Stormy tenure

THE HIGH-DECIBEL NOISE surrounding Proposition 74 has obscured the facts. Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut school funding this year, as the teachers unions claim? (No.) Did he increase school funding by a substantial amount? (Yes.) Did he nonetheless renege on a promise to restore funding cut from the previous year and say the real problem with schools was bad teaching? (Yes.)

This history is important to understanding why Schwarzenegger is promoting Proposition 74, which is intended to make it easier to fire bad teachers. Though the governor's reasons for pushing the measure are suspect, he is right that teachers unions and cumbersome state rules make it too difficult to dismiss inept or uncaring teachers. Proposition 74 wouldn't help very much, but it would help a little. That's reason enough to support it.

Everyone on campus -- and some people off campus, such as involved parents -- knows who the bad teachers are. These teachers stay on in part because many principals have neither the time nor the inclination to go through the complicated procedure necessary to fire a teacher, and in part because school districts prefer to avoid the costs of administrative law hearings to which all fired teachers are entitled.

The helpful part of Proposition 74 addresses a minor part of the problem. It would expand the probationary period for new teachers, who can be fired for any reason, to five years, at which point they would receive tenure. Current law sets probation at two years. That's not enough time.

Teachers unions argue that by reducing job security, a longer probation period would discourage people from entering the profession. We have more faith in teachers than that. Most prospective teachers are intent on succeeding at their work; they don't enter the profession because they know they can fall back on tenure protection if they fail.

Proposition 74's writers did a clumsier job when they tried to make it easier to fire teachers who have gained tenure. The initiative eliminates the requirement for principals to go through two separate and lengthy periods of documentation of problem teachers. Instead, it requires two consecutive "unsatisfactory" evaluations, a year apart, for dismissal.