Like most union-dominated workplaces, the New York City Department of Education maintains strict seniority rules. No matter how great or bad you are, if you are a first year teacher your job is in jeopardy.  During my first couple of years, I was definitely low man on the totem pole, which meant that at least three times I was in real danger of losing my job.  Once, only a last minute sabbatical by a senior teacher saved me: I found out I would be returning for the school year about a week before the school year began.

This always struck me as unjust. No doubt, there were some incredible older teachers.  But there were just as many who were bad or simply mediocre.  Not only were these lifers immune from firing, they also were paid (at the time) something like triple my salary.

The truly talentless and the obtuse among the senior teachers insisted on giving low grades, arbitrarily favoring certain students and living on the edge as administrators tried (and generally failed) to remove them.  But they were always a minority. 

More interesting were the bulk of the old timers; many of whom had developed tricks that allowed them to thrive—tactics that kept criticism at bay.  One teacher concocted a system in which he divided all of his students into groups and had them writing their own constitutions and designing their own cities for government class.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Creative education at its best.  But this system was created so that he could read the Village Voice at his desk while his students ostensibly did their assigned tasks.  What really happened was discussion of the dismal prospects of the Knicks and gossip on who was dating whom.  He even solved the problem of grading: he gave each team a certain number of points and then they were responsible for grading themselves.  Everyone got a 91. The only work that was ever submitted were papers written by each group.  After this particular teacher retired, I taught a class in his old room. After the day was done, in his abandoned closet, I discovered boxes and boxes of dusty and totally ungraded papers.

The longer I spend inside the system, the more convinced I become that everyone’s a running a racket.  Whether it’s the teacher who gives all of his students a base grade of 93, or the one who has student monitors grade all her papers, it seems like very few people are actually working. Do they know something I don’t?  Why are there so few old and good teachers? They are out there, but they are a small band. 

The fact is that many “seasoned” educators know that so long as they give high enough grades, they can float by.  This is the reason why the proposed legislation to end teacher tenure is so threatening.

In “Last Teacher in, First Out,” New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina—who is really working the Ed Reform Beat—goes into some of the reactions to this idea.  Teachers everywhere are angry and upset about the prospect that the sacrosanct rules of tenure might be threatened. 

But really, the odds of passage are grim:

“[The legislation] wasn’t just dead on arrival, it was dead before it was put in the mail,” [State Senator Eric] Schneiderman said of the legislation. “It does open the conversation about how to ensure there are quality teachers, but the idea of giving the administration total discretion to pick and choose who is fired with no standards is not going to fly.”

The truth is that I really don’t know what to think.  I hate tenure and I hate seniority as a concept.  I do believe that principals should be able to fire whomever they want and pay teachers for merit, not years in the system.  But how can I ensure that the principals are good?  Many of them are walking examples of the Peter Principle. 

I like to think of myself as a good teacher.  I spent the whole day grading papers in a Starbucks next to a bearded man who reeked of Nag Champa and Clamato instead of playing with my kids.  

What do those old schemers know that I don’t know?