"Arizona: The place to teach if you can't get a job anywhere else."
That's not the slogan we want to send to prospective teachers on recruiting fliers, but anyone considering a teaching job in this state is getting the message loud and clear: Look elsewhere before you apply in Arizona.
Not satisfied with slashing our already lowest-in-the-nation school budgets still further, Republicans also passed a bill putting our teachers' job security at the bottom of the national heap. Tenure protections in the state have been virtually abolished.
Advocates of this anti-teacher legislation will tell you they just want to let districts weed out bad teachers, including those who have been in the classroom for years. I doubt this noble sentiment is actually the impetus behind the bill. Republicans consider teachers and teacher unions to be the enemy, and this is just another way to weaken them. But even if their motives were pure, their punitive legislation will lower, not raise, the overall quality of teachers in the state.
To understand the conseaquences of the bill, we need to look at what tenure is. Teachers spend their first few years on probation when it's reasonably easy to fire them. But if they make it through those years, they're granted tenure. That doesn't mean they can't be fired. It just means the district has to go through due process, allowing teachers to defend themselves. If their performance is still considered sub-par, they have to be given a chance to improve before they can be let go.
The other thing that happens as teachers continue to work in a school district is, their salaries go up. First-year teachers make enough to the cover basic necessities and not much more. They get raises based on added years of experience and increased education. Even then, they can expect to earn less than people in other professions, but at least tenure means their jobs are reasonably secure. That makes the low salary a bit easier to accept.
As soon as tenure protections go, job security flies out the classroom door. After all, a district knows it can hire two young recruits fresh out of school for the cost of one experienced teacher. Two for one. That's a very tempting proposition, especially when administrators face shrinking budgets and growing class sizes.
Without tenure, it will be open season on everyone who's been around 10 years or more.
Tell me, who would want to begin their teaching careers in Arizona knowing their salaries will be low, their classroom budgets will be cut to the bone and their jobs will become more insecure the longer they teach? The best and brightest prospective teachers will send their applications to states with decent budgets and reasonable tenure policies.
And what about our competent, experienced teachers? You can be sure lots of them will be filling out applications for jobs in other states rather than face the yearly prospect of pink slips in their mailboxes just because they're too high on the salary scale. And of course, the best among them will be snatched up by schools in other states eager to pick up good teachers wherever they may be found.
Meanwhile, those teachers who stick around will avoid saying or doing anything that might put their jobs in jeopardy. They'll think twice before raising their voices to question any school policies, even when they know there are better ways to treat students and improve education. And they'll shy away from any teaching techniques or topics that might be at all controversial.
Schools will be filled with quiet, intimidated teachers who preside over safe, bland classrooms.
Obviously, we want to get rid of incompetent teachers, no matter how long they've been around. But punitive, anti-teacher legislation which will drive away our best teachers at the same time is not the way to do it.
Dave Safier is a regular contributor to Blog for Arizona.
