Michael Lee Mr.

Epstein Issues Assignment

5/29/11 Participation in Gov.

Teacher tenure is the increasingly controversial form of job protection that public school teachers in all states receive after 1-7 years on the job. In most states it takes three years for a teacher to become tenured and the resulting tenure is for life. The concept of giving teachers a lifelong term is similar to the concept of giving Supreme Court justices life terms in order to protect them from non work related influences. Before tenures were commonplace, teachers, especially women teachers would be fired for nonsensical reasons such as getting married or becoming pregnant. Proponents of tenure argue that it protects teachers from being fired for personal or political reasons. However, In these modern days there are job protections already in place to protect from discrimination in the workplace and teacher tenure is simply outdated.t proponents of teacher tenure contend that tenure prevents the firing of experience teachers to hire more inexperience teachers. However in my opinion tenure is having the opposite effect. It is allowing the more experienced tenured teachers to become more complacent due to the lack of fear to lose their jobs. FurthermoreTenure
laws maintain the "last-hired, first-fired" policy which harms younger teachers opponents of tenure

argue that this job protection makes the removal of poorly performing teachers so difficult and costly that most schools end up retaining their bad teachers. Opponents say that tenure breeds complacency in teachers who do not fear losing their jobs.

Prior to the introduction of teacher tenure, teachers would be fired for non work related reasons such as the principal wante3d to hire his friends, or there was a change in political party. After the great depression, teachers began to organize politically in order to receive more funding and better job protection. Local teachers unions would negotiate tenure clauses in their contracts and soon most teachers had some form of job protection. In 1983 tenure for teachers became a national issue when president Regan released A nation at risk, a report which found that "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people." In this report he calls on states to reform tenure laws, increase educational standards

and increase the use of standardized testing. In 1985 the Illinois state board of education released a report which showed that on average only three tenured teachers had been released per year. However even after an attempt to reform the laws regarding tenure only 39 teachers under tenure were fired in the next 18 years in all of Illinois. In 2000 the first major anti teacher tenure achievement was made. Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat, successfully pushed a law through the legislature eliminating tenure for new teachers. When meeting with a joint assembly of congress Barnes told them that "Most of the time, tenure means a principal doesn't even try to dismiss a bad teacher because, even if the principal bucks the odds and succeeds, the cost in time and money is staggering. In fact a L.A Weekly investigation found that the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $3.5 million trying to fire seven underperforming teachers. On average, legal struggles to

remove each teacher took five years and ended with four of the teachers being fired. Proponents of teacher tenure contend that tenure protects teachers from being arbitrarily fired for non work related reasons. Before teacher tenure was universal, women would often be fired for getting married, becoming pregnant or wearing pants. Another argument that proponents of teacher tenure offer is that tenure protects more experienced teachers from being fired to hire less experienced and cheaper teachers. Finally tenure protects teachers academic freedoms for example; Tenure protects teachers from being fired for teaching unpopular or controversial curricula such as evolutionary biology and controversial literature such as The Catcher in the Rye. This academic freedom allows teachers to be more creative in their lessons, opposed to just simply teaching for the test. The court has shown academic

freedoms to be very limited and the content taught by a teacher must be relevant to and consistent with the teacher's responsibilities, and a teacher cannot promote a personal or political agenda in the classroom. However in every good argument there are counter points, opponents of tenure suggest that Tenure makes it difficult to remove underperforming teachers because the process involves months of legal wrangling by the principal, the school board, the union, and the courts. Often the legal bill of the lawyers as well as compensation for teachers can become tremendous. So much so that a survey done by the New Teacher Project found that 81% of school administrators knew a poorly performing tenured teacher at their school; however, 86% of administrators said they do not always pursue dismissal of teachers because

of the costly and time consuming process. In my opinion, these numbers are outrageous and they are one of the main reasons I am against teacher tenure. I believe teacher retention and pay should be based on a system of merit. A common question asked is how is merit determined? While taken alone, GPA, standardized testing and graduation rates and cannot accurately define merit, however in my opinion, a combination of these options should represent if the teacher is performing their duties satisfactorily.