State may toughen rules for community-college professors

State may toughen rules for community-college professors

By Denise-Marie Ordway and Kathleen Haughney, Orlando Sentinel

Life for thousands of community-college professors in Florida could be changing drastically as the state considers making it tougher for them to earn and maintain tenure.

This afternoon, state officials will discuss the changes they plan to make to rules governing employment contracts for professors at Florida's 28 community colleges. The State Board of Education is expected to consider the changes early next year.

The public hearing will be from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Heathrow campus of Seminole State College.

Under the new rules, it would take longer for a professor to earn tenure — at least five years instead of three. The proposal also would require tenure-seeking faculty to meet a series of performance metrics that include feedback from students and employers.

And once professors earn tenure, they would undergo intensive reviews every three years. College administrators would focus on student success, looking into factors such as job placement and whether students do well in subsequent courses.

The changes, sharply criticized by faculty, are another move by state leaders who say they want to increase accountability among public educators.

Colleges and universities statewide are being pushed to boost their graduation and job-placement rates to show taxpayers that higher education is worth their investment.

Last year, a committee of Florida lawmakers sought to abolish tenure altogether in community colleges so administrators would have more control over their personnel and to make it easier to get rid of low-performing employees.

Though that effort failed, the Legislature succeeded in 2011 in eliminating tenure for new teachers in elementary, middle and high schools.

Tom Auxter, president of the statewide faculty union, United Faculty of Florida, blasted the community-college proposal, calling it an effort by Republican leaders to cheapen education by having colleges rely more on temporary instructors instead of skilled but more expensive professors.

He argued that making tenure tougher to obtain would prompt the best professors to leave.

"This is just a political way to destabilize the jobs of quite a few people in order to have replacements for them fast," Auxter said. "It's a way to have cheap labor. It has nothing to do with quality."

But state leaders said they want to ensure community colleges' standards are consistent, especially considering the rising importance of these institutions in providing the state with college graduates. Most community colleges now offer bachelor's degrees.

Randy Hanna, chancellor of the Florida College System, stressed that, although the proposal would require tenure-seeking professors to meet certain criteria, colleges would have flexibility in terms of how heavily each piece of information would weigh in an employee's evaluation.

He said the tenure rule needed to be revised. It had not been reviewed in at least 20 years.

"I think it's a way to ensure that local [trustee] boards and presidents and faculty are working together in a process that will provide for accountability and still make sure the decisions are made at that local level," Hanna said.

Today's workshop on "continuing" contracts for full-time, tenured professors — as opposed to contracts that must be renewed every few months or annually for many other faculty — is the second one held this year on the proposal.

Hanna said revisions were developed based on feedback from college presidents, lawmakers, faculty and the Governor's Office. But Michael Brawer, executive director of the Association of Florida Colleges, said he plans to voice concern about a provision in the most recent version that had not been present in another version that the association had agreed upon.

The earlier version did not include one of the most controversial provisions, which calls for creating an evaluation system that would require students and employers to reflect on the education that students received from individual instructors.

That part, Brawer said, presents substantial logistical challenges and is giving many college administrators "heartburn" — because they are not sure how it can be done fairly.

Valencia College President Sandy Shugart said he appreciates that state officials are trying to ensure rigor in all the colleges' tenure processes. But he said some changes are "too prescriptive."

For example, the plan suggests using the salaries of graduates to help gauge professor quality, Shugart said.

"You can't assign that to a particular faculty member because that student has had 20 or 30 faculty members," Shugart said.