The Education System Is Failing Our Children

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.

Today, there seems to be a push to change the policy of teacher tenure. “Roughly 2.3 million public school teachers in the United States have tenure—a perk reserved for the noblest of professions (professors and judges also enjoy such rights).” (Stephey) Tenure refers to a policy which gives teachers a permanent contract that effectively ensuring them a guarantee of employment for life. Stephey continues to state, “Though tenure doesn’t guarantee lifetime employment, it does make firing teachers a difficult and costly process, one that involves the union, the school board, the principal, the judicial system and thousands of dollars in legal fees.”

The American education system is failing the generations of the future. Society neglects the children born into impoverished areas, while mainly white upper class children participate in superior educational activities. Low-income neighborhoods often produce schools with low scoring students. Therefore the government transitions these schools into impersonal factories. The phrase diversity masquerades the reality of re-segregation of schools. Many schools across the country are utilizing the phrase diversity, yet the statistics reveal that over ninety percent of the students are black or Hispanic. Creating successful environments is extremely difficult and subsequently results in serious consequences for the American education system.

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)

America’s education system is a disaster and the government has over the years spent millions on fixing the education system. The government has failed in fixing the education system because they are not the real people who can fix it. The government has made many different programs to fix the education system, like the No Child left behind program. Most people blame the government for spending millions to fix the education system and failing. What our society does not understand is that the government can only fix so much. It is time for all students, parents, and teachers to take responsibly and fix the education system in the way they want. Students, parents and teachers can make the education system better by students taking control of their own education, parents who care for their kid’s education and teachers who make amazing learning environment for their students.

Waiting for Superman both disgusted me and inspired me. It disgusted me to see our education system in such disarray while no one seems willing to make or allow any changes to occur, yet I was inspired to do my best to be a light in a failing system. From this movie and the readings I have done in this class, I realized that America is never going to have an education system that everyone agrees with, so the only thing we can do as a teacher is to ensure we are preparing young minds for the future as best as we possibly can.

Too many teachers lack the ability to educate their students, and prepare them for the future, and too few of these ineffective teachers are losing their jobs. Firing an incompetent teacher requires getting the union, the school board, the principal, and the judicial system involved, followed by thousands of dollars in legal fees. It is seldom that a teacher is ever fired. One California school spent eight thousand dollars to fire one teacher protected by tenure (Stephey). The trouble that schools must go through to fire an inept teacher deters schools from firing the teacher. The teacher will keep his job, and continue to poorly educate students and prepare them for the future.

While reading the piece, “Straight from the source: What works for fist-generation college students” I was somewhat conflicted. I applaud the state of Texas for taking steps in order to increase enrollment of first-generation students in higher education institutions, However, I feel like these steps aren’t addressing the bigger issue; that being the broken education system in America. Until this bigger issue is addressed and the problem is dealt with from the root, anything that is done will only be addressing the symptoms caused by the real problem which is America’s broken education system.

The ability of teachers to earn tenure has sparked debate for many years. Whether it is an individual who is for or against teacher tenure, both sides present valid points. First, teacher tenure was established to provide security for teachers and prevent them from being fired for political reasons, personal reasons, non-work related reasons, or to hire new teachers at a lower salary to replace veteran teachers. Challengers to the teacher tenure law argue that it makes teachers complacent, and inhibits schools abilities to get rid of bad teachers. Tenure does not actually make it impossible to fire a teacher who has earned tenure or what is called a non-probationary status. It does however create a costly and lengthy process for dismissing a tenured teacher if the school system cannot prove that the individual has engaged in certain acts.

Richard Kahlenberg, the author of the article Tenure said that tenure was to protect students’ education and those who provide it. He goes on to say that before we can start digging into tenure we should first define what it is. Tenure, for American teachers is awarded after three years, and when it is awarded they have the right to know why a discharge is being sought out by the employer. They also have the right to have the issue decided by an impartial person. Kahlenberg listed why tenure is still necessary, some of them being; it strengthens legal protections, protects a range of people who may be discriminated against that the race and gender antidiscrimination laws do not, and tenure gives teachers the confidence to stand up to outsiders

Teacher tenure is life-long job protection for teachers who have been employed as a teacher for one or more years depending on the state. The purpose of teacher tenure is to protect teachers from being fired for political or personal reasons. It also prevents school districts from eliminating experienced teachers in favor of less expensive teachers. The fundamental problem with teacher tenure is that it is given to a teacher after only one year on the job and requires little to no additional effort. The increased job security breeds complacency in many teachers who are teaching only to collect a paycheck. There is a need for teacher tenure but the program must be drastically reformed.

Tenure is something that teachers get that protects them from the possibility of them losing their jobs. I feel like this is a bad thing and that teachers shouldn’t be able to get. I didn’t know this but now it makes sense how there are alot of teachers that don’t do nothing in class and just hand out worksheets to students. I have always believe that without teachers we wouldn't be successful in life but tenure is something that needs to change its not fair for the schools and students. In conclusion, Have you ever ask yourself why a bad teacher still teaching or why they haven’t fired that teacher it's because a policy restriction called

A federal law put in place to abolish tenure will revolutionize the public school system. It is a simple yet realistic advancement to push forth positive effects on many measures, from America's status as a country down to one school’s status. Not only will it affect education, but this legislation could potentially strike up other forms of employment that use permanent contracts. For instance the “U.S. Government Accountability Office [presented a] startling statistic: 40.4% of the U.S. workforce is now made up of contingent workers.” In other words, almost half of the nation's employed have not been guaranteed a permanent job and this has been a rising trend since the recession. It is obvious there are negative effects to this large percentage

When you look up the etymology of ‘epidemic’, you will see that the word is broken down to mean something “among and/or upon people or a district”. With that being said, one of the biggest epidemic issues today, is the affects and effects of the American school system. The reason that both words are being used is because school has the power to affect and effect; on different levels. America’s effectiveness is felt by not only the parents, but the children as well. These children of today are exiting the wombs’ of their mothers’ with great intelligence. In other words, a child knows where they feel wanted, loved, etc. This applies to the classroom as well. In many cases the school system has been said to be broken. When the school is broken,

First of all most should know that teacher tenure has a system of due process, checks, and balances so that teachers can be fired--just not to easily. Before argueing that teacher tenure should be abolished, one should listen to a few points.