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By BOB KUSTRA

A recent issue of Business Week reports on the new world of work, calling it a radical redefinition of labor and bidding farewell to unconditional lifetime employment.

We hardly had to wait for the business weekly to make the point. Almost any of our neighbors across Illinois can go out their front door and point down the street to a home where corporate downsizing has taken its toll.

Whether we want to greet such news with praise or condemnation, most observers can agree that the American workplace is being forced to keep up with the pressures of foreign competition in a global economy by toughening up at work.

As the pressure is turned up on the workforce to increase productivity and efficiency, the focus usually lands on the quality of education. Yet, when we turn to the school to re-examine the way our children are being taught, we find that those entrusted with the care and education of our children for five hours a day are held responsible for their performance by an archaic set of work rules.

The Coalition of Essential Schools has won national attention and praise for its attempt to improve how children learn in the classroom. Ted Sizer, a professor at Brown University and the Coalition founder, admits that his work has been slowed considerably by teachers afraid of change and what that might do to their job security.

From my visits to schools and discussions with parents, principals and teachers, I am convinced that most teachers do a very good job teaching the youth of our state. But I also have learned from those same visits that there are teachers who simply don't belong in the classroom anymore, if they ever did, and it is next to impossible to remove them.

On those occasions when legislators propose changes in the law which make it easier for school boards to fire bad teachers, union leadership rushes to the defense of the status quo and thereby protects the least competent in the classrooms of Illinois.

On this point, teacher unions disagree strongly. It is possible to get rid of a bad teacher, they claim. One lawyer who represents downstate school boards when they attempt to fire bad teachers counters that it takes years in court to fire an incompetent teacher. Most school districts, unable to absorb the legal expenses, just give up. He does concede there is still one surefire way to remove a teacher, and that is a morals charge. Anything short of that, forget it!

Recently, I ran into a teacher from one of our finest suburban schools. I asked him how the early retirement program was working in his school, and he told me that 23 teachers took advantage of it.

"How many of those," I asked, "could the school afford to lose?"

"All but five," he replied.

Maybe we should be thankful there is at least one way to move teachers on who are no longer challenged by the classroom. Unfortunately, early retirement involves buying out the teacher's pension and is costly both to state and local taxpayers.

Current law requires that teachers be reviewed for tenure at the end of their second year. During the first year, the teacher is on probationary status and can be removed without stating any reason. In the second year, a teacher can be removed for one of a number of reasons listed. Once tenure is granted, it is, for all intents and purposes, a lifetime appointment. Where else in the American workplace is there such a guarantee?

School children across Illinois deserve more than this minimalist approach to the performance review of teachers.

Tenure as it exists in Illinois law should be replaced with performance- based contracts that school districts would enter into with individual teachers for three to five years. Principals, fellow teachers and parents would participate in an evaluation system. With the knowledge base expanding exponentially as it is, a re-certification process whereby teachers are re-examined periodically like other professionals must also be adopted.

Needless to say, good teachers will be neither threatened nor harmed by these measures. In fact, these performance-based approaches to accountability could be combined with a merit pay system that would reward our finest teachers with special incentives. Then, the general public will be able to eliminate at least one item from its list of complaints about our schools.

Respect for our teachers will increase with the realization that there are effective means by which to hold teachers accountable for their work in the classroom. And, most important, incompetent teachers will be moved out of our children's classrooms.

It won't be long before the annual budget process will have school advocates renewing their annual pleas for increased funding. Before another dollar is appropriated for schools, isn't it about time that those of us in government apply to our teachers the same set of rigorous standards of performance that those who pay the bills are finding at their own workplaces?

I think it is!

Republican Bob Kustra was re-elected November 8 to his second term as lieutenant governor of Illinois.

10 / December 1994 / lllinois Issues