Does teacher tenure equal lower educational standard?

Question

I read that soem state officials are not only linking tenure to bad teachers but also to poor test scores.
Is this because they cannot be fired?

Answer 1

YES.

Read this book:
Unsatisfactory Performance: How California’s K-12 Education System Protects Mediocrity and How Teacher Quality Can Be Improved, by Thomas C. Dawson and K. Lloyd Billingsley,

It examines the problems that affect teacher quality throughout the country.

Teachers lack incentives to perform in the classroom and are not held individually accountable for the academic progress their students make. Teacher compensation is determined not by classroom performance but rigid salary schedules, based on credentials and seniority. Across-the-board pay increases boost the salaries of good and bad teachers alike.

Teachers automatically receive tenure after just two years, without even having to pass a test. Tenured teacher are virtually impossible to fire, however devastating their impact on children. Procedures for firing a tenured teacher make it practically impossible. With costs of $300,000, administrators do not attempt to dismiss a failing teacher.

If improving teacher quality is a goal then streamlining the dismissal system to fire incompetent teachers is imperative.

Teachers resist common-sense reforms like performance pay, replacing tenure with renewable contracts, and differential pay depending on subject.

Answer 2

The tenure system in California public schools (K12) is actually a system which guarantees certain employment rights which are fairly standard in several states within the private sector workforce.
Our system is called: Due Process, wherein teachers must be afforded due process whenever their employment status is being threatened. We can, do, and SHOULD be fired if there is proof of ANY wrongdoing/incompetence on the part of the teacher.

Many administrators here in CA use the "tenure" issue as an excuse NOT to do their jobs in securing sufficient instances of proof of:
*Professional incompetance
*Administrative actions initiated to remediate this incompetance
*Administrative actions to follow through on remediative strategies to deal with the incompetant teacher.

Most of the horror stories one hears about lazy, incompetants in the classroom (teachers, that is ..) really IS the result of the corporate climate of the individual schools within which these incompetants work.

Answer 3

Not always does the tenured teacher become a poor teacher. Poor teachers were bad before they were tenured. A good teacher will always strive to be the best they can be. At least that is the way it is at our school.

Answer 4

There should be no tenure except as a special mark of extraordinary distinction for outstanding individuals. The rest is just union protectionism.

Answer 5

No, it does not necessarily mean that. Even tenured teachers can be fired. There has to be a legitimate reason.