Argumentative Essay On Tenure In Schools

Tenure in school systems has been a highly controversial topic lately. Tenure refers to the job security of teachers after they have worked at a certain school for three years. When teachers earn tenure, it is very difficult to take away their jobs. This is especially true in higher education. According to the Washington Post, 32 states grant tenure after three years, nine states grant tenure after four or five years and four states never grant tenure at all. Granting tenure to all teachers gives everybody a job for life which should not be the case. Under-performing teachers should not have definite job security. America should remove academic tenure, replace it with a different system, and re-evaluate school teachers and professors.

Tenure is a type of protection from dismissal through tenure statues. Under these state statutes, a contract renews automatically each year. School districts must show cause and have documentation to dismiss tenured teachers. Tenured teachers may be dismissed for reasons of incompetency, insubordination, immoral conduct, neglect of duty, conviction of a crime, or fraud. A teacher that is certified by the state is assumed to be competent and it is the school board’s responsibility to prove incompetency. Immoral conduct is specified in statute in many states for grounds of dismissal of tenured teachers.

Public education has had a negative effect on students; it’s often because of the bigger class sizes, poor test scores, and high crime in the surrounding areas. Public schools need to revise their system to determine what’s the best fit for their student’s educational needs. All children who live in a school district have a right to attend a district school. Many parents would like more options and opportunities for their child, and would like to be involved in their child’s education. Charter schools are part of the answer for a better educational choice for children’s academic achievement. Charter schools have many successful methods and continue to pave the way for children’s education needs .

This paper will effectively detail the issues surrounding policy as it pertains to teacher reform for New Jersey Tenure Laws. I will discuss why this new reform has made it impossible to terminate non-effective teachers because of the protection that TEACHNJ provides. I will also discuss inaccuracies as it pertains to accountability and transparency under the new tenure laws. Lastly, I will discuss the teacher rating system and evaluation system that rates teachers in four categories, from highly effective to ineffective. Teacher evaluations would be based on measures of student learning, such as improvement of state test scores, student work, and other practices linked to student achievement. The New Jersey Education Association has proposed streamlining the legal process for removing teachers, but has adamantly defended the basic job protection of tenure, saying it prevents unfair dismissal, favoritism and attempts to save money by firing expensive veterans. The state’s largest teacher’s union also vehemently opposes judging teachers largely on test scores, saying that doing so penalizes teachers with the most difficult students, and that the data is unreliable. Teachers are fearful of losing their jobs if they don’t raise test scores, teachers will redouble their test-preparation efforts, and quality instruction will be sacrificed,” NJEA President Barbara Keshishian said in a statement. “Parents should be alarmed and dismayed at this proposal.” (Brody)

The last reason why charter schools are now better than public schools is because charter schools are not dealing with racial problems. This means that there are no such things as racism in charter schools while some public schools are now still have to deal with bullying and racist actions from one student toward another. With the amount of bullying and racism still happening out there, children needed this type of environment to study in so that they don’t have to be afraid or stress out. This is an important factor that makes charter schools so special. Not only charter schools don’t have any racism issues, they also provide students with disabilities special programs to make them feel like home. According to Ronald W. Holmes, a PhD from

In Waiting for Superman, a documentary by Davis Guggenheim, Guggenheim explains how teacher unions are making it impossible to change public education for the benefit of American students. Guggenheim begins the documentary by explaining what tenure is. Tenure was created by universities to protect professors from losing their jobs for political reasons, but only after many years of teaching were they granted tenure. Public school teachers believed they should be granted tenure, so they formed unions and went on strike. Eventually they were granted tenure, and it's now part of every teachers contract, making it almost impossible to evoke change in the school systems.

Some parents claim there’s nothing better than them. Others argue that they place profit above education. Whatever the opinion, one thing is certain; charter schools are becoming the most controversial public education issue in the United States. Charter schools have combined features of both public and private schools. The reason these schools are better for students, parents and the community are vast. Since they are exempt from the rules and policies imposed on public schools, they have some notable advantages. First, the teachers have more freedom to prepare lessons, and schools themselves can emphasize certain courses according to the necessity of the students. Second, they can offer limited enrollment to keep class sizes small, which

Charter schools are described to be a unique public school that offers an alternative education outside of traditional public schools in the Unites States. Charter schools are usually created by a group of people – parents, educators, community leaders- who come together and create a charter plan which explains the schools guiding principles, course curriculum, and so on. Once that charter is approved by the state, the state continues to fund the charter schools. “In the early 1990s, a small group of educators and policymakers came together to develop the charter school model. Minnesota’s legislature passed the first charter law in 1991, and the first charter school opened in 1992.”

While these aspects of charter schools have been very important in beginning this movement, ultimately it is the effectiveness of charter schools that will determine their future. Evidence regarding the aggregate effectiveness of charter schools is mixed. Most famously, the 2009 study by the Center for Educational Outcomes stated that “17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.” While those numbers resonate like a failure of the charter experiment, when examined further, some of those claims fall about. In his article “Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools,” David Osborne states that the fallacy in this study is that the majority of the evidence comes from “a student’s first year in a charter schools.” This taints the study because “when

For the most part, they are not pleased with charter schools. According to Nathan (1996), “In most states, teachers unions have tried to prevent the charter school concept from getting a real test. The idea threatens their power and their concept of how public education ought to operate” (p.93). They become upset when there is a change in their world, and in the book Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education, Joe Nathan points out an example of unions upset when teachers try to change the norm in schools. On page 94, he speaks of how in one school, the teachers wanted a closer working relationship with parents, so they started meeting with parents once a month at noon to review how things were going at the school and to discuss way parents could help students at home. The parents were delighted, but the local union went to the local school board to protest that these teachers were violating the labor-management agreement by giving up their “duty-free lunch.” The union in this example caused the board to agree with them, saying the program is controversial, and therefore the family preferences were ignored. Charter schools, however, are breaking the notion that teachers have little control beyond their individual classroom. According to Nathan (1996), “Suddenly, the teachers can, and often are, running schools. The teachers decide whether

From the earliest days of charter schools, they have been the subject of many education debates across the country between the public, politicians, and education experts. In 1995, when the first charter was constructed in Minnesota, many education reformers believed charter schools to be the answer that was going to change the face of public education. However, over twenty years later with over 6,079 schools in total and increasing around 7 percent every year, the debate still rages on about the impact of these charters (The Hechinger Report, U.S. News). In the 1990s, school choice campaign movements sprouted up urging state legislatures to pass laws authorizing charter schools. To offer a quick background, charter schools are established after an organization –either nonprofit groups or for-profit businesses –acquires a charter from a state-authorized agency (Ravitch, 122). In addition, while charter schools do have to follow some of the major education laws and regulations that all other public schools across the country have to follow, charters do not have to follow most: giving them too much freedom from state curriculum frameworks and educational standards (The Center for Education Reform). Despite the popular belief that charter schools are incredibly successful and the “fix” to the education problem in the United States, after taking a deeper look at the management problems and lack of achievement, it can be argued that charter schools are not as successful as one may think.

America is dependent on teachers; good, well educated teachers who dispense their knowledge onto their students without prejudice. History has shown us that teachers have had to go to great lengths to gain equal rights in the work place. Teachers used to have to follow strict and sometimes outrageous rules to keep their job. A female teacher could be fired from her job by getting pregnant or even by just wearing jeans to work or staying out too late. Teacher tenure was introduced in the early 1900s and protected teachers from being fired without due reason. Although the majority of teachers do great work in teaching their students in effective ways teacher tenure bring a sour taste to some of Americas tongues. Teacher tenure is an important part of Americas educational system, but it is in need of some changes which will help ineffective teachers become better educators and award teachers who do well in teaching their students.

The main difference in public and charter schools has is the property value that can cause teachers with a good teaching skill to work in a charter school and poor performing teacher to work in public school. The video demonstrates, “The involvement of a public school in New York City called the school zone that is filled with ordinary students that did not have the chance to go to a charter school called the Harlem Success Academy and the main reason is students can only get enroll by being picked in the lottery.” (Lottery) Charter schools usually hold annual lotteries giving nearly four hundred students a chance to enroll between charter school and public school assign by the city. The video also demonstrate, “A good example of African American child called Christian Yoanson that was trying to get enrolled into Harlem Success Academy, but never got picked from the lottery and has to go to public school.” (Lottery) Another reason students go to public schools is parent with low income from their job that can make it difficult for their child to enroll into charter schools and can only enroll into public school. “Emil Francis Yoanson is a good example of a parent that has low income from his job and always wanted Christian Yoanson his only child to get enrolled into charter schools despite having a low income.”(Lottery) Hopefully charter school in New York City can change

Tenure is a type of job security that educators earn once they reach an exact level of expertise. Once a educator has earned tenure, they need to be able to follow the teaching contract as long as they abide by the rules set forth in their contracts. It's believed

Some argue that tenure allows bad teachers to stay in the classroom. Teachers that are just there to put in their time and don't really care about the students themselves. They feel that granting teachers tenure encourages them to become complacent about their jobs. “Tenures are something that can be beneficial to students, as well. By providing job security, teachers can concentrate on teaching, instead of worrying about overly obsessed parents coming after them. Take for instance, a parent getting a coach fired because they did not give their son or daughter enough play time on the court. There is the classic scenario of parents that will look for a teacher's flaws in teaching before they look for flaws in their child as a student.”(Sharifi)