Before the discussion in class today I had always thought that a teacher being tenured was a good thing, I did not really think about how it impacts students. It seems like there is a reoccurring theme of once a teacher's tenure is given s/he are more likely to lose their incentive to perform and teach well. This is unfortunate for the children who are being placed in these kinds of teachers classes. Obviously, this doesn't apply to all tenured teachers, but the teacher's are slacking off and not doing their job after they get their tenure is frustrating and disappointing. It is not fair to the student's, parent's, or school district but nothing can be done about it because they are "untouchable" because of support they get from the unions for having a union.
After two years of maintaining one's position as a teacher s/he is granted a tenure. I think that two years is a very short time to determine whether a teacher or not is worthy enough to stay in that school district for as long as s/he wants. As Mr. Glassman stated in class, it takes many years to become a good teacher. Time allows these teachers to do their own little "experiments" on what works and what doesn't when trying to maintain a classroom. Tenures shouldn't be granted to teacher's who haven't succeeded some of these common obstacles. It seems like I'm not the only one, "California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called a special election for Nov. 8, 2005 that included Proposition 74, which would have extended the time before a teacher becomes tenured from two to five years," but this proposal failed.
While there are a lot of pros for tenured teachers, I focused on a few of the negatives because of the fact I was so unaware of the cons. Changes need to take happen on these teacher tenures because they are limiting things these students could be learning. For more examples of pros and cons on teacher tenures visit: http://teachertenure.procon.org/
Andrea-
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that tenure is unfair to students, parents, and their school district. Just from reading your link, many negatives of tenure standout to me. Tenure is given to nearly everyone, creates complacency, makes it very difficult and costly to remove bad teachers, makes the focus on seniority as opposed to performance, does not grant academic freedom, does not give a teacher long enough to prove themselves, and can give the difficult jobs to new and inexperienced teachers. I plan on becoming a teacher and though I would like to feel as though my job is secure, I think the cons of tenure outweigh the pros and I do not support it.
Andrea
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I don't think tenures are correct in some of the clips we have watched they show how doctors and lawyers can lose their jobs so easily. Teachers though it is so hard even if they aren't good. This just doesn't seem fair that we should let bad teachers teach are children and set the foundation for our future doctors and lawyers and other professions. I know the idea behind it was to protect teacher's job. I think this is a hard situation because what it was set up to do was to help people but in the long run now it might be hurting people.