out of school for three days, and if this trend continues, I'll continue to get more relaxed, and the exchange will get more irreverent. But you all should remember the old bulls, the young bull, and the cows on top of the hill.

You'd be better off teaching young teachers to "Roll with the Punches." Our PD should concentrate on reducing unforced errors. Rather than pump up the intenesity in our toughest schools, young teachers need to learn to "don't put the ballon the ground," and "reduce unforced errors." You take a team with a high-risk offense, push them to the limits, train them that defeat is unthinkable, and I take an equally talented team, prepare them for the long season, teach them to "play their positions," slow down, play the percentages and eliminate mistakes, and my system will win repeatedly.Even so, I'd keep my team's and my trash talking to a civil enough level.

By the way, the two must-reads for education today should be Catch 22,for its indictment of data-driven accountability, and Adlai Stevenson who said:

"I find St. Paul appealing and St. Peale appalling."

Hi John,

First, I want to thank you for this continued dialog - its really only through an honest push, and push back, that we move the discussion forward. I think I've uncovered at least part of our discordance.

Clearly, we are both passionate about public education. Where we diverge is in how we fundamentally see the current state, and the future of this field we both are very passionate about.

You make the statement that when I'm "on the clock" I don't have the authority to act on my opinions. My new e-friend, you couldn't be more wrong on many levels!

You see, I'm never "off the clock." I'm a professional and I care about this field to my core. I live this stuff 24/7. Your view of the role of HR as a bureaucrat or factory boss, controlling and monitoring the status quo. My view of the role of HR is an artist, where my work is shaping and crafting a better schools. Further, I do in fact have the "authority" positively impact many of the changes I'm proposing, even when I'm working. I negotiate with our union, I push through local policy changes with our board, I inform and move our state and national legislators. I run our district's evaluation and performance pay systems to enact the changes I believe in. Simply, I walk the talk.

You see, when one commits to this, one can be much more efficacious than you presume.

We also differ significantly on the contractual and statutory job protections (or the illusions of them, but that's another discussion) you cherish. You see these as hard won worker victories. I see these has leftovers from an era where management and labor settled in a stagnant, boring, and ineffective equilibrium. I make no bones about it, I seek to absolutely demolish these protections - they are impediments to transformative change. We've got no time to coddle those who can't carry the significant work at hand.

John, the factory age you hang on to has really already passed us by - you just don't realize it yet. I fundamentally believe we've got to push this system to turn and change or its going to die. Transformation.

Our discussion and dance is no new thing. You represent the status quo, I represent the revolution.

"Whatever it takes" is considered trite and dismissed by you. To me, its the rallying call of the revolution - it has meaning, it speaks to me.

Game on.

John,

That was the juiciest, richest comment ever!

I love the sports metaphor --brilliant.

Yeah, we're up against the nemesis Barbara Ehrenreich describes in "Bright Sided": that icky nexus of business-speak and quasi-Christian cheerleader talk.
My superintendent signs his emails "Passionately". Gag me. What kinds of souls do these ruthless work-is-all androids possess?

You know what? This is the sign of a failure of adequate humanities teaching (perhaps as a result of anemic progressive ed and test-prep approaches over the last few decades). These business-types have not been properly humanized. Lacking meaningful intercourse with Montaigne, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and the like, they lack the sense of beauty, the sense of the fallibility of humans, the love of and respect for worthy traditions that mark a civilized soul. It is a mark of soul-illness when a real estate agent is passionate about and 100% devoted to his job, isn't it? What do you think? Schools should be enriching our kids' souls with the wherewithal to live a happy life OUTSIDE of work, not leaving a gaping chasm there that job alone must fill. Now the hens come home to roost: the liberal-arts-deprived students we graduated have morphed into business-realm Bolsheviks and are now coming back to liquidate anyone who stands in the way of their utopia.

"rallying call of the revolution" --

Whenever I hear this kind of talk coming from hyper-committed TFA-turned-administrator types, I think of Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, under which Mao had young tykes turning the country upside-down creating the great new communist society. Of course, it was a dismal failure that set the country back years, but it gratified Mao's ego -- just as the current "reforms" stand to gratify the Wall Street barons who see even bigger bucks to be made off public school privatization than were made off for-profit colleges.

I know a couple of these types in my district. They treat any hint of skepticism as evidence of insufficient desire to better the lot of our poorest kids, wearing their self-righteousness on their sleeves and without the slightest awareness of the depths of their ignorance.

I figured it was time for me to weigh in....

I, too, am concerned by the notion floated in some circles that an entire industry has to depend on the endless supply of people who are willing to give up all and everything for their jobs. I deeply admire those who do--especially when they do so for children--but I also know that those people are a limited and at times unrenewable resource. So passion and simple feasibility both have to e part of the conversation.

BUT I think we should avoid reading that passion as anything but passion--and we should certainly not think ill of administrators who bring that passion to their jobs, see that passion as potentially transformative, and see how their own jobs can effect change. The change itself might not be something everyone agrees with, but school reform discussions that emerge from a common devotion to children are the best kind...

John, I know from your writing that you have a profound passion for the good of children, and that you're always "on the clock,"--at great personal sacrifice. Melody and Ben, I suspect the same of both of you.

Yes, the rhetoric of passion can become a problem when it becomes a mere advocacy/PR tool. But it's clear to me that the passion teachers and administrators in this conversation have for their jobs is the real deal.

A nice closure Claus.

For the record, I've been in this field for 15 years and am here to stay. I guess get used to my provocation!

Uh... Claus I think you've got some spam in that Ipad post.

Anyway, more of what I'm talking about in terms of "the revolution" from Sir Ken Robinson.

http://bit.ly/a9KYoQ

Whoa. Ken Robinson strikes me as the archetype of a sophist. Exactly the sort that Socrates would politely pick to pieces. Exactly the sort of "motivational", speaking-fee-collecting charlatan Ehrenreich profiles in "Bright Sided". Scary.

Claus, yes, we're all passionate. But there's passion fueled by wisdom and passion fueled by sophistry or pathological ideology (as in the Cultural Revolution). Was it you who once cited Confucius to the effect that learning without thought is fruitless, but thought without learning is perilous? It's the latter we find with these reform zealots. I also think of Yeats's "The worst are full of passion and the best lack all conviction", or something to that effect. The Jasons are not evil, but, I fear, ignorant of what is true, good and beautiful. These are the gatekeepers of the academy. Yikes!

Melody, I loved your comparison to the Cultural Revolution. It reminded me of "The Oracle Bones" and its accounts of venerable Beijing intellectuals, the wonderful custodians of China's rich cultural heritage, viewed as trash by jejune Communist true believers. No respect. No comprehension of what treasures these old folk were. The young functionaries KNEW they were doing the right thing by marching the old scholars out into the fields. Jason, if you're still reading: are you familiar with the Cultural Revolution?

Hi Ben -

Yes, I am still reading. Thanks for taking the time to view the Robinson video. I found it tremendous.

I find this thread very interesting and really enjoy participating in the "give and take" - and of course I am familiar with the Cultural Revolution.

To you, representing and defending the established status quo, someone like me is a radical - dangerous, reckless, "scary." So, you need to characterize me with these sorts of outlandish comparisons. In discussions with people just like you, I've been called a fascist "Hitler," a corporatist "Mussolini," and now a communist "Mao." At least pick an ideology to compare me to that's consistent!

You display a natural reaction to this revolution, and your methods will become increasingly more desperate as you continue to lose ground. The industrial/factory view of education, along with its labor/management relationship paradigm is falling down around you. As Alinsky writes, the ends will increasingly justify the means - I expect you guys to just get increasingly nasty.

So it goes. Call me a commie-fascist-corporatist-privateer-etc-etc-etc.

I'm still here - and still pushing.

Until tomorrow ...

Jason Glass
Eagle, CO (or more precisely Providence, RI tonight)

Ben F,

Thanks so much for bringing up Robert Moses. As I said, the thing we should keep in mind, probably more than anything is the scene in Catch 22 when the mission becomes "tight bombing patterns" because pictures of tight bombing patterns look so good on the cover of Life Magazin. But we should quickly follow with The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Power Broker. We should always remember how we got here from there. Humans are full of foibles. History is not made from top down dictates, but from complex and often irrational and nonrational behavior of featherless bipeds. The social engineers just think they are in control

I was writing an Oklahoma version of the process described by Robert Caro's biography of Moses, and discovered that the same patterns as NYC, and the same patterns illustrated in Chinatown, as well as the same types of human behavior created our segregated system. Our oligarchy also thought they were doing good as they choreographed the developement of the city.

Our schools are still paying the costs for their social engineering. When their Jim Crow finally collapsed,they used the tax system to shut down factory jobs in the inner city (that were still profitable) and then divert them to the exurbs and beyond. Busting unions, they just assumed, would lead to the greater good. They worshiped The Market, as they understood it, where a handful of elites guided the Market.

Now, people who have forgotten (or never known) the history of our urban realities think they can undo the harm on the cheap by top down educational reforms. Paul Tillich called this mindest "Cheap Grace."