OUR VIEW: Be a great teacher; it's the law (vote in poll)

Teachers, make certain your students learn and progress. If you can’t do that, find another career. It’s the law.

Controversial SB 191 is no longer just a great and radical idea. Gov. Bill Ritter signed it Thursday, enacting a law that will quickly elevate the quality and status of teachers and the futures of children from all socioeconomic plights throughout Colorado.

With this law, Colorado takes one more step in its advance toward becoming the greatest state for public education — a state known for educational innovation, market-driven educational choice, home-school freedom and excellence among teachers.

Traditionally in Colorado, teachers have received tenure after showing up to work for three consecutive years without getting fired. Tenure essentially guarantees job security regardless of results.

While the majority of teachers in Colorado are dedicated, talented, well-educated and underpaid, a system that entrenches any amount of mediocrity and under performance does disservice to students, parents, effective teachers and the future of Colorado and the United States. The future wealth of our country depends entirely upon the ability of young Americans to someday produce valuable goods and services in excess of what they consume. Their ability to do that depends on the quality of education they receive.

Under Colorado’s wonderful new law, teachers will earn tenure only after three years of effective evaluations. To receive a passing evaluation, a teacher will have to show results in the form of academic growth among students to the satisfaction of the school’s administration. Even teachers who receive tenure will have to continue achieving good results because the law says they will lose tenure by scoring two consecutive “ineffective” evaluations.

Opponents, rallied by union leaders, have not told us this is a bad idea for students or the future welfare of the nation. They have told us it’s unfair to teachers who may not be able to appease administrators or achieve adequate results with under achieving kids. At every turn they have told us how this may negatively affect teachers, not students.

(Please vote in poll to the lower right in red type. Must vote to see results. Thanks!)

Frankly, who cares? Schools aren’t funded to create safe and comfortable careers for the small percentage of teachers who underachieve. They are funded to educate what must become the most fiercely competitive and innovative work force in the world. Anyone with some other view of the function of our schools has no business teaching in them.

Imagine tenure at a law firm, where all that matters is good results for clients. Should under performing lawyers who get poor results for a majority of clients continue working because society owes them good jobs? Of course not. Poor-performance teachers, who are rare in Colorado, do society more harm than most of their poor-performing peers in other fields. We cannot tolerate them, and that’s what this law says.

Thank you, legislators and Gov. Ritter, for a bipartisan effort that resulted in a law that ensures high standards for teachers, students, parents and society at large. The fruits of this law will soon become obvious.

— Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board. Friend him on Facebook

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