To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether K-12 teachers should get tenure, go to ProCon.org.
Teacher tenure is the increasingly controversial form of job protection that public school teachers in 46 states receive after 1-5 years on the job. An estimated 2.3 million teachers have tenure.
Prior to the introduction of teacher tenure, teachers were often fired for non-work related reasons. Teachers could be dismissed if a new political party took power or if a principal wanted to give jobs to his friends. Calls for special protections for teachers coincided with the women’s suffrage movement and labor struggles during the late 19th century. The National Education Association issued a report in 1885 advocating for public school teachers to receive tenure to protect against political favoritism and discrimination based on gender and race. In 1886, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a pre-college tenure law. When nearly 10,000 teachers arrived in Chicago for the 1887 NEA conference, teacher tenure was one of the main discussion topics. In 1909, New Jersey passed the first comprehensive K-12 tenure law in the US. Proponents of the teacher tenure law in New Jersey argued that it would attract more qualified teachers and eliminate political favoritism, while opponents warned that tenure would make it more difficult to remove ineffective teachers.
After the Great Depression, teachers began to organize politically in order to receive funding and job protections. Teachers unions negotiated for tenure clauses in their contracts with state and individual school districts. By 1940, 70% of K-12 public school teachers had job protections. In the mid-1950s, the number grew to over 80%.
Education and tenure reform became a national issue following the release of A Nation at Risk, a 1983 report of President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education that found “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” The report prompted states to look at reforming tenure, strengthening educational standards, and increasing the use of standardized tests.
PRO
- Tenure protects teachers from being fired for personal, political, or other non-work related reasons.
- Tenure prohibits school districts from firing experienced teachers to hire less experienced and less expensive teachers.
- Tenure protects teachers from being fired for teaching unpopular, controversial, or otherwise challenged curricula such as evolutionary biology and controversial literature.
- The promise of a secure and stable job attracts many teachers to the teaching profession, and eliminating teacher tenure would hamper teacher recruitment.
- Tenure helps guarantee innovation in teaching.
- Teacher tenure is a justifiable reward for several years of positive evaluations by school administrators.
- Tenure is a good system that has become a scapegoat for problems facing education.
- Tenure allows teachers to advocate on behalf of students and disagree openly with school and district administrators.
- Contrary to public perception, tenure does not guarantee a teacher a job for life.
- Tenure protects teachers from being prematurely fired after a student makes a false accusation or a parent threatens expensive legal action against the district.
- Tenure encourages the careful selection of qualified and effective teachers.
- The formal dismissal process guaranteed by tenure protects teachers from punitive evaluation systems and premature dismissal.
- Tenure allows teachers to work more effectively since they do not need to be in constant fear of losing their jobs.
CON
- Teacher tenure creates complacency because teachers know they are unlikely to lose their jobs.
- Tenure makes it difficult to remove under-performing teachers because the process involves months of legal wrangling by the principal, the school board, the union, and the courts.
- Tenure often makes seniority the main factor in dismissal decisions instead of teacher performance and quality.
- Tenure is not needed to recruit teachers.
- With job protections granted through court rulings, collective bargaining, and state and federal laws, teachers today no longer need tenure to protect them from dismissal.
- Tenure makes it costly for schools to remove a teacher with poor performance or who is guilty of wrongdoing.
- With most states granting tenure after three years, teachers have not had the opportunity to “show their worth, or their ineptitude.”
- Tenure does not grant academic freedom. No Child Left Behind in 2001 took away much academic freedom when it placed so much emphasis on standardized testing.
- Tenure at the K-12 level is not earned, but given to nearly everyone.
- Tenure is unpopular among educators and the public.
- Teacher tenure does nothing to promote the education of children.
- Teacher tenure requires schools to make long-term spending commitments and prevents districts from being fiscally flexible.
- Tenure lets experienced teachers pick easier assignments and leaves difficult assignments to the least experienced teachers.
This article was published on January 13, 2011, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.