Without Tenure
TENURE AND POWER
We’re linking to a really interesting blog post below on why tenure should be retained for teachers. This matter is pertinent because it is before the courts, and a landmark case in California threatens to eliminate tenure for teachers.
Listen to this post!
The core of Peter Greene’s argument is that if there is no tenure, all the stakeholders in education will attempt to use the threat of losing a job to get their way. Eg: What if Johnny brings home a well deserved “C” and his parent interprets that to mean he won’t get into Harvard? Parent shows up at school door vowing to get teacher fired if she doesn’t change the grade. As Greene says, “the biggest problem with the destruction of tenure is not that a handful of teachers will lose their jobs, but that entire buildings full of teachers will lose the freedom to do their job well –”
“Without tenure, every teacher is the pawn and puppet of whoever happens to be the most powerful person in the building today. Without tenure, anybody can shoulder his way into the classroom and declare, ‘You’re going to do things my way, or else.'”
Read more here:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/08/without-tenure.html
We’d love to hear your reactions. In particular, we’d love to hear from administrators. This piece is obviously written from a teacher’s point of view. And maybe this teacher hasn’t had the best administrators.
But, Principals, when you hear a teacher say that bad teachers are the fault of weak administrators, I’m sure that a million pieces of red tape fly in front of your eyes — the kind that keep you awake thinking of what’s in the way of you doing your own job.
Tenure does help teachers do their jobs. No question.
Administrators, what’s your side of this?
CITE is the Center for Integrated Training and Education . For over 25 years, CITE has and continues to train TEACHERS (Early Childhood, Literacy, Special Ed, Grad Courses, DASA); COUNSELORS (School, Mental Health Masters, Advanced Certificate); and ADMINISTRATORS (SBL, SDL, Public Admin, Online PhD) in all five boroughs of NYC, Yonkers, and Long Island.
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