Actually, my whole point was that there ARE nuances. Yes, I am acknowledging these points:

"Even you are acknowledging that a) there's a problem with trying to remove problem employees after probationary periods and b) that "seniority rights" are problemaic in hiring at specific schools."

And I'm coming at it from a specific point of view -- that of a newspaper journalist who sees my colleagues wanting to protect their own seniority rights while mindlessly attacking another profession's seniority rights, without the least awareness of what they're doing. They're the ones who aren't seeing the nuances; I'm the one pointing them out.

The Answer:  Teacher Professional Partnerships

Unions are a neutral entity.  They are good for workers at the top of the seniority list but real bad for teachers near the bottom.  I have been bumped out of 3 jobs in 8 years because someone higher up on the totem pole ran their own program into the ground.  And I do agree that the union-less charter alternative is often just as bad if not worse (look at KIPP schools and the extra demands they put on their teachers).  However, I do think it is unfair to classify all charter schools as falling into this category of poor job satisfaction.  Charter law opens up the potential for a new classification of teacher job description to emerge.  There currently are over 50 charter schools around the country organized as teacher professional partnerships.  These are typically very small project-based schools with very low teacher-student ratios.  These schools have no administration, the teachers share the administrative responsibilities.  Their practice is structured as a cooperative and each teacher is a full owner of their job, not an employee of the school.  With such a structure there is no need for unions since teachers set their own salaries and decide among each other what policies are best for their school.  To the best of my knowledge only charter laws allow this to exist.

Nice conversation in this thread. I'm more and more seeing the ed reform wars through the lens of the history of American Labor, and it just gets more and more complex for me.

As NYC Weboy points out, unions aren't perfect, nor is the prospect of unprotected teaching profession. The Waltons, I have no doubt, want to do to neighborhood schools what they did to neighborhood grocers, hardware stores, and so on: shut them down, and hire their "human capital" for a fraction of their former income and benefits. TFA, in this respect, seems really a well-marketed cover for what, in historical terms, would be seen as hiring scabs.

They spend two years, then go on to a choice non-profit or grad school. But the teachers they replace, who spent 20 years in a school suddenly closed and re-opened as a charter - where do they go? Wal-Mart?

Do we offer "alternative lawyer certifications" that let people who haven't passed the Bar compete with those who have, at bargain prices? No. Yet we let 22-year-olds with five weeks of training compete with professionally certified teachers. It's disturbing on so many levels.

Ironically, my husband, now-former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who took a buyout in the face of the Chronicle's very uncertain survival, is getting his substitute teaching credential. (He will be a dues-paying member of United Educators of San Francisco, the teachers' union local.)

Aside from the need to give a whole lot more thought for its own sake to the teachers'-union bashing they do, members of the mainstream press should also be pondering the fact that they're extremely likely to need to retrain for imminent new careers, and may find themselves joining the teachers they have so vilified. That would be just deserts, wouldn't it?

This thread for me seems to bring me back to a question/topic I addressed in an earlier thread (I don't remember which one) that went something like this:  Is it charter schools that are the problem or laws that allow them to be misused? 

It seems that we are all in agreement that the "Big Box" charters like KIPP and TFA don't really offer anything new to education other than longer work hours, greater teacher demands, and less pay.  This doesn't mean that all charter schools fall into this category.  Just as there are some poor performing and arguably damaging public schools out there that give public schooling a bad name there are also these "big box" schools that damage and tarnish the name of charter.  My concern is that this back and forth will in the end bring down the better side of each category (traditional public vs. charter) down.  I for one would like to see this fight be over policy reform that regulates how charters operate and how traditional publics can be more flexible. 

As for lawers, I wonder how they would respond if legislation were offered up requiring them all to join a union that limited their pay to a set structure based upon years of experience regardless of performance and bound by a system of seniority and tenure that stifled creativity and innovation. 

As always, this debate frustrates me because it ignores the fact that there are plenty of places in the US where teachers' unions have no real power or influence and their schools are generally no better off than those in areas with strong unions.

Virginia, where I currently work, is a "right to work" state, which means that all those union protections and supposed obstructions don't exist. Also, we don't have real tenure. I see no evidence in the teachers and students around me that this has made the school system any better than in other states. If people are going to argue about the usefulness and validity of teachers unions, they should at least be aware in the huge variation between those unions and between what they can even do. We've a federal system, and every state has different laws on this.

So what do you say to stories like this?  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,5765040,full.story
There is lots and lots of data there: not just assertions and assumptions.  

Far from the worst example: District officials thought they had a strong case against fourth-grade teacher Shirley Loftis, including complaints and other evidence they said dated back a decade. 
According to their allegations before the commission, Loftis, 74, failed to give directions to students, assigned homework that wasn't at the appropriate grade level and provided such inadequate supervision that students pulled down their pants or harmed one another by fighting or throwing things. One child allegedly broke a tooth, another was hit in the head after being pushed off a chair, a third struck by a backpack.

The commission, however, sided with Loftis. It acknowledged that she showed signs of burnout and "would often retreat from student relationship problems rather than confront them." 

But it said the district did not try hard enough to help her and suggested administrators find her another job -- perhaps training other teachers.</blockquote>

OK, the quote didn't work.  All of the following is a quote from the (much longer) LA Times story: 
QUOTE: District officials thought they had a strong case against fourth-grade teacher Shirley Loftis, including complaints and other evidence they said dated back a decade. According to their allegations before the commission, Loftis, 74, failed to give directions to students, assigned homework that wasn't at the appropriate grade level and provided such inadequate supervision that students pulled down their pants or harmed one another by fighting or throwing things. One child allegedly broke a tooth, another was hit in the head after being pushed off a chair, a third struck by a backpack.

The commission, however, sided with Loftis. It acknowledged that she showed signs of burnout and "would often retreat from student relationship problems rather than confront them." 

But it said the district did not try hard enough to help her and suggested administrators find her another job -- perhaps training other teachers.

I fully acknowledged that type of situation and quandary, Stuart (clip from my original post):

**I've seen situations in which it was indeed difficult to “get rid of” a problem employee. I’ve seen them both with teachers, in my life as a public school parent and advocate, and also with union newspaper employees, in my previous career as a daily-newspaper copy editor.  

In my observation -- while union contracts did indeed help protect those problem employees’ jobs and make it impossible to “summarily” fire them --  in every case I’ve seen, it was poor management judgment that led to the situation. I recall several cases in which my newsroom colleagues, including union activists, were voicing serious and legitimate concerns to management about new employees still in their probationary periods -- and went ignored. Then when the problems blow up later, “the union” gets the blame.

Of course, that said, it’s still a terrible situation when poor management decisions result in problem teachers in the classroom. It’s a challenge balancing protecting employees against arbitrary or retaliatory management actions with the ability to terminate a problem employee.**

That has no bearing on my overall point, which is that it's unclear on the concept at best and outrageously hypocritical at worst for teacher-bashing journalists to espouse job security for their own profession and denigrate it for teachers.

And, again, eliminating job security from the teaching profession, as the "education reformers" are working hard to do, is likely to have the negative effect of keeping or driving the best employees out of the profession, as job security is clearly a benefit any employee would value.

1.  With due respect, I don't think the original post gave sufficient weight to the many horror stories described in the LA Times article, and that are the result of a system in which employees can retain job security despite the most egregious malfeasance or incompetence. 

2.  The alternative to total job security for everyone isn't "eliminating job security" altogether.  There are plenty of ways to make it easier to fire stupid and incompetent people without going to that extreme. 

3.  Why do you think reducing job security would drive the "best employees" out of the profession?  The most obvious effect would be precisely the opposite: getting rid of the bad apples.  And it seems intuitively obvious that it would be incompetent people who get the most benefit from a system of total job security, and who would therefore value that system the most highly.  Star teachers are more likely to be confident in their abilities. 

Regarding the teacher in L.A. I think there may be MUCH more to the story than is presented here, or in the newspaper.  My first question is where is the administrative support.  Without administrative support, a teacher will find it virtually impossible to maintain an adequate classroom environment.

The purpose of teacher unions is to serve the needs of the teachers.  The union contract provides me protections so that I can go about the work of teaching without worrying about losing my job over arbitrary and/or capricious actions of an administrator.  But I would like to know of other professions that require a three-year probationary period during which time at the end of any contract year a teacher may be dismissed with the simple, "Thank you for your service," or "We believe there are better candidates in the applicant pool."

Job security is important for several reasons.  I worked on a team with three other teachers a couple of years ago and due to one having other opportunities and another being caught in the not "highly qualified" status (despite being excellent) the two of us left found ourselves with two first year TFA teachers.  Had the original four of us been able to stay together, we would have had a set of classes and middle school students completing extraordinary projects.  As it was, there was an enormous learning curve for the new teachers and to be honest, a certain lack of respect for our experience.

And to explain, my initial reaction to your post was curiosity, because whenever tenure comes up, there's always someone who chimes in with the fear that if not for tenure, principals would be arbitrarily firing teachers left and right.  So I'm wondering: Out of the 94,000 or so public schools in the United States, how many have principals that are really likely to try to fire the good teachers rather than the incompetent ones?  
But then again, maybe the answer would be: a lot.  I don't know.  I'm reminded of the "Peter Principle."  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

Perhaps not just the Fair Labor Standards Act, but other labor law as well does limit employers ability to fire anyone at any time for any reason . . . enough said about that.

This is still wrong.  You're still implying that the FLSA provides job security (which is simply false).  And "other labor law" doesn't apply unless it's a unionized workplace.  In every other workplace, the usual standard is indeed employment at will.  That is the law in every state except Montana. 

For a job that is chronically underpaid, over-scrutinized, and damn hard, even in the "easiest" schools, a bit of job security is not unreasonable.

Sure, let's have "a bit" of job security, rather than lifetime protection for the many incompetent or even criminal teachers described in the LA Times article. 

Some are outstanding, most are good enough, and a few are poor . . . but isn't that true with any profession from rocket scientists to ditch diggers?

OK.  But if only a few principals are doing poorly, then why is near-absolute lifetime tenure needed for all teachers?  Why would they need to be so afraid of the many "outstanding" or "good enough" principals? 

NYC weboy, please use your real name...It seems cowardly when people don't use their real names, as if, perhaps, they are afraid of being fired from their jobs if they were known to have independent opinions.

Kirstin Downey