Brad Lager's Capitol Report - Quality Teachers Produce Quality Results

Over the final six weeks of the 2012 legislative session, we will be focusing a majority of our time on public policy that will help facilitate the greatest number of economic opportunities for the greatest number of Missourians. Although there are a number of important public policy changes necessary to help improve our state’s long-term economic outlook, few are more important than ensuring that we have a quality educational system producing a quality workforce.

Last week, we began debating the highly contentious issue of teacher tenure in our public schools. While the overwhelming majority of teachers do an outstanding job educating our students, there are situations in which a teacher is not getting the job done. When this situation occurs, there must be a process in place to help the teacher improve within a reasonable timeline. If the improvement process is not successful, then we owe it to the children of our state to have a mechanism in place for replacing that instructor with someone who can get the job done.

In the real world, extreme challenges with teacher tenure are rare. School administrators and veteran teachers can quickly identify those who are not cut out for the difficult job of classroom teaching, and normally, those individuals are removed before they reach a tenured position. In the unfortunate circumstance that a poor teacher was not removed before being protected by tenure, we cannot allow this to be a barrier to improving the educational opportunities for Missouri’s children.

If we keep doing what we have been doing, we are going to keep getting what we have been getting. Currently, we are not producing the dynamic workforce we will need in order to grow and thrive in an increasingly competitive global environment. As we move forward, everyone (parents, students, educators, etc) must understand their role in preparing students for a lifetime of learning and achievement. Although changing teacher tenure by itself will not fix the challenges facing our schools, it will help ensure that those teaching in our classrooms are doing the best possible job of preparing Missouri’s schoolchildren for a bright future.

As always, please feel free to call, email, or write with your ideas or concerns. The Capitol number is (573) 751-1415, my email is brad.lager@senate.mo.gov and my mailing address is Room 422, State Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO 65101.