I see an alphabet theme starting to emerge.  Steph so graciously asked for my thoughts on tenure and unions.  I’ll be writing about tenure today–after this short PSA.  There is a new report just released by the Council for Great City Schools examining the achievement of black males in America’s public educational system and calls the findings a “National Catastrophe.”  This is not new.  The gap between black males and everyone else has been staggering for sometime.  We keep looking for a quick fix as if there is one factor at work in the achievement gap.  I haven’t read the report yet (too much other stuff to read just now) but I’ll certainly write about it once I do.  (I realize more and more this is becoming an education blog–can’t help myself as an educator and a parent).

Ah Tenure.  It is what teachers and professors strive for.  Who wouldn’t want job security for “life” (in most instances)?  I know most people would totally want that.  There is such a divide in teaching.  I’m going to leave universities alone for the moment as they are a different being than public schools–there is some security for those on the tenure track as opposed to non-tenured public school teachers.  There is also a lot of propaganda surrounding tenure as well and I hope to clear some of those up–at least for my state of Missouri.  I just want to say upfront that I am not a fan of tenure.  As a teacher, I would happily trade tenure for performance base pay.  Tenure is antiquated and to be honest it really isn’t that easy to fire someone–even someone who isn’t doing their job.  Laws are in place to protect teachers, even those who don’t have tenure are guaranteed due-process.

Tenure is archaic.  Tenure was developed to protect academic faculty from wealthy donors to elite universities in the early 1900’s.  It allowed faculty to pursue research agenda’s that might conflict with the university without penalty or job loss.  This idea of tenure is good as without it, I wonder how many discoveries might have been lost or how many ideas would have gone unexplored without tenure.  But tenure for high school teachers?  What academic freedom is being protected there?  I can’t explain why a public school teacher needs tenure. They are bound to due process.  Can school boards decide to fire a teacher?  Yes.  Do they need to prove cause?  Yes.

I can’t speak to the history of tenure in public-schools and I won’t pretend to.  But I can talk about how I think tenure cripples education.  I believe that tenure takes away incentive for teachers to continue learning and growing.  Teachers need to keep learning and perfecting their teaching style.  Tenure lulls teachers into a sense of comfort that somehow allows them to stop working and learning.  This is certainly not the case in all instances.  There are wonderful teachers with tenure and tenure itself isn’t the enemy, but I often have to ask the question “if we are doing our job and doing it well, then what difference does tenure make?”  What other profession has “tenure?”  I don’t want a doctor who has tenure and hasn’t had to learn anything new in 10 years.

I want teachers who are striving and learning and reading and researching.  I want teachers who want to learn and teach the best that they can in classrooms.  And in my eyes, tenure (in public schools–and to some degree in universities) breeds comfort and the status quo.  That, in my eyes, hasn’t worked thus far.