Teacher tenure is a topic that has sparked massive debate recently in the field of education. There are thoughts circulating that tenure is awarded too quickly or to just about anyone, which leads to many teachers lacking work ethic. However many people, specifically teachers’ unions argue that tenure is imperative for the benefit of both the students and the teachers.
Teacher tenure was first awarded in the early 1900’s in an attempt to improve the quality of education in the United States because the lack of stability within the classroom was negatively impacting students’ educational experiences. Not only was this system developed to help the students, but also to help the teachers because they were now offered more job security for a position that they previously could have lost at any moment’s notice.
Tenure is the right of a teacher to due process when being fired, which is awarded after the successful completion of a probationary period. This includes being informed of the reasoning behind their termination and also having the right to a hearing prior to their termination. In theory, this is a very effective and seemingly reasonable action to follow for any teacher when considering termination, regardless of whether or not they have received tenure. However, because of the rules regarding what this hearing must include when a teacher has tenure, administrators are less likely to fire teachers who have tenure simply because the proceedings are very costly and time-consuming. This would be less detrimental to the school system as a whole if only the best and most qualified teachers were granted tenure, but it is almost laughable how easy it is to get it. Most teachers get tenure after only three years, no matter what their skill level is.
This is a major issue because teachers who are average or below average at their job are granted tenure after just three years of teaching and are almost guaranteed job security for the rest of their career, even though this might not be the most beneficial teacher for the students attending the school. A new teacher with outstanding credentials and is a better teacher than some already working in a school could apply for a teaching position, however, because a teacher who already works at the school has tenure, this new teacher may not get hired, ultimately resulting in a loss for the students’ education because they are losing out on a better teacher.
In addition to this issue, tenure also causes many teachers to lose their motivation to do their absolute best and continue to improve their teaching skills. Once a teacher is awarded tenure, they know that their job is secure enough that as long as they don’t perform completely horribly, the school’s administration would probably not go through the long and costly process of creating a hearing in order to fire them just for doing an average job. As a result, some teachers who lack the passion to do their best in the classroom from a pure passion for teaching just do the bare minimum in order to keep their job. Tenure decreases incentives for teachers and that is incredibly harmful to the education of students across the United States.
In contrast, teachers and unions, particularly the American Federation of Teachers, argue that taking away tenure would be detrimental to teachers nationwide and that the recent attacks on teacher tenure are uncalled for. Claiming that it is only a small percentage of teachers with tenure that abuse their job security assured by tenure, they say that we do not need to completely get rid or or change the system. The American Federation of Teachers’ websites argues that tenure is just as necessary today as it was when it was first created.
The reasoning behind this argument is that tenure can be seen as civil rights protections for teachers. They state that because of racial tensions that still exist today, tenure is a form of protection against being fired for an unjust reason. Basically, their main argument is that without tenure, teachers would have no protection against being fired just because an administrator had a personal problem with them because of their race, gender, religion, etc. These reasons are definitely valid in support of teacher tenure, however I think there are definitely better ways to address these issues.
I am not trying to argue that no teacher should be granted tenure just because some teachers tend to misuse their job security, I am just saying there needs to be reform in terms of who can get tenure. In addition to changing the requirements of the probationary period, I think that teachers should be reevaluated randomly throughout their career to ensure that they are holding up to the standards they were first held to in the very beginning of their career, before they had been granted tenure. Teacher tenure is so important to the success of education in the United States, however we need to fix it before the cons outweigh the pros of it.