rebuttal?

[crs]

I'm looking for an informed, even-handed rebuttal of this paragraph: There are countless dedicated public school teachers in our nation. Guggenheim made a doc in 1999 focusing on them. But educators and the teachers themselves acknowledge that schools have teachers who are not merely incompetent, but even refuse to teach. Protected by the tenure

Comments

[binkbink]

Perhaps the defect is not that there are bad teachers with tenure (some even break the law and remain) but that they got the tenure in the first place without being detected

[nathanw]

I think this is about public school teachers, not colleges - so no research to fall back on, and an entirely different set of criteria for "tenure", which mostly seem to involve doing the job for a while.

[binkbink]

If no research, what is the point of tenure? What desirable freedom does it protect?

Public Schools have tight curricula and very little latitude for differences of opinion because what they teach is mostly already proved or approved, so there isn't a need to provide the intellectual freedom that is meant to blossom in a university.

I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as tenure in the public school systems and I don't see the purpose, except to prevent a teacher being replaced by someone who is not nearing retirement (which incurs a legacy cost) or less experienced and therefore paid less.

The teachers I know all are "at will" employees, and subject to being let go with very little notice and essentially without cause.

[ocschwar]

In cities with political machines, teachers would have reason to worry that they would suffer retaliation if they didn't work for the local precinct captain for free, for example. So there is a place for tenure. But only a limited place.

[damselfrog]

There are many more places than that where unions can be fairly critical to keeping working conditions even tolerable. A few examples off the top of my head

[damselfrog]

(Admittedly, that doesn't directly address tenure... but even within a set curriculum, there are a lot of directions one could go. Imagine how much worse history classes would be if the teachers risked being fired for bringing up the wrong political views?)