Opinion: In today’s pages: ending tenure, pressuring Pakistan and Blagojevich
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The Times editorial board puts paid to teacher tenure. Tenure, the board says, protects the few bad apples among teachers and a better system is needed.
Teachers deserve meaningful job protection. Senior teachers should feel safe from administrators who could save money by hiring lower-paid beginners and from parents who can turn vindictive when they don’t get their way. Instead of sheltering weak instructors, though, teacher contracts should specify fair and effective ways of assessing their performances -- and ushering them out the door.
Over on the Op-Ed page, columnist Patt Morrison also takes on education and says the looming budget cuts, along with the impending departure of Supt. David L. Brewer, make the Los Angeles Unified School District ripe for an extreme overhaul in every way. W. Scott Thompson assesses Thailand’s remarkable King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Rosa Brooks writes that the indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich is a warning for victorious Democrats to avoid feeling too smug.
For every Larry Craig, there’s an Eliot Spitzer; for every Ted Stevens, there’s a Rod Blagojevich.
Back over in the editorial stack, the board presses Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari to not only punish the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, but to make and a serious effort to shut down their networks, weed out their supporters and disable their allied charity, Jamaat ud-Dawa. Lastly, criminal prosecution of a Colorado man who ranted online against an ex-girlfriend was probably good cause for a civil lawsuit, but criminal prosecution, the board says, is an ‘afront to the 1st Amendment,’ and Colorado’s law permitting it should be declared unconstitutional.
* Photo by Hoang Dinh Nam AFP / Getty Images)
In today