This week, over sixty schools in Detroit were closed due to teacher absences as teachers went on strike against horrific conditions in the city’s schools. Teachers are outraged by both the physical conditions of the schools (mold, rot, etc…) and by the enormous class sizes that the school district was forced to adopt after major budget cuts. The school district is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and the state legislature has seemingly preoccupied itself with the bottom line rather than the conditions within the school district. So, teachers called in sick this week to protest their working conditions, effectively shutting down the school system for days.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers, the city’s primary teachers’ union, has not called for an official strike. However, its former President Steve Conn, who was ousted from the presidency in 2014, does take credit for organizing the “sickout.” This week’s empty classrooms frustrated many parents and lawmakers but the sickout did strike a chord with city leadership. Mayor Mike Duggan conducted an inspection of several schools this week and has announced plans for further health and safety inspections across the school district.

Some view the sickouts as a step in the wrong direction, arguing that the teachers’ actions will only further isolate decision-makers in the state legislature. Yet the sickout can also been hailed as a genius move to sidestep the bureaucracy and effectively protest non-violently. Organizing a strike through formal channels takes a great deal of time and formal procedures but the sickout was pulled together quickly and effectively because it required relatively little formal protest organization. By using their sick days, teachers were simultaneously protesting and using the personal time legally allotted to them, which may protect them from harsh retributions from anti-reform sympathizers. Every teacher is entitled to a set number of personal days and they can use them however they see fit.

Teacher strikes are devastating to any school district as they deny students crucial time in the classroom, but they are also a critical tool for reforming our nation’s schools. Detroit has now captured national attention, placing significant pressure on state and city officials to act quickly. As the teachers return to their hazardous classrooms, the city leadership and the state legislature have the responsibility to make health and safety a priority for the school district. Meetings have already been arranged (although no date has been set) to discuss health and safety reform. The sickout only lasted a few short days, and time will tell if it achieved the desired results, but it did shine a spotlight on conditions that few outside of the Detroit school system were aware of before this week. The sickout is an unconventional tool but it may be exactly what many organizations are looking for: a peaceful way to protest that does not impose on the quality of life of the protesters. Taking a sick day is an inconvenience, but for many it is preferable to going on a formal strike and forgoing wages and health benefits. The average teacher only has a handful of sick days every year so spending even one is a sacrifice, but the publicity that Detroit teachers have garnered may inspire other suffering school districts to follow in their footsteps.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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Tenure was originally created as a protection for teachers. In more recent times however, critics have grown concerned that it has turned into a system that has the potential for abuse. Read on to learn about the history of tenure and the arguments for and against it.

The History of Tenure

The early twentieth century saw an immense number of unions formed in a wide array of industries, empowering the American workers and dramatically altering legal precedent concerning workers’ rights. During this time, American public school districts began adapting and adopting the process of tenure from colleges and universities and applying it to their own school systems. Tenure, in the K-12 public school sense, provides teachers with the right to due process before being terminated. Before tenure became a common aspect of public school districts, female teachers were often dismissed for getting pregnant or even being seen in town with a man to whom she was not married to; and older teachers were often replaced with new, younger teachers simply because they had become too expensive for the district.

As educational professionals seek ways to improve the American education system in the wake of No Child Left Behind’s rigorous standards, many argue that replacing teacher tenure with a merit-based system would improve teacher quality and, therefore, student performance. However, advocates of teacher tenure argue that is protects vital rights that, if removed, would allow teachers to be exploited and would constrict their ability to improve their educational strategies.

What are the arguments for teachers being able to receive tenure?

Advocates argue that the tenure system protects teachers from being wrongfully dismissed because of problems that could arise out of industry politics, economics, and other such dynamics, as well as personal or political reasons, such as disagreeing with the school board over whether to teach a topic such as evolution or to teach a banned book. Advocates argue that this allows teachers to take more risks in their teaching style and methods, encouraging teachers to push the pedagogical boundaries and improve themselves as educational professionals in the process. A distinction that many advocates of teacher tenure make is that it does not make it impossible to fire a tenured teacher. Instead, tenure ensures due process is followed when a district seeks to dismiss a teacher.

Tenure is not merely given to any teacher hired by a district; most school districts require teachers to spend three to four years in a probationary period before receiving tenure, which allows the teacher to gain experience and allows the district to determine whether the teacher will continue to be a valuable addition to the school’s faculty.

Many teachers also face the prospect of termination due to false student accusations. At times a student may falsely accuse his or her teacher of committing a fireable offense, which often gains a large amount of negative publicity for the school district and could potentially blacklist a teacher from getting a job elsewhere. Tenure ensures that a thorough investigation is conducted before the administration acts upon a student’s accusation, thus protecting good teachers from malcontented students.

What are the arguments against teacher tenure?

Opponents of the tenure system argue that it is being manipulated by teachers’ unions to make ineffective teachers difficult to dismiss and creates a system that favors seniority over merit. Opponents argue that while teachers must work through a probationary period before receiving tenure, nearly all teachers receive it once they reach that mark, and therefore tenure becomes a process not aimed at protecting and retaining good teachers, but at protecting the job security of all teachers regardless of merit. In the New York City public school district, 97 percent of teachers received tenure after teaching for three years, and opponents argue that statistics such as these indicate that tenure is not a highly selective process.

Tenure also makes teachers difficult to fire by allowing teachers’ unions to drag out the termination process and to dispute any decisions concerning dismissal, making the removal of poor teachers expensive and time consuming. A study published in 2009 stated that 89 percent of administrators did not fire ineffective teachers for fear of the time and money it would require to do so. Additionally, in the Chicago public school district, where only 28.5 percent of student met expectations on standardized tests, only 0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008. Obviously, there is a disconnect between the poor performance of students in this district and the replacement of teachers who were unable to improve that performance.

Many opponents also argue that tenure allows teachers to stop seeking personal improvement and to begin to “coast” through their jobs. In a profession that demands constant improvement while children’s education hangs in the balance, a system that provides teachers with impeccable job security unrelated to merit is not the way to promote teacher development.

Conclusion

The history of granting teachers tenure makes sense, but whether or not the system has reached antiquity is a common topic of debate. Tenure has many benefits — protection and incentives for teachers — but also some downsides — potential to kill innovation. As the American education system evolves and begins to adopt more alternative forms of teaching, such as charter schools, tenure policies may have to evolve too to keep up.

Resources

Primary

University of Minnesota: A Study of Transparency of K-12 Teacher Tenure: What the Evaluation Policy Documents Reveal

Additional

Huffington Post: An Argument For Teacher Tenure

NEA Today: What Teacher Tenure Is and What it Is Not

Teach For America: Point/ Counterpoint: In Support of Teacher Tenure

News Observer: Wake County School Board Opposes Elimination of Teacher Tenure

Teachers Union Exposed: Protecting Bad Teachers

NPR: Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary?

USA Today: States Weaken Tenure Rights For Teachers

Scholastic: Weigh In: Is Tenure For Teachers Over?

Education.com: Should Teachers Have Tenure?

Concordia Online Education: K-12 Teacher Tenure: Understanding the Debate

Teachhub.com: Teacher Tenure Debate: Pros and Cons

Take Part: Pros and Cons of Teacher Tenure: What You Didn’t Know

Joseph Palmisano

Joseph Palmisano is a graduate of The College of New Jersey with a degree in History and Education. He has a background in historical preservation, public education, freelance writing, and business. While currently employed as an insurance underwriter, he maintains an interest in environmental and educational reform. Contact Joseph at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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