Teacher tenure

The problem with tenure - the teacher has little incentive to work hard for the children - after the three year period is up!

Also - one could be an excellent teacher - not be liked by administration - and get the heave-ho anyway!

 

This is definitely a problem, MK, and one we are familiar with. Our youngest son had a real dilly a few years back. There were so many complaints on her; she made middle schoolers cry! She was a little young to retire but finally did. Wow, talk about a loose cannon ... she had to go!

 

I know state universities have it, and I am pretty sure it is state-wide. I know I had some teachers who had to have tenure because they absolutely sucked at teaching us.

 

Yes, our teachers (Florida) have tenure.

And yes, we have very strong local and state teacher's unions. Despite that, we have elected a Republican Govenor for the past three elections over the unions' opposition.

 

Not that I know of here

 

I don't know what the state schools here do. Most of the teachers I know teach in private schools and we all are on year-to-year contracts.

I imagine, they are tenured though based on what I've read on the state website.

 

I don't know...

 

At the higher levels of education they do in Texas. I am not sure about the public schools (lower levels) though

 

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I had a 5th grade teacher who was incompotent and verbally/emotionally-abusive toward her students. Throughout the school year I had her, I was one of the students she consistently harassed. On several occasions, she blatantly lied about my grades, falsified records, and successfully used the power of her position to make my life miserable. And I was not the only one who faced those problems that year. In fact, we found out that she had been doing that sort of things for more than a decade. Things got so bad that by the middle of the school year I was under a doctor's care for stress-related acid reflux syndrome (which ended shortly after summer vacation began).

Fortunately, each time she sent me down to the principal's office to receive punishment for my alleged offenses, the principal would allow me to relax in his office before sending me back about an hour later or would have a friendly chat with me about my life and family. It was clear (especially as an adult looking back on it) that he didn't believe a word she said and was not going to punish the students for her mental illness.

Added to all of her issues, she couldn't spell very well and would mark student's work wrong if they spelled things differently than she did (even if they showed her the proper spelling in the spelling book -- which was one of my mistakes the first week of class) and did not really know how to teach simple mathematics.

Now I don't know if my hometown school district had an official tenure system, but I do know that the school district claimed their hands were tied until she decided to retire because of the teacher's union agreement.

While I understand the purpose of tenure for the purposes of academic freedom in institutions of higher education, I don't think it is appropriate for K-12 level education. In college, you ultimately don't have to attend that school or take a certain professor. In public education, you are required by law to attend and you normally don't get your choice of teachers. Innocent students may easily find themselves under the authority of a psychopath without any real way to defend themselves or opt out.