To the Editor:
To someone who has taught for 40 years, Marc F. Bernstein’s cry for extending the time it takes teachers to earn tenure (“Is Tenure an Anachronism?,” Commentary, March 22, 2006) is an ironic indication of one of the real problems of our public schools: leadership that has no answers to the palpable decline in academic standards other than to rail against teacher tenure and union contracts.
If school districts with a superintendent, deputy superintendent, several assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and in some cases chairpersons on their supervisory teams can’t determine the competence of a teacher in three years, it should be abundantly clear that the problem is not with the tenure law.
In my experience, attacking teacher tenure is the last refuge of educationist scoundrels.
Morton Rosenfeld
Plainview, N.Y.
