RHEEWIND.

The New York Times has a nice piece on the role of tenure in the fight between DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and the teacher's unions. But for a more ground-level perspective on the complexities of the issue, I'd recommend this e-mail I got from reader Nate today:

So I read this article about Michelle Rhee and the end of tenure in DC, and I have some serious misgivings...As a grad student studying to be a math teacher, I am all for reform. Who needs tenure? I should only get better at my job as I get older. That's how most jobs work. If I need a guarantee not to be fired...well I just don't. Not to mention that while I got into teaching not expecting anything like this, I would really love it if my career had a way to reward excellence, which it currently doesn't (at least not in the same way as most private sector jobs, ie monetarily, with status and recognition) And I am a big fan of reform in general. We need to shake things up. The system is obviously broken.That said, how are we measuring this performance that we'll be basing our new merit-pay structure on? Standardized tests? That gives me chills. Now I understand the need to test; I understand that we can't manage what we can't measure. But there are a ton of societal goods that can't be measured by standardized tests. In fact, standardized tests are pretty bad at measuring a whole lot of things. Even subjects like math and science, which lots of people think tests are pretty accurate on. A short timed test really only measures a very narrow skillset. As my topology professor said, "Great mathematicians don't need to think quickly, they need to think deeply." Perhaps we don't need everyone to be great mathematicians and scientists. But we do need some people following those paths, and if we start teaching to tests, I guarantee we will have a lot fewer.My point is this. It seems like reformers keep wanting to jump in and start doing things, because education is so stagnant. Which I understand. But the place to start isn't merit pay, it is finding methods of assessing teachers that aren't totally fucking useless and irrelevant. I think if we had such assessment, people would find teachers much more amenable to merit pay and a lack of tenure.

At some point, since we eventually have to manage education, we're going to have to measure it. Somehow. You can do that through testing. You can do that through principal evaluations. Both have their problems. A hybrid would have its problems. A third option would have its problems. But the question, at some point, must cease to be whether a particular option is perfect, and become whether it's better.Take my job. You could measure my performance on blog traffic, or article citations. We don't do that, though, because the point isn't necessarily popularization. So instead, there's this guy named Mark Schmitt, and if he thinks I'm doing a crummy job, he can fire me, and if he thinks I'm doing a great job, he can promote me, and it's possible that those judgments could be influenced by personality factors or whim or other suboptimal measures, but it's all we've got, and it's better than there being no way to fire or promote me. Every year, proposals like Rhee's come somewhat closer to enaction. And when they're defeated, they come with costs. In DC, for instance, the teacher's unions are taking an incredible beating in the eyes of the public. And I know a number of teachers who are disgusted with their own representation, mainly young teachers. It's hard not to see that the union will eventually have to accept a reform of this nature. It would be good if, before that point, the unions took some time from protecting tenure -- which future members, like Nate, don't necessarily want -- and put some into figuring out which evaluative processes they're most comfortable with. because if they don't, they may end up with one that they really don't like.