Can Anyone Explain to Me How Tenure for Teachers Is Good for Students?

It does nothing for anyone but the teachers... same with the union, they work for the teachers not the kids.

Good question and reading the responses hasn't convinced me it's a good thing. In all jobs there is politics, favoritism, nepotism etc. That's life.

The idea is to offer a big perk to professionals who don't get paid very well. Unfortunately in any field that does this, you wind up with a bunch of bad apples (or just lazy ones) that can't be fired. I don't think they should completely take it away, but it should be MUCH harder to earn than just "time served."

Tenure does many great things. The first & most important is that it protects teachers from politics. Let me share a story that happened to a local teacher about 3 years ago. This man taught band & music classes & directed the after school band program for about 20 years. His band won awards at every competition they attended, for years. He was hugely successful. About three years ago his wife decided to run for a position on the school board against a current school board member. She lost. A few days after the election he was notified that he was fired from the after school band position (a non-tenured position) by the board of ed. B/c notes are kept of the meetings, it was known that the woman his wife challenged was the one that initiated the firing. If he did not have tenure, he would have been fired from his teaching position as well. For something that was not related to him AT ALL. It was for something his wife did! Thankfully, for him the students & band parents protested & he was reinstated in his job. Tenure protects us from wrongful termination, so they couldn't fire him from his teaching position "without cause". If they had "cause" skipping work, arriving late, not teaching, they could fire him. Firing someone with tenure is not impossible, it just takes some work on the part of the supervisors & principals. They have to document that they notified the teacher of the problem & worked with them to fix it. If it does not get fixed, they can with hold the teacher's incriment (raise). They can do this for as many years as they like, or they can begin the firing process. Most of the time if the administration tells a teacher they will be firing them, the teacher quits & the problem is solved. I know of 2 teachers who were told they would be fired & instead they quit. Problem solved, teacher gone. My husband works for a very large school district. They recently closed their alternative school (for the bad kids) & had to bring those staff members to the other schools. One of the staff members is awful! He does nothing but steal other teachers worksheets & hand them out. The administrators at this school are excellent & noticed a problem immediately. They started documenting his poor teaching & his lack of trying from his first month in the building. They are building a case to fire him. I doubt he will return next year. Again, not impossible to fire someone, it just takes some work. If you have bad teachers in your school, blame the administration for not dealing with it. I also ask you to think of every job you've had...how many "bad" employees were at those jobs. How many times have you said "so & so must be related to someone really important b/c they still have a job". My friend works for a huge cooperation. She moved to a different position a few months ago, since being in this position she has discovered that the person who did her job (finance) previously, did just about everything wrong. In fact the entire department (most of the people are now new) was a disaster. The previous employees have cost the company MILLIONS of dollars in mistakes! Yet, none of them have been fired yet! They were just moved to different positions within the company! Tenure protects good teachers. Bad employees everywhere are protected by lazy bosses.

The second is that is protects older, more experienced, and usually better teachers from being fired to hire younger, cheaper, less experienced (& the majority of time lower quality) teachers. Young teachers may have a lot of enthusiasm, but good teaching only comes from experience. NO ONE is a good teacher their first day on the job. (My hubby & I are both teachers & we have both improved with each year of experience). You also need older teachers to guide younger ones. I would not have survived my first 2 years of teaching if it weren't for 2 older teachers in my school supporting me & guiding me.

Third, tenure allows you to pay less for quality teachers. My husband & I are science majors who choose to teach. Tenure provides stability to the teacher's family. We could have worked in industry & would be making over 100k a year (each) and probably only working 40 hours most weeks. But, we love teaching & chose that instead. W/out tenure (& benefits) teaching would not have been a viable option. My hubby has been teaching for 10 years & only now makes 58K. I am now a SAHM, if I had not stopped teaching I two would be 10 years in at only 58K. after about 20 years my hubby will be making about 80K and that's the top of the guide, so that doesn't increase much over any additional years. So, even at his top level of experience he won't make as much as he would in industry right now. In fact, during grad school, his class was told by a rep from CVS that if they switched to pharmacy (he was begging for people) that they would START at 100K!

Fourth, tenure can give a teacher a sense of confidence. I became a MUCH better teacher on my first day of tenure, b/c I finally relaxed. Prior to that the school principal made me so nervous (he was gruff, mean & constantly have unexpected outbursts, he would yell at people for no reason & I was always afraid that I would do something to piss him off & he'd fire me in a fit of anger) that I could not teach as well. Once the threat of being fired for no reason was off my head I was better able to focus on my teaching & I did much better. My hubby's (who taught at a different school) administrators were more calm and logical. He always knew where he stood with them. And so, receiving tenure did not affect him at all.
I could go on and on, but I think I've said enough. Thank you for asking your question.

I am a public school teacher. Tenure is in place to protect teachers from being wrongfully fired, which could be problematic. There are a lot of politics in the world of teaching, and with such an abundance of teachers looking for jobs, who's not to say a principal could fire a perfectly good teacher to make way for so-and-sos friend or daughter or son to teach? The sad reality is once some teachers have tenure they view it as a reason to slack off. But, while SOME think this way, most teachers do not feel this way.

I have not seen Waiting for Superman, and I honestly don't plan on ever seeing it. Whether or not people agree with tenure, I will tell you I bust my behind every year to meet the needs of my students, provide a safe learning environment, push them to do their best, and prepare them for life. I have to do all this with the pressures of standardized testing and people out there trying to "catch" us teachers not doing a perfect job. The reality is I can do what I can in my four walls for seven hours a day, and I will work as hard as I can to do it, but we cannot fix society's problems in schools alone. Parents need to step up and do their part, too, instead of leaving everything up to the schools.

If used correctly (which it isn't in some places) tenure keeps good teachers in the district. If tenure did not exist, a school board could walk in and wipe out a group of "old and expensive" teachers without just cause.

Tenure keeps the really good English teacher with 15+ years of experience in place even when the administration wants to fire them because they want to keep the cheaper, non-tenured football coach who does little more than roll out the ball for PE classes but is considered a god because he coaches.

Let's say a talented female teacher gets pregnant, has a baby, and takes a leave of absence. Tenure can protect her job when the administrator wants to ditch her in favor of a male teacher or a single female teacher who won't have those "disruptive leaves because they dared to get pregnant".

Now - given these two situations, which teacher would you want for your child?

I will fully agree that tenure can be abused and unions work tirelessly to protect the inept. The process to get rid of a bad tenured teacher is absolutely ridiculous. But, just because there are some bad apples does not mean that every single teacher who reaches tenure just sits back and coasts for the rest of his or her career. That's just ignorant.

In my district, one attains tenure after four consecutive years of full-time teaching with favorable evaluations from several administrators. But really, it doesn't stop there. Once tenure has been achieved, in order to maintain a teaching license we must complete 120 CPDUs (workshops, professional development classes, conferences) or 8 graduate level credit hours every five years, for the rest of the career. 20% of those hours must be related to special education. More often than not, teachers must pay for these workshops, conference, graduate classes, travel/lodging/meals while at a conference or other opportunities out of their pockets and do them on their own time (many do them during the summer). If you don't do these, your license isn't renewed and you don't teach anymore.

Hi All,
I am not going to take sides with the tenure issue, but would like to address the teacher bashing going on with the post. In any profession you are going to find different levels of workers. Most teachers are hard-working and dedicated professionals. They teach because they love it and want students to learn.
Most teachers put in many hours beyond their regular day and they only get paid for the 180 school days. Teachers have summers off without a paycheck and some have to get second jobs to make ends meet. With the recent cuts to education, teachers have larger class sizes, less resources and many received pay cuts or lost their job. They spend their own money to provide supplies for their classes.
Tenure or not, unless you have spent a week, year or many years in the shoes of a teacher it is not fair to label teachers as lazy and not concerned about the students. A teacher will not last in the job if that is their attitude.

Tenure's PRIMARY focus is to provide academic freedom. To protect teachers when what they are researching or teaching goes against popular opinion. It's a SAFEGUARD. Just like the checks and balances between the Executive, Legislative, & Judiciary. Most of the time those checks and balances aren't 'needed', but we've seen the alternative for when one person (or small group of people) seize power. Having that 'check' balances the system. Of course, NOTHING is perfect, and there's always lousy people in the world, but it is far better than the alternative.

Tenure is VITAL to a freethinking and free society for the EXACT same reason that lifelong appointments are VITAL in the judiciary: it frees judges up from outside pressure just as it frees teachers up from outside pressure.

Just like judges, not all professors or teachers are tenured. There's something called 'tenure track' which (in universities) is HIGHLY competitive and relatively scarce these days. The tenure and non tenture positions create a dialogue of opinions. 1 group (nontenure) will always be afraid of losing their jobs if the dare to 'stick their neck out'. We PROTECT whistle blowers and inventors (patents, intellectual property, etc) in every other line of work... tenure is how we protect academics, how we protect our educational system, how we make sure that the ________ (church, govt., pushy people on the school board, PTAs, ANY form of politics) most teachers have to bow to whoever happens to be 'best' at politics. Tenured teachers do not have to bow to whatever "pop" fad is out at the time.

Some famous examples of why the educational system fights to keep tenure:
- Galileo
- The Inquisition (teachers were amongst the first rounded up and tortured to death... indeed this is a COMMON theme amongst dictators, Saddam Hussein did it, many countries in africa have done it, Hitler did it, N.Korea did it. Sounds like great company to join, doesn't it? ANY teacher who does not teach exactly what the dictator wants taught and how is imprisoned &/or put to death)
And here's a few examples of those who DO have tenure
- Anti-vietnam-war teachers in the late 60s
- Science teachers who teach evolution in some bible belt states/districts even though if 'put to a vote' the parents of the school would overwhelmingly vote to strike it from the curriculum.

Without tenure... we have Government Schools. Think Soviet Union, or N Korea, or Hitler's Germany... but here.

I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted at the ridiculous attitudes against teachers and unions and tenure. Like anything, tenure can be misused but in most instances that's not the case and when there's a truly bad teacher it CAN be gotten around to remove the teacher when necessary. My mother was a teacher and I have two close friends (in real life) who are teachers.

Tenure benefits the children by helping them keep good teachers. But the main problems in our schools aren't "bad teachers" or a "bad school system." It's that many parents are not involved in their children's education. Parents are not involved in PTO or in close communication with their children's teachers. Yet they expect their children to maintain good grades and for the teachers to do everything. I can tell you that my best friend does an awful lot for her students that their parents ought to be doing for them... including providing toothbrushes, deodorant, and teaching them basic life skills that their parents never bothered to teach them. She's more of a parent to her students than their own parents are AND she teaches them and excels at her job. Thank goodness she's tenured.

I have not yet watched Waiting for Superman, so I can't speak to what that film does or does not portray accurately (in terms of my experience, having been a public high school teacher for a decade).

As far as I can see it, the only justification for tenure is that it allows the taxpayers to pay us much less because we trade competitive salaries for job security.

The first overhaul that should be made to the system is to increase tenure to five or even ten years (much like at the college level), and to allow teacher salaries to be negotiated teacher-by-teacher the way that it's done in almost every other profession--one on one in an annual performance review with the teacher's immediate supervisor, who takes the time to observe the teacher's performance, collect feedback from students/parents in the way of evaluations, and so on. Tenure pretty much benefits unions, as does group bargaining. Most teachers would probably be paid more if they negotiated their salaries independently, but we have a nearly 200-year-old system here and no one at the top seems to be committed to anything more than lip service about our "failing schools." (Hint: more testing is NOT the answer. Neither is just randomly throwing money at the problem. Or allowing people who haven't managed a classroom in years--or EVER!--to dictate the strategies to fix it. The best answer is more local control, and better communication between students, parents, teachers, and supervisors.)

If you want a thoughtful piece that speaks to the truest and deepest problem facing American public education, read the essay "America Skips School" by Benjamin Barber. It's honest, well-informed, and more than just sound bytes.

Tenure for teachers is INTENDED to be help students by protecting teachers from being fired for political reasons (think "Inherit the Wind"). Theoretically, it allows teachers to TEACH without fear of reprisal from outside forces who might disagree with them for some reason; ensures that they can grade students fairly without backlash from influential parents who want their child given an A, etc. At the University level, it's so that professors can pursue research that is IMPORTANT without fear of offending a donor and losing their jobs.

These days, you're right, teachers are tenured to automatically. I am a public school teacher... and a VERY good one... but I've been tenured for 6 of my 8 years of teaching, and there was NO WAY anyone knew back then that I'd turn out to be fantastic. I probably could of waited a few more years.

As a side note. Private schools are no better. They frequently have even FEWER requirements of teachers before or during their employment. As a result, teachers frequently know very little about actually TEACHING (because they don't have degrees in education) and often LOWER the rigor so that more students feel successful and their parents stay happy.

Anyway, HTH.
T.

It's not tenure that's the problem. SK was the only one who pointed out that there are effective and ineffective people in education at all levels of experience, as there are with ANY job. There are just as many untenured duds as there are tenured duds. You don't hear anybody out there crying that we weed out all ineffective Doctors who are practicing, or all sub-par Lawyers who dare to take on cases. Or how about that mechanic who didn't fix your car to your liking and to whom you won't be referring your friends? Good lord, what to do about him . We must stop him from working!!!!

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I work in education, and as others have mentioned, you can't truly evaluate the situation until you walk a mile in an educator's shoes. There is reason we put so much stock in educators and have a really high expectations from them, it's because it is one of the most important jobs in the world.

It's a shame that people focus on the few bad apples that are in the bunch (and how to get rid of them) when they could be focusing more on what they can do to improve their individual child's education from the home. Volunteer at the school, become active in your child's learning process, make it a point to partner with the teacher early on. I guarantee that if you become one of those parents who is known and respected around the school environment, you will be less likely to be placed in a "terrible tenured teacher's" class. And if you were, it wouldn't matter because you have a handle on the homework and promote a general value of responsibility, respect, and love of learning, so one year in a sub-par teacher's classroom is not going to break your child.

There isn't a teacher out there who is not at least attempting to teach to the state standards. If you follow through at home and realize that learning doesn't just occur between 8am-3pm, whether a less-than-stellar teacher is allowed to continue to practice or not will not have a profound affect on your child's total education.

I think we can all safely say that teachers aren't in it for the money, so they must actually care about the kids. Sure, some are better than others, but all of the ones I know have their heart in the right place and are just trying to help future generations learn what they need to know to carry society onward.

Tenure does not benefit the students. It exists to further the agenda of the self serving teacher's union. Your folks had the right idea sending you to private school. Follow their example and do the same for your kids.

IT'S NOT! So much of the school system is so messed up, I wish we could just get rid of the unions. They are not in it for the kids, they are all about making $$$$. Teachers should be rewarded for performance just like any other job and get raises accordingly. It would encourage them to perform at a higher standard. We spend more money on education than most of the world yet we have some of the worst education systems. Every year we throw more and more money at education and what good is it doing us. It buys us more administrators. Almost every teacher at my kids school has an aide. My teachers never had an aide when I was a student. Plus the parents all help out a temendous amount in my sons class. This also irritates me. everyone complains about teachers salaries. Helllllo, they work 188 days per year. The average American works 250 days / year. That is about 1 1/2 months more than a teacher. Plus most professionsals are salary and are putting in about 60 hrs/wk. I know most teachers put in extra time, but not 60 hours. I know because most of my friends are teachers. I know their job is important, but so are most peoples. Everyones job is what makes the world go round. Everyone has satisfaction and struggles in their own professions. Anyway, hope no one is offended by my comments, I am very passionate about the decline of our education system.

I'm sorry but I can't resist, it's super man, not supper (dinner?) man. Did you go to a public school?
Please don't be offended, I AM joking!!! And though I haven't seen the movie yet I agree that tenure is a ridiculous system, be it kindergarten or graduate school :(

It's a great documentary. Google 'rubber rooms', that's a real blood boiler too. It's nearly impossible to get rid of teachers that are tenured, it costs the district way too much & let's face it all districts, state, & feds are broke. It's the old saying "cheaper to keeper". I read it would cost New York $500,000 per teacher to TRY to get rid of them. So instead these teachers sit in a big warehouse 8 hours a day because they are not fit to teach in a classroom, & there are about 700 teachers & they get their full pay & full benefits.

I personally don't believe in tenure or if a teacher is tenured & has a bad reputation, they should be fired without all the hassles from the unions. I do think there should be some security for all professions not just because you are in a union though.

These are Union Fat Rats that profit off all the unionized members. Even Bob Chanin (please google him) the head of the NEA (National Education Association) said the teachers union could care less about the children, it's about union profits. Union leader CEO's make over $30,000 a MONTH yet they talk about the private sector CEO's making the same amount of money, can you say big time double standards. I don't believe there are any benefits for the children because teachers are tenured, it's quite the opposite. In fact I believe all Unions need to be re vamped, so that the union members dues aren't so high & the Union big wigs aren't lining their pockets so much, since this is suppose to be a service to protect citizens. IMO

Of course tenure is not good for students. In no scenario is it-and do not let the teachers unions convince you otherwise with their vast propaganda machine. But the thing is-they are not in the LEAST concerned about the children. That is the big lie. They are only concerned about their union apparatus-and then the teachers that they serve. I have found that nobody in public education is actually concerned about the children. From the school board down to the teachers-they are first and foremost concerned about themselves. The children are just a means to their end. And a convenient thing to pull at our heartsrings and help convince us of their causes. They make us feel guilty because it is 'for the children' and if we don't go with it we are bad.
Take away tenured 'jobs for life' and put in performance reviews and you will see our country's test scores skyrocket. Teachers will actually have to prove themselves in the classroom and if not-bye bye.

As a very proud teacher and very proud member of a teacher's union I am appalled by the teacher/union bashing that goes on these days. I realize there are "bad" teachers...in my 12 years as an educator I have even worked with a few...however, some of those "bad" teachers are better than some of the parents of my school children. Let's all face it...education begins and ends at home. As a mother of four I know how important this is.

What is sad to me is that we have students in my school who do not know how to spell their first and last name in Kinder (this is something my children could do at three years old), we have students who don't know how to hold a conversation because their parents never talk to them, we have students who don't eat unless they come to school, we have students who PARENT (this year alone we have a fifth grader who gets up two to three times a night to feed her baby sister because the "mom" does not wake up)...and I, as an educator, am supposed to fix this?? I'm supposed to get students up to grade level when they arrive so far behind? I do what I can and I work hard to push my students as hard as I can...but sometimes it's not enough. Should I be fired because I cannot bridge this gap? Should my tenure be revoked because I dare speak up for my school children who live in situations many of you would find appalling?

I work very hard at what I do. I work on my own time after my own four children are put to bed for YOUR children. And I take offense to this. I am offended that this is even a topic of discussion. And honestly, I am disappointed that I feel like I had to write an answer because so many in this thread choose to put me and my colleagues down because we have tenure...

It is not that tenure is bad it is how it is done in many of the schools today. Here in Il you get tenure after 4 years which many feel is too early. Some states it is after 2 years! I am not against tenure after someone has paid their dues but not when someone is just starting out. We had a teacher that was looking up the girls skirts and because of tenure he was not fired! Many states are starting to fight it. No job should be protected to the point they can sit their and read the paper and not have to worry about getting fired!!! There is no other job that would allow this to happen. What is funny is many people in the teaching profession agree that we need to do away with tenure or at least make it harder to get but the ones with the clout are afraid of losing their jobs so they keep fighting to keep it. I know there are school districts that are fighting it and are making headway. I hope it continues. Have you watched Freedom Writers or Lean on Me? Two other great movie about our schools.

I'd like to know the answer to that question too. Here in California, teachers get tenure after teaching for only 2 years. What other job gives that? That upsets me so much. I don't understand why teachers cannot be fired like anybody else. I know teachers are important, but so are other professionals out there. I plan on homeschooling my kids when the time comes; there's no way I'm letting a teacher who cannot be fired teach my kids.

Well, I believe it's meant to encourage the investment in the level of education required to become an educator as well as providing job security for a teacher to feel comfortable creating an environment which promotes the free flow of ideas. That's the theory behind it as I understand it. Does it get abused and bastardized beyond recognition? Oh yeah.

It doesn't! Some of the BEST teachers I worked with were straight out of college and some had 10+ years experience. On the other hand, some of the absolute WORST teachers I worked with were straight out of college and some had 10+ years experience.

The problem with tenure is when there is a teacher who is really awful and the district can't fire him/her because of tenure. They have to jump through a million hoops to get rid of that person. Great teachers don't need tenure.

An LA Times article actually suggested that a good way to cut spending in LAUSD was to fire experienced teachers and hire new ones that cost less money. That is why there is tenure. And tenure does not mean that a teacher can not be fired. Our school recently fired two teachers with tenure. One was a bad teacher and the other was a great teacher for many years, but taught too long past her prime.

I agree that there are some bad teachers out there that need to be fired, but who would replace them? There are not a lot of people out there with college or master's degrees willing to work for 30-40K a year. I have a lot of friends who would make great teachers, but couldn't afford it. If the profession was more competivite, you would get more qualified applicants.

I also strongly disagree with merit pay. I work my backside off and got some of the highest scores in the county last year and I still disagree with merit pay. Yes, part of my scores were due to my teaching, but they are also due to the fact that I teach at a very affluent school where parents can afford tutors and the education in the district is outstanding starting at kindergarten. I can not take credit for all of their previous knowledge when I get them in 10th grade. If we were paid based on test scores, no one would want to take on the hard cases where the good teachers are needed the most. It would also make the profession more competitive. Currently, teachers share good lesson plans with one another and help eachother out to the benefit of the students, but this might change if there was too much competition.

Also, I always laugh when people say that teachers unions are so strong. I live fairly close the the harbor area in Los Angeles and the longshoreman union there is strong. If you get a job on the docks, you start at over 100k with great benefits and need zero education compared to a teacher with a bachelors starting at 1/3 the salary. And for those of you who think that teachers still get great benefits, I am currently paying $1000/month for my family's insurance and have $600/month deducted for my pension. It makes me sad that our society puts more importance on getting boxes taken off of ships than educating our children. Someone commented that we keep throwing money at schools. Actually, they keep reducing our budget every year. The past two years I have had salary deductions and class size increases. If we did not have any unions, I would soon be teaching a class of 50 students and collecting food stamps.

Finally, I just have to say that due to all of the teacher bashing out there, this has been a very bad year for teacher morale, at least on our campus. Like most of my colleagues, I was an excellent student in high school, went to a top 20 university, got a very difficult degree, went on to get my masters, and went into teaching. I am smart enough to do pretty much any profession, but chose to teach because I feel that it is a very important job. I would not mind the low pay if I felt appreciated, but there is soooooo much teacher bashing out there right now. I have taught for 12 years and always thought that I would teach for 25 more, but right now I am starting to reconsider. If society in the US (most other countries have much higher respect for teachers) does not put more importance on education, we are going to lose a lot of good teachers.

I have a friend who teaches in California. She hates that bad teachers get to stay and she loses her job every year even though she is an amazing teacher.

Yet she would fight to the death to keep tenure. That crazy union has teachers brainwashed to believe that even good teachers would be let go if they reach a high salary. It is simply not true, there are far too few good teachers to ever let one go no matter what they make.

When you are lying to those you are supposed to protect I think your motives may not be to protect that person. :(

IT'S NOT GOOD AT ALL...All it does is give teachers a reason to be lazy as teachers because they know nothing will happen to them!!!! For example, we have a kindergarten teacher at our school who is tenured and she is horrible and of course nothing can be done to her. She is the one teacher that after everyone has her goes around telling everyone who's coming into kindergarten, "hope your child doesn't get X because she is horrible and my child learned absolutely nothing this year."

Tenure in most systems provides job security in a political world. This provides a stable educational system for the children. And administrators in most school systems have the evaluation tools to assist teachers to improve their performance, or to help them leave. In fact many parents are not aware of how many teachers are "helped" out of their jobs every year. When administrators do not evaluate teachers, which seems to happen in large systems, little effort is made to improve or remove teachers. But that is not the unions' failure. In some larger districts, due to union/ administration agreements, it is nearly impossible to fire teachers, and that is a shame. I cannot understand why a school system would ever agree to such work rules. This is not the norm, but it does happen. As a side note, my Dad worked in a merit school system. And yes, experienced teachers were let go to save money. Soon the newer teachers became experienced and they, too, were replaced. The students never had an opportunity to learn in a stable environment, with teachers working as a team. Thank you for asking an important question.

It is hard to get people to be teachers. People want more money and
something more exciting. Tenure gives stability and attracts people to
be teacher.
Of course , teachers should be monitored and watched a bit and let
go when they can't teach well any more.