Letter: Why fix something that isn’t broken?

The recent rage against public employee unions, tenure laws, and particularly teachers, gives rise to the question, “Just how did Minnesota become such a leader in the field of education before all of this political wrangling began to knock it down again?” Secondly, why are we so intent on fixing something that seemed to be working quite well sin the first place?

The answer to these questions lies in the public’s perception and interaction with public education. Suddenly, many of those who profited and thrived because of a wonderful system of education are intent on vilifying and changing the system that allowed them to succeed.

The reason that the seniority/tenure system was adopted is that no one could find any other effective alternative for establishing who was an excellent, adequate, or less than adequate teacher. Under the best of conditions this would always depend upon the students, parents, administrators, school board members, and legislators. Keep in mind that often these people played multiple roles.

Certainly some school districts are more stable than others, but no one is immune from the disgruntled parent, board member, or administrator whose child did not succeed in the classroom or in an extra-curricular activity due to a fundamental disagreement about how some situation was handled. If you think that micro-managing is a problem now, just go ahead and change our tenure law to open a can of worms. Allow children, parents, bus drivers, or the building maintenance staff determine who should or shouldn’t teach.

My father always told me that the janitors were probably the most qualified to make that judgment anyway. Suffice it to say that we have utilized our present system because it works better than anything else. So at the risk of telling legislators that they’ve wasted a good deal of time about something that doesn’t really need their attention (what’s new?), I say let sleeping dogs lie

Tags: opinion, phelps, education