While driving towards Chicago, I tuned in to a radio talk show in which Karen Lewis, the new President of the Chicago Teacher's Union, was answering questions from listeners on the topic of tenure, among other things.
I've always been under the vague impression that tenure means it's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to fire a teacher that has it. And apparently some callers thought the same thing - someone called in with a complaint that her school can't get rid of "bad" teachers. Karen Lewis' answer to that was that tenure does not guarantee a teacher a job, but rather it guarantees a teacher the right to "due process" when being considered for termination. There wasn't much more explanation of the nature of tenure, about which I'm curious.
I suppose if I take a cynical view, I would expect the "due process" to which she referred to be defined in such a way that makes it practically impossible to fire a teacher. I don't know for sure, so I'm happy to defer that assessment. But even if I take a more benign view of "due process", I suppose I'm uncomfortable with the idea that teachers who are not tenured don't have access to "due process".
In industry, your qualifications are vetted through the interview process and then, if things go well, you're hired. Then your competence is vetted through job performance. If you do well, you flourish; if you don't do well, you're let go. The process is pretty much the same for everyone, whether they've been on the job for ten days or ten years. If the company leadership is strong, then this model seems to work pretty well.
I wonder why the same model shouldn't be applied to the teaching profession.
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