Frank and Ernest by Thaves for November 20, 2012

Are you sure it wasn’t “tin you’re?” (tin you are)

Perhaps you will be outmoded some day. Keep well-oiled!

Fire resistant! Took me a minute.

Unfortunately, having tenure means a bad instructor can keep on being a bad instructor to the detriment to the students and eventually to the school. Unless they do something that is illegal, you’re stuck with them.

I hear the old “bad guys you have to keep” farce so much. It was anti-union then and now. tenure prevents a prof from being forced to teach a company line whether it be only creationism in a back water Texas school or only evolution in a New York U. It gives the worker a voice. More tenure to you.

Tenure does NOT mean you can’t be fired. As the comic suggests, it means you are “fire-resistant” not “fireproof.” Tenure just means that you are not subject to summary dismissal, being dismissed without reason or without a hearing. The problem with “bad” teachers is not tenure, but the evaluation process. In many cases, a process for accurate teacher evaluations is non-existent. (I don’t recall ANY of my college professors being observed by department heads for evaluation.) In other cases, fear of the union keeps boards of education from acting on more dismissals.

But think about it: Teachers are human beings too and most have the same expenses the rest of us have. Most have families to take care of and expenses do not tend to go down but rather go up all the time. Most teachers did NOT get into teaching to be bad teachers or to be lazy. They enjoy their job, although there are parts of the job they wish they didn’t have to deal with - like any other job. The never-ending paperwork. The constant forcing of more curriculum and special interest content into the same 6- to 8-hour daily time constraints. Having to participate in online trainings and webinars ON TOP OF the regular mandated on-site trainings and despite the fact that you have little time for these “highly recommended” extra trainings because you TEACH all day. You have your planning time taken away for meetings, so you end up planning after-hours, when you know you still have lots of papers to grade and your family to take care of. Getting some job security in return (NOT “job-for-life” guarantees) is not unreasonable.

During a teacher’s non-tenured period, a teacher can be fired or let go for almost any reason, without reason. I’ve even seen first-hand some good experienced teachers let go because the district wanted to replace such teachers with new, less expensive teacher graduates, to save the district the expense of paying higher salaries. (In one such case, the Superintendent still received his annual raise PLUS a bonus.) While there certainly are some teachers that abuse the tenure system, some districts abuse their non-tenured teachers.

Tenure only means that you cannot be fired without valid reason and the right to a hearing. If the district no longer needs a position (say student population falls), you can be let go or transferred. You can be fired if you do not do your job, tenured or not. You can be fired if you do something illegal or unethical. But as long you do your job in an ethical and legal manner, and as long as the school district has a position for you, you cannot be fired for no reason.