In case you missed it, Charlotte lawyer Luke Largess had an excellent letter to the editor published in the Charlotte Observer yesterday on the oft-misreported subject of teacher tenure and the conservative crusade to turn all state public school teachers into, effectively, temps.

“Last Friday’s Observer reported the misgivings of superintendents and school boards over the end of teacher tenure, and the challenge in determining who will be the 25 percent of teachers to be offered four-year contracts with $500/year pay raises. Sunday’s editorial also discussed these issues. But the Observer disserves this important discussion by continually repeating two Republican myths about these coming changes.

The first fable is that tenure must end because only 17 tenured teachers were fired in the 2011-12 school year. That number, from a line in the annual Department of Public Instruction report on teacher turnover, ignores the full DPI report and the story it tells.

The central fact: 11,791 teachers left their jobs that year, including 5,599 with tenure. Some tenured teachers left voluntarily, but DPI’s report shows that many were forced out. At several stages in the dismissal process, a tenured teacher can resign. The 17 “dismissed” teachers either went through the statutory hearing process to the bitter end, or never requested a hearing and were dismissed summarily. DPI’s 2012 data show that most teachers put in the dismissal crucible resign. 147 tenured teachers “resigned in lieu of termination” in 2012. And that figure also only tells part of the story. Read More…