Search This Blog    Roemer makes right call on suggesting ending
tenure  As his latest comments show, Board of Elementary and
Secondary Education member Chas Roemer has it completely
backwards … by his musing about not running for reelection.
Rather, more than ever educational progress in Louisiana
desperately needs officials like him, as demonstrated when
Roemer opined in a letter to legislators that the state needs to
end tenure. As it is now, after a three-year probationary
period, a teacher in a traditional public school in Louisiana
gains access to procedures that make it difficult to fire even
for cause. Witness the samples for the latest reporting period
of 2007-08 that show 97.6 percent of tenured teachers retained
their job in the state, as did 98.8 percent of those in the
probationary period when it is easier to fire them for cause.
Statistically, these results advance two largely contradictory
conclusions. They may indicate that, with the overwhelming
proportion of teachers apparently performing