Essay on The Purpose for Tenure in Teaching

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.”

Dr. Todd Cherner is an Assistant Professor of English Education in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program in the Spadoni College of Education at Coastal Carolina University. Dr. Cherner has completed his third academic year at Coastal Carolina University as a pre-tenured faculty and has submitted his documentation for third year review. As the Chair of the Department of Master of Arts in Teaching, Middle Level Education, Special Education and Physical Education in the Spadoni College of Education, I have completed my evaluation of Dr. Cherner’s documentation for retention beyond the third year, in accordance with the University’s 2012-2013 Faculty Manual Promotion and Tenure Guidelines and the Spadoni College of for Education Promotion and Tenure Performance Expectations Elaborations document (adopted 12/9/2011). Also, the definitions of descriptors defined in the Promotion and Tenure Faculty Annual Evaluation Rubrics (cited in 2013-2014 Spadoni College of Education Policies and Procedures Handbook) were used to make the determinations of “outstanding,” “very good,” “good,” and “needs improvement.” The following comments and rating are derived from my review of Dr. Cherner’s documentation for third year review. I have my evaluation of Dr. Cherner’s documentation in the areas of teaching, scholarship, and service.

For over thirteen years, I have witnessed an enormous amount of change in education. When I started teaching in New York City back in 2003, I remember being told, “whatever you do, don’t wind up of the cover of New York Post”. The room erupted in laughter and my stomach erupted in panic. Shortly after that announcement our principal handed out an enormous book of our district policies. -As I flipped through book of policies and regulations I thought to myself how could there possibly be this many rules about teaching.

Fred Doyle, a licensed educator, taught for Mount Healthy City Schools from 1966 to 1971. Fred Doyle was an educator that had numerous altercations with faculty and students while teaching for Mount Healthy City Schools. The altercations included verbal arguments resulting in Doyle being assaulted, verbally referring to students with offensive language, making indecent gestures to students, and sharing a dress code memo cited from Doyle’s administrator on an on-air radio station. Soon after the on-air radio news, Doyle learned that the Board approved the Superintendent of Mount Healthy City Schools recommendation of not renewing his teaching contract. The explanation was due to the “ lack of tact in handling professional matters” in reference to the indecent gestures and the on-air radio show incidents. Doyle brought suit to the Mount Healthy City Board of Education to be rehired and granted punitive damages due to the violation of his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Webster's dictionary defines tenure as, “the act, right, manner, or term, of holding something (such as a landed property, a position, or an office); especially :a status granted after a trial period to a teacher that gives protection from summary dismissal. In other words, educators receive due process protection from accusations or charges against them.Years ago, educators who acted in destructive and abusive demeanor sidestep meaningful ramifications due to tenure safeguards .However, the supreme protection granted to tenured teachers diminished greatly as of July 2011. Michigan stripped the unassailable security of tenure and the world of education in Michigan altered permanently.Forlornly, educator Kathleen Goulouze failed to adhere to modifications of the updated teacher tenure decree.

The school’s rules were provided in student handbooks that were given to every student at the beginning of the year, and the rules are also posted in each of the classrooms on campus. The parents and student received detailed oral and written notice of the charges against the student, which provided information about the incident and evidence the administrator discovered. Since this student’s action presented an immediate danger the administrator was able to immediately remove the student from school without advance notice to the parents, however, the parents were told of the incident in a timely

Esteemed teacher at Elk Grove High School was arrested Thursday morning. Two Elk Grove police officers barged in on her first class of the day not only to find that she had controlled substances on her, but she also tried planting them on a student in said class.

The school officials did not have enough sufficient evidence that they needed to conduct a full strip search to search as far as her underwear. There was not any evidence that told the administration that she would be hiding drugs in her clothes. However, the school administration are no held “personally liable” because the laws were not “clearly established” to show that it violated the students right yet the court decided that it did.

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)

Case background: T.L.O. and another student were caught smoking cigarettes in a high school bathroom. Tobacco use was allowed in this high school in certain smoking areas, but was not allowed in restrooms. They were taken to the principal’s office by a teacher. T.L.O. would not admit to smoking and declared she was a non-smoker. The assistant principal took T.L.O. to his office where he searched her purse. When he found cigarettes and rolling papers, he decided to search the rest of her purse for other items associated with marijuana. He found marijuana and evidence that she was dealing marijuana to fellow students. T.L.O.’s mother was called and took T.L.O. to the police station, where she

We are formally complaining about Ms Sanchez's supervisory actions in allowing perjured evidence to be put forth in expelling a student, Olivia Scales. We further complain that through her acceptence of perjured statements, and negligence in gathering statements, Ms Sanchez's has violated state law § 39-11-402 (3).

In a large suburban high school in Wisconsin, a teacher has been dismissed for his actions that put students in danger in the eyes of the administration and school board. The teacher has appealed the decision with the Wisconsin Labor Relations Board (WLRB) and has won his appeal. This means the teacher will be returning to work with back pay. After winning his appeals case said teacher has sued the district in federal court for wrongful dismissal as a violation of his civil rights. He has asked for $500,000 and won the case being awarded the amount of $5,000. Throughout this report we will take a look back at the entire situations and discuss alternatives to what could have been done. (Teacher Dismissal For Cause)

The “just cause” reasoning for possible dismissal that applies to this case is “immorality” (State of Florida, 2012). The teacher harassed and threatened other students while in the classroom. She humiliated these students and even went so far as to tell a parent about their child’s sexuality. She talked about adult things that teachers should not be disclosing to children, especially when

Most would ask, "What exactly is teacher tenure?". Well, in short teacher tenure is a permanent job contract for school teachers. Teachers can earn tenure by proving their teaching skills over a specific number of years while working at the same school. In most cases the number of years a teacher must work at the same school is anywhere from two to seven years. After receiving tenure a teacher cannot lose his or her job without just cause, for example obvious incompetence or severe misconduct. Tenure offers job security to teachers that have successfully completed their probational period of teaching. (Heard)