Teaching is a difficult and frequently thankless job. It takes the right type of person to be willing to go to work every day, put up with a ton of nonsense and politics, and still do their best to teach our kids.
Sometimes the best teachers are those who have been at it for years and have acquired a great deal of skill and insight. Sometimes the best are the beginners, straight out of college, who are bursting with the type of enthusiasm and fresh ideas that make students want to learn and get ahead in life.
But one thing is certain: it’s absolutely crucial for every classroom to have a high-quality teacher. That’s why strong state tenure laws, which essentially give lifetime job protection to K–12 teachers who follow the rules and stay out of trouble, are such a bad idea.
The union types will almost always describe tenure, which is often granted after a teacher’s first three to five years on the job, in its most simplistic terms and shake their heads in wonderment when someone objects. They remind us that tenure was created to protect teachers against unfair termination. And they’re right—but times have changed.
Years ago, before teachers’ unions were common, teaching jobs were often handed out as rewards to loyal supporters of successful local politicians. Those teachers could be—and often were—fired for just about any reason, fair or unfair.
But the world has evolved a great deal since then, and there are now many safeguards in place against unjust termination. “So much has changed about our larger legal framework,” said Tim Daly, president of TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project). “A law about teacher tenure, by far, is not the only thing that would protect you.”
What should protect teachers is what protects anyone who must continually justify their job: success. Good teachers continue working, bad ones go away.
And if a good teacher is fired without cause or because of some political grudge or ideological difference with a principal, you can be sure that parents will hold that principal accountable. Administrators who value their jobs will heed the public’s demands.
Despite the common sense inherent in a system where people must compete for their jobs every year, union supporters have a way of making tenure laws seem logical, fair, and simple.
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Perhaps Reverend Roundtree thought he had an upper hand. She'd loll about in these giant puddles, chase tiny translucent fish, hold up seaweed and shake it at a little brother like she was the monster.