Teacher Tenure Ticks Up Under Bill De Blasio. Will It Continue?

Chalkbeat reported that teacher tenure has ticked up during the first two years under Mayor Bill de Blasio but is still significantly lower than before Mayor Michael Bloomberg attacked teacher tenure.  In the last school year (2014-15), 64% of teachers received tenure, compared to 53% in the last year under Michael Bloomberg (2012-13).  Before the recession hit and teachers were hard to come by, 97% of the teachers received tenure in 2007 and drifted lower to 89% in 2010 before plummeting to 58% in 2011, at the height of the recession when their was a large teacher surplus.  As the economy improved less college graduates entered teaching and soon the pool of  "newbie teachers" were rapidly shrinking as the education reform movement made teaching a less rewarding profession both economically and professionally and administrators were more willing to reward teachers with tenure.

Most teachers who were refused tenure were not discontinued (2% to 3% annually) but had their probation extended for a year or two.  In the last year only 2.3% of the teachers were discontinued and effectively cannot work in the New York City public school system.  This does not include the thousands of teachers who resigned or simply left the system due to the terrible classroom environment or used teaching as a stopgap measure until a better offer presented itself.

As the teacher shortage looms on the horizon, I expect that more teachers will get tenure since there will no longer be a surplus of teacher candidates to replace them, especially, in Math, Science, Special Education, and other hard to fill teaching positions. The increased tenure rate is economically based and not due to a kinder or more sympathetic City Hall administration.