System #12: Tenure

Another stagnant part of our education system is the concept of tenure. Tenure was an idea created to save professors from being penalized for innovation. It was created as a guard rail to the power of politics entering institutions of learning. Learning requires exploring new frontiers and overturning outdated ideas, but imagine exploring the possibility of evolution within a religious climate, or investigating a subject that's going against the politics of the university. The ease in which the administrators and political class of a university could dismiss someone who was attempting to expand humanities horizons was unbecoming of our highest centers of education.

This is especially egregious considering the fact that most professors have been required to publish research to maintain their tenure which means that they have HAD to innovate, they've had to step outside of our intellectual cultural norm (for better or worse), they have to metaphorically put their necks on the line. The nice balance of this, is that you are protected to innovate. Mostly...

Tenure in Public Schools

However, nowadays, tenure has been expanded to much more than professors at universities, it's been given to teachers of our public schools and in my state, Virginia, as you can see in the map above, tenure kicks in after 3 years, the checks and balances of which isn't even applicable for K-12 where standardization reigns supreme. Imagine that, needing tenure when the government is actively trying to make each teacher and each student the same, regular...standard. What then are we protecting?

There was a time when tenure was warranted in our public schools. For instance, during the suffrage movements of the 1920's where women teachers could be fired for getting married, pregnant, or worse...wearing pants! These days, however, we have state and federal laws that prohibit those types of things.

[In the] 1920's where women teachers could be fired for getting married, pregnant, or worse...wearing pants!

With it's original reasons no longer around, it can't be denied that the application of tenure, without the necessity of innovation, teachers are incentivized to maintain the status quo, keep their heads down until their jobs become protected which then allows the bad apples to stop actually teaching.

These bad apples end up being transferred from school to school until, as demonstrated in the documentary Waiting for Superman, they end up in massive office buildings, paid to teach nothing while they waste their lives, and our tax dollars. If this is the cost, what's the benefit for the good teachers? Unions maintain that tenure is absolutely necessary but considering how we have a lack of teachers, and that getting rid of a good teacher would be a terrible financial decision for a school, I don't believe tenure would be necessary in a system that valued student performance and putting students first.

Michelle Rhee

Putting students first is exactly what Michelle Rhee stood for. She came to "power" in D.C. after its Board of Education was striped of its decision making ability and it became concentrated in a new position they named "chancellor," given to her by the mayor. She quickly attempted to fix the broken system by pushing for the removal of tenure to the point of offering teachers 100% pay increases, up to $140,000 based on what she termed "student achievements." Teachers were excited about this announcement. The goal was to make teachers coveted positions, to increase competition and increase the stream of students who'd want to become teachers. Everything was set until the teachers union vote came to a head with the majority of its members deciding to vote the new policy in, only to be vetoed by the union president. One vote, against thousands...though to be fair, the president of the Teachers Union, who's sole job is to defend the rights of teachers, wasn't wrong to veto this, but this again shows another systemic problem which we'll handle in another article.

...[the vote] vetoed by the union president. One vote, against thousands...

Jordan Peterson

While we say that tenure makes it very difficult to fire professors, and it really does actually protect them, assuming they aren't breaking any laws. Unfortunately, Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, found out otherwise. Dr. Peterson was a staunch advocate against Canada's regulation of free-speech as it could be a slippery slide. Facing immense political push-back for his views, he still was able to keep his job. However, as a teacher, he loved teaching students, and helping them grow, but by being connected to him, his students would get black-listed from jobs and connections. Because of this, he couldn't in good conscious continue to inflict it on them. He, therefore, chose to resign his position. As you can see, even the invulnerability that tenure provides has holes, especially when the persecuted has a heart for others.

Conclusion

Removing tenure for public school teachers, who are already protected via the separation of church and state, and anti-discrimination provisions could free up dollars to pay teachers more. It would free up money that's currently being spent litigating, or even, in New York's case, housing bad teachers.

Either we keep tenure and remove standardization, or we keep standardization and remove tenure, but both can't exist together. If it were up to me, however, I'd remove both. I'd keep a national standardized progressive test, that would be taken by all kids. This test would include a progression within the questions so that based on your scores we could tell which grade or mastery level you belonged in within each subject. For instance, a 3rd grader would complete the basic math equations, while a high-schooler would finish those as well as calculus-type questions. With a test like this, students would see their progression as could the teachers. Students could also get inspired by questions they didn't know, or ask questions after and learn on their own. Making the gradation transparent would help align our disparate states, their children and teachers, without stifling them in chains of bureaucracy. This type of "standardization" would also allow each state to add their own flare. For example, as well as a counter-example, while in Middle school in Hawaii, we learned Hawaiian history during History class. However, while that was fascinating, and warranted, I didn't learn nearly even a speck as much about the Civil War as I had 3 years earlier living in Virginia, in elementary school. Some events, especially in history, probably need to be taught throughout our country, while others could be added on for our regional history.