Tenure started for good reasons but has morphed into a system that is more focused on job protection than student learning. Tenure is worthwhile when teachers earn it in return for demonstrating and maintaining quality teaching practices.
Tenure is exactly the kind of education issue that I most dislike. Tenure is all about what adults get out of the system rather than how students learn. Defenders and detractors pretend students are their main concern, but mentions of students are tossed in as afterthoughts no matter who’s doing the arguing.
Tenure started for a legitimate reason: Too many public sector jobs were going to political cronies, and public school teachers were at risk of losing their jobs for all the wrong reasons. That is not a strategy for getting high-quality teachers into classrooms.
Early reformers wanted to ensure that teachers could be dismissed only for cause, which, roughly translated, means a teacher could be discharged only if she wasn’t doing a good job.
But, over the decades, tenure morphed into lifetime job assurance no matter what. For too many years, what passed for observations and evaluations was a joke. A generation or more of teachers expected to become tenured after they had punched the clock and had the barest of reviews. We should never have allowed that to happen.
Then unions, drunk with their own power for several decades, went too far in supporting teachers who did not deserve their support. Instead of reining in their enthusiasm for challenging the system, overeager state and local unions waged war on school districts that tried to discharge ineffective and unscrupulous teachers. They drove up the costs and the time involved in such cases and inspired public ire as a result. Worse, their actions too often allowed some bad actors to join the dance of the lemons and skip off to jobs in unsuspecting districts.
Reformers get an opening
That overzealousness gave so-called reformers a perfect opening during their general attack on public education. With their ham-handed approach and their generally ugly attitude about public education, these reformers don’t get much sympathy from me. But they are right about trying to tie tenure to evidence of quality teaching. If the profession wants to retain the privilege of tenure, that privilege must be attached to high standards, or it becomes another albatross on the profession.
If we believe what we say we believe about the relationship between quality teaching and student learning, then we should ensure that only qualified and effective teachers obtain and keep tenure. Expecting teachers to earn satisfactory evaluations on a planned schedule is an appropriate exchange for the privilege of tenure. Tying teaching quality to the grant of tenure is the right direction because it is good for the profession and good for students.
But if tenure is to be based on merit, then we also must create systems that offer teachers a pathway to succeed. That begins with high-quality observations and evaluations and professional learning systems that enable teachers to improve.
Simply creating a hit-the-road-Jack system is immoral and inappropriate when learning is your main enterprise.
Mean-spirited lawsuits and legislative action have forced the profession into a defensive posture on tenure. Anyone who’s ever felt their back against the wall knows the discomfort of that situation and the natural inclination to fight back. But the profession must rise above that. By joining efforts to tie tenure to teaching quality, teachers will benefit both themselves and students. We can acknowledge past errors and still deliver legitimate ideas for improving tenure. In all that we do, the profession must put high-quality student learning ahead of politics.
Let’s leave our respective corners, and stop fighting each other. Instead let’s create a system that serves students by ensuring that they have the most highly qualified teachers possible. Anything less than that is unacceptable.
Citation: Richardson, J. (2016). The editor’s note: Tenure should benefit students. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (6), 4.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Richardson
Joan Richardson is the former director of the PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan magazine.
