Oklahoma Teacher Shortage

[C_M_25]

I agree with most of your suggestions, but do you have any evidence that tenure actually causes laziness. Most studies I've seen have not seen a correlation. What tenure does is provide teachers comfort in knowing they can teach about evolution or controversial issues, things that they should be doing, without losing their job because of political reasons.

There are things about tenure that I do like such as what you mention.

I still feel that there are those out there that get tenure and just kick back. My wife replaced a teacher like this. She was older, and she was a problem for everyone. She yelled at kids and parents, and she was just burnt out overall. She had tenure though and could draw a check. Eventually, they managed to get her to retire, but tenure can allow these problems to occure.

[dankrutka]

There are things about tenure that I do like such as what you mention.

I still feel that there are those out there that get tenure and just kick back. My wife replaced a teacher like this. She was older, and she was a problem for everyone. She yelled at kids and parents, and she was just burnt out overall. She had tenure though and could draw a check. Eventually, they managed to get her to retire, but tenure can allow these problems to occure.

And, of course, I'm not defending bad teachers, but (a) are you sure teacher couldn't be fired even with tenure? I've seen a number of cases where administrators don't even make the effort to create a paper trail as to why the teacher should be fired and that's why nothing ever happens. And (b) are you sure these teachers wouldn't exist even if we got rid of tenure? There are incompetent people in just about about every field. Teachers just seem to face way more scrutiny about it. And as is evidenced by the teacher shortage, there's not exactly a ton of qualified people knocking down the door looking for teaching jobs.

I'm not saying I have answers to these questions, but we should figure out answers to them before we get rid of something that protects teachers from doing their work without interference for political reasons. The recent case in Seminole where teachers were fired simply for disagreeing with district decisions about spending provides a great example of what can go wrong. And teacher tenure came about before unions ever came to prominence in the United States too. A complicated issue.