To best train and support school leaders in their evolving roles, they require high-quality preparation and in-service pipelines that both address the changing demands on their positions and acknowledge the cascading effects that well-prepared leaders have on both student outcomes and in school culture and retention. Including school leaders in…

The focus on using the courts to abolish tenure is a distraction from the important work of improving teacher quality. Unfortunately, the recent decision of Vergara v. California has only perpetuated the mistaken notion that only after tenure is abolished can underperforming teachers be removed. But the authors contend that administrators,…

Just a few years ago, tenure appeared low on the reform list for state policy makers and district administrators, viewed as too hot an issue politically to challenge. But it was front and center in the 2014 landmark "Vergara v. California" lawsuit, which challenged teacher tenure and related policies. Yet whether to grant tenure or not…

Tenure is under fire. Conservatives have long attacked such policies as tenure that constrain the ability of managers to fire whomever they want, but the latest assaults on tenure have invoked liberal egalitarian ideals. With all the problems in education, why are we so fixated on teacher tenure? What is really going on? How did tenure get its…

To stem the tide of new professionals leaving teaching, the Oceanside School District in New York created a program that sees teaching as a six-year career ladder beginning with an internship and ending with National Board Certification, with board-certified teachers supporting new interns and residents.

This manuscript proposes a mathematical model to address faculty sufficiency requirements towards assuring overall high quality management education at a global university. Constraining elements include full-time faculty coverage by discipline, location, and program, across multiple campus locations subject to stated service quality standards of…

Bob Kerrey's rocky tenure as president of the New School may seem a fading memory, but the recent disclosure that he earned $3-million from the institution last year could rekindle resentments on campus and raise questions about Mr. Kerrey's continuing and lucrative role at the college. Under fire from New School faculty over turnover in the…

The author reports on a promise to name a chief academic officer as second in charge of the New York City schools which paved the way for Cathleen P. Black to succeed Joel I. Klein as the district's next chancellor. The compromise plan, announced amid intensifying debate over her selection by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, won a state waiver…

A faculty member may be surprised to hear that the AAUP-affiliated United University Professions--one of the largest academic unions in the nation, with more than 33,000 members across New York State--includes a growing number of academic professionals who are not faculty members. Professionals at a public college or university range from the…

Efforts by state legislators to curtail collective bargaining or destroy public-sector unions, abolish tenure, and decrease funding for education are spreading throughout the country. This author states that the scapegoating and vilification of unions and teachers, however, are not new. The current attacks have historical parallels, when cries of…

Scholars who teach composition, a staple on the schedule of many a college freshman, often wind up stringing together a series of adjunct teaching jobs while keeping an eye out for that first step on the golden track to tenure. This article reports on a group of 20 people hired by St. John's University to teach in its first-year writing program,…

This article discusses academic freedom that is currently under threat at many public two-year schools, which serve almost one-half of the nation's first-year college students. The growing reliance on part-time faculty exacerbates the problem, with many adjuncts feeling muzzled for fear of losing their jobs. The problem of academic freedom at…

Worries about a partner's finding a job are a major reason why colleges lose faculty and professional-staff recruits. Some institutions have hired people to focus largely on nonfaculty job searches. (Finding faculty jobs for spouses or partners is a more complex negotiation with the university.) But as the economy continues to dip into uncharted…

This article reports on an unsettled tenure case at Columbia University. The high-profile and controversial tenure bid of Joseph A. Massad, a Palestinian-American professor of Arab politics, was turned down by Columbia University's provost, Alan Brinkley. Mr. Massad's case follows closely on two other high-profile tenure bids affected by the…

In the US, graduate assistants are an integral part of a university's educational and operational climate. Graduate assistants provide teaching, research or administrative services to the educational enterprise in exchange for professional experience and a financial stipend. Recent strikes of graduate teaching assistants at New York University…