The Problems With Tenure

Teachers are some of the most important people in children’s lives. Their skills and expertise are relied on to educate children. At some point a trend occurred, with teachers becoming greedy about their job and benefits, and they stopped caring about the students. The public education tenure system needs to be changed because it is unfair to the students who do not receive a quality education.

            Geoffrey Canada stated it well in the film Waiting for Superman when he says teachers believe they are entitled to their jobs. The current tenure program leaves the school system powerless to fire teachers that are not helping their students learn. It is a teacher’s job to educate students, and if the students are not learning then the teacher is failing, and they should be able to get fired. A teacher that is consistently doing a bad job of educating children does not deserve to keep his or her job.

            What children learn depends greatly on their teachers. Children learn more when taught by teachers who care and are good at educating.  It is not fair for children to be stuck with teachers that the school knows are not doing a good job. Somehow a teacher’s job became more important than a child’s education. Some teachers just do not care about educating kids; once they get tenure and cannot get fired they stop trying. When seeking tenure, public school teachers should follow the same process as college professors. Then only the dedicated teachers who know how to educate would receive tenure.