[Variance]

On the flipside, doesn't tenure allow teachers to defy a progressive administration and teach Creationism just as easily? Tenure doesn't help any particular agenda, such as science and evolution; rather it enables all agendas, and teachers can be just as bad as they can be good, like all people. The solution is to make teachers accountable to a curriculum and ensure that the curriculum is teaching evolution, via the courts if necessary.

[roc]

> "On the flipside, doesn't tenure allow teachers to defy a progressive administration and teach Creationism just as easily?"

Teaching creationism (as opposed to not teaching evolution) is a funny edge case that runs, pretty quickly, into the establishment clause. So it's perhaps not the best example.

But, sure, tenure protects teachers who refuse to teach evolution just as it protects those who would teach it.

And I see that as a feature as well. It's not there to further any particular ideology. That's rather the point.

And the problem with a federal curriculum as ultimate judge is that such a curriculum is ultimately a political creation. If today's legislature were voting on the NCLB act, the Santorum amendment would very likely have become law. And then we'd have biology teachers forced (via the courts if necessary) to "teach the controversy".

[opendais]

Yes. And then they eventually would get fired for it.

This isn't about protecting a progressive viewpoint against a conservative one. It is about protecting teachers from being forced to service Political Viewpoint X or lose their job immediately.

[Variance]

So teachers will also eventually get fired for teaching Evolution in a Creationist school district. Tenure doesn't seem to actually do anything other than add red tape and drag out the process. Voters, via school boards, get their say either way. Teachers just get fired in two years rather than a month. Why not just mandate that all employees in all businesses can't be fired for two years after being hired?

And if you're arguing that tenure isn't about protecting radical ideas, but instead about job security regardless of political ideas, why should teachers have more job security than anyone else?

[opendais]

Except a Creationist school district would be a violation of Church/State separation and the trial relating to that would stop the teacher from being fired...

> Why not just mandate that all employees in all businesses can't be fired for two years after being hired?

Last time I checked 'all businesses' did not change ownership on the basis of opinion and did not require the person to speak publicly about sensitive subjects.

> why should teachers have more job security than anyone else?

Because otherwise a number of them would get fired every time someone from the opposing party gets elected.

[glenra]

>> why should teachers have more job security than anyone else?

> Because otherwise a number of them would get fired every time someone from the opposing party gets elected.

How would that work, exactly? It seems like on so many levels a bizarre result to expect, and in the rare case where you might expect it seems like it'd be a positive thing more often than not. Or even if it wasn't, there are SO many simpler ways to prevent that outcome than giving EVERY teacher tenure.

Do you expect a republican or democratic political candidate to make firing all the English teachers or PE teachers or music teachers of the other party their first priority when elected to the (nonpartisan) office of Superintendent or to the City Council? Surely not! Does French or Math instruction come in Democrat or Republican flavors? Of course not! You're only really worried about science and history, right? Can you justify offering tenure to ALL teachers on that basis?

On the flip side, what if some teachers are objectively really terrible, a candidate runs on a platform of "I will clean up the schools by getting rid of these bad teachers!", and the candidate gets elected on that platform because the voters agree with it. Why shouldn't those teachers be gotten rid of?

[opendais]

> How would that work, exactly? It seems like on so many levels a bizarre result to expect, and in the rare case where you might expect it seems like it'd be a positive thing more often than not. Or even if it wasn't, there are SO many simpler ways to prevent that outcome than giving EVERY teacher tenure.

Oh? What is this great solution you have? The courts? That takes years, at which point the teacher is unemployed and may years later receive compensation. Good luck expecting that to go well.

> Do you expect a republican or democratic political candidate to make firing all the English teachers or PE teachers or music teachers of the other party their first priority when elected to the (nonpartisan) office of Superintendent or to the City Council? Surely not! Does French or Math instruction come in Democrat or Republican flavors? Of course not! You're only really worried about science and history, right? Can you justify offering tenure to ALL teachers on that basis?

My PE teacher also taught the sex ed class. My English teacher taught a book that was later banned in the School District for a number of years before being unbanned again.

Also? Only 6 of the 12 years is divided up like that.

> On the flip side, what if some teachers are objectively really terrible, a candidate runs on a platform of "I will clean up the schools by getting rid of these bad teachers!", and the candidate gets elected on that platform because the voters agree with it. Why shouldn't those teachers be gotten rid of? Why do you create arguments that are irrelevant?

The teachers that are terrible can be gotten rid of. If you think it is too hard, then streamline the process so they can be fired in X time period. There is a huge range between "can dismiss for any reason" and "can dismiss for performance".

[glenra]

> Oh? What is this great solution you have? The courts? That takes years, at which point the teacher is unemployed and may years later receive compensation. Good luck expecting that to go well.

Nah, it's an institutional problem; you'd solve it with slightly different rules about how schools are run. For instance, you could give principals more autonomy over hiring/firing teachers but make it harder to fire THEM, thereby reducing the ability of nitwit politicians to exert pressure to fire particular people. You could make more of the relevant intermediary jobs (like state superintendent) nonpartisan, and make being nonpartisan an explicit part of the job. You could add more transparency to hiring/firing decisions and leave it to the voters to punish politicians who do that sort of thing - if regular elections aren't enough disincentive, then add a petition-based recall process.

Or you could recognize that political sea changes at the local level don't happen often enough for this to be a significant problem, so we shouldn't worry about it until and unless it actually happens. Don't institute cures that are worse than the disease. (The fact that some district in Texas has this problem doesn't mean you need tenure everywhere in the country.)

Though the real solution is more student autonomy. Let parents decide which schools to send their kids to rather than arbitrarily assigning them to a specific one and the whole issue basically goes away. If parents don't like what's being taught to their kids, make it easy for them to go elsewhere or teach the kids at home and they don't NEED to get rid of bad teachers. (When people don't like what's served at a restaurant, they don't typically lobby to fire the cook, they just eat somewhere else! Because they CAN.)

Fundamentally, the purpose of a school system is to benefit the students, not the teachers. If you want to convince people tenure is a good idea, you need to make the case from that perspective - why it helps the students. Otherwise it just sounds like special pleading.