Tenure

Without getting too technical, tenure is the protection given a teacher after serving a satisfactory probationary period. The probationary period can last 3 to 5 years, depending on where you are as it varies from state to state and district to district within each state. While you are on probation you are totally unprotected, you can be dismissed at any time for any or no reason. Once you have tenure the school district has to prove cause before you can be terminated. Please understand what I just said, the district has to prove cause before you can be fired. Once you have been terminated your career is over, as no one will hire a teacher who has been fired for cause.
I was fortunate to have a really great principal for my beginning teacher year and probationary period. During this time I worked with a thirty year veteran teacher who told me, “Peters, I’ve worked with 8 principals, 2 of them have been pretty good.” Talk about “The Peter Principal” and rising to your level of incompetence this concept is alive and well in education. Most principals are hard working individuals dedicated to their schools and the children in them. But, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and there are far too many who are willing to misuse their power. Tenure protects us and forces the administration to present evidence that we have not measured up to some clearly defined standard.
Unfortunately we hear about incompetent teachers who cannot be fired because of tenure and are harming the children’s education. This is, I believe, the exception rather than the rule. Every profession has incompetents but, with the exception of the police, hardly anyone is as susceptible to false allegations as public school teachers. The “cannot be fired” is just not true, tenure requires cause, it must be proved that you have done something wrong, not just an allegation. I recently read an article about New York City schools having a room where teachers who could no longer be trusted in the classroom but could not be fired were kept. The article was particularly angered by the fact that these teachers were being paid their regular salary to sit around and do nothing. What can I possibly say about a system that creates management that can think of nothing to do with an invaluable resource such as these teachers. Perhaps instead of attacking the teachers, who do the work and their Unions that protect them, we should turn our attention to the stupidity that exists in the school systems bureaucracy.