The question is really in the title - but here’s some background. I hear/see people complain about tenure for teachers as if it’s something that only applies to teachers- but as far as I have ever been able to tell , there isn’t any real difference between a teacher gaining tenure and some other unionized public servant completing probation.* It’s easier to fire a teacher before they get tenure because once they get tenure they’re entitled to due process - same goes for some other unionized public employee who hasn’t completed probation. Teachers with less tenure get laid off first - other union public employees with less seniority get laid off first. But I can’t help but think that the difference goes beyond the name- because I never hear people complain that say, publicly employed nurses get laid off based on less seniority first, or that once the nurse finishes probation, it’s harder to fire him.
at least where I live and hear the complaints- it could be different elsewhere.
In our state it’s called Professional Status, and it kicks in after 3 qualifying years of employment. Before that, you can simply not have your contract renewed and you’re out of a job. After you have PS it’s harder to dismiss a teacher, but not impossible.
You have many more protections with PS, but if there’s no job then there’s no job. This is happening right now in my wife’s school, and obviously a lot of teachers are on edge.
Three years? It took my wife seven years to get tenure. And for every one of those seven years, she was told at the end of the school year that her contract would not be renewed. Only in July or August, after the teachers with more seniority either retired or transferred out, would slots open up and she’d be rehired.
A lot of people think tenure means “job for life” but that isn’t strictly the way it works. It’s true the school board can’t fire you just because they don’t like you, but they can transfer you into any position that a teacher is qualified to do, which can include some non-teaching positions. They can also load you up with unsatisfactory performance reviews, which kill your chances of getting a transfer or being hired by another district. Or, they can jigger your assignments around so you end up in a slot that’s going to be eliminated anyway because of budget cuts or declining enrollment.
Of course, a lot of teachers will hang on just for the salary and benefits. This is especially true in states with an all-or-nothing retirement system (you don’t get vested until you serve your entire 20 years or whatever.) But that’s more a fault of the pension and health insurance systems than of tenure per se.
Ensuring a form of due process is the quick way of describing it to people who mistakenly believe tenure means a job for life. Having been a teacher, I assure you, they can be fired. But after tenureit has to be with cause.
I suspect many of the complaints you’ve heard are because the complainers are assuming that “tenure” for grade school teachers works the same way as for college professors. Not only does it work differently, it’s a fundamentally different thing.
Tenure in higher education exists* primarily to protect academic freedom: you don’t want to give a climate-change-denying governor the power to fire climatologists at the state university because their work says he’s wrong. This protection isn’t hypothetical…this sort of thing became a problem during the McCarthy era.
As the OP notes, tenure for teachers often resembles “professional status” for other public employees much, much more than it does tenure for professors. I was glad to learn in this thread that Massachusetts doesn’t call the K-12 version “tenure” at all…I hope that’s a nationwide trend. I think that would help reduce both confusion and the weird preconceptions that teachers sometimes encounter when this comes up.
Another big difference that many people are fuzzy on: if an academic in a tenure-track job is denied tenure, they’re effectively fired. Typically, they have a year in which to continue their work (teaching/research) but really, that year is used to apply for jobs. It’s very hard to get a second tenure-track job after being denied tenure once, though I know someone who pulled that off.
A tenured professor doesn’t have a “job for life,” though I understand why people reach that conclusion; sometimes tenured faculty behave in ways that would get them fired in any other setting.
But just as people wrongly assume that tenured teachers have the same kind of job security that tenured professors do, the confusion goes both ways: lots of people think college professors have summers off in the way** that teachers do. They absolutely don’t. Some may not have formal duties over the summer, but taking summers off is a great way to have your tenure application denied.
Academic tenure is becoming rarer every year, and people like former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker have tried to do away with it altogether. This both troubling and way off topic.
** I know many teachers work second jobs over the summers and/or do things like take continuing education classes or lesson planning. There are very few truly cush gigs out there beyond being an heir/heiress, and that field doesn’t have many openings. With apologies to Dorothy Parker: I’ve never been a billionaire, but I just know I’d be darling at it.
“Tenure” for primary and secondary teachers is only a talking point at all because at-will employment is the norm. In most other developed countries, a situation where you can only be fired for cause, and where there are regulations on how layoffs work, is just called a job. Sometimes this gets inverted by the anti-teacher crowd, and they’ll grouse about how no other country has tenure for teachers. Which is true, because they have “tenure” for all jobs!
We don’t have tenure in Texas; we don’t even have unions (we have professional organizations, but we can’t collectively bargain or strike). People here still complain about unions and tenure ruining education. It’s true that there is due process for the decision to non-renew a teacher’s contract, but it’s far from impossible to do: you just need like 3 documented interventions/growth plans.
Honestly, I think that education has probably brought this on itself. Parents are incredibly prone to demand principals fire people. I think that a lot of principals say 'We can’t fire him/He has tenure" when what they mean is more nuanced, like:
[ul]
[li]You are a crazy parent and that is unreasonable[/li][li]He’s not perfect, but given the resumes on my desk, I doubt we’d do better[/li][li]This issue you bring up is a problem, but he’s an enormous net contributor to the organization and we are going to accept for the sake of [A], **, and [C].[/li][li]He knows where the bodies are buried, so here we are.[/li][li]He has a powerful person protecting him, so here we are.[/li][li]I am an incompetent and/or conflict adverse manager, so I am not willing to deal with this.[/li][li] This is an isolated incident and he is a valuable contributor; I’d rather counsel him than throw him out over one mistake.[/li][/ul]
All that gets blurred out and “tenure” (or “under contract” in Texas) takes the blame.
Yeah, but part of the reason I thought "tenure’ might be something more is because a fair amount of the people I hear complaining can only be fired for cause ( after a probationary period that typically lasts a year) and layoffs for them happen in order of reverse seniority. Because they belong to unions that can collectively bargain.
That part is mostly true, but as you said it’s part of the collective bargaining agreement, not law. And positions need to be filled by teachers that are certified to teach that particular role. That’s one reason many teachers will get certifications that they don’t currently need, as it makes them qualified for many more positions, and in times of budget cuts that makes more valuable.
I think you misunderstood me. What I am saying is that I always assumed “tenure” meant something more than described in this thread because a fair amount of the people I’ve heard complaining about it are people who work in union jobs ( government or not) who have the same protections through their collective bargaining agreements that “tenure” apparently provides teachers. And while I can imagine at-will workers being opposed to public servants having more protections, I didn’t really think that the school janitor ( for example) might be complaining that the teachers have the same rights he does. Apparently that’s exactly what I 'm seeing- that other unionized workers are indeed complaining that teachers have basically the same rights they do- although to be fair, they also might think “tenure” means more than it does.
Some countries do have both situations: in Spain any civil servant (including public school teachers from kindergarten to university) can be in the situation we call “own the post”; when it refers to teachers it’s normally translated to English as “tenure”. For most people beyond the “trial” period of their contract, whether civil servants or not, what you describe is indeed the norm; for those who “own the post”, there are additional restrictions on firing them, on switching them to a different job (they have to accept the change and if the switch is temporary can go back to the old post later), or additional perks such as how long they can leave the job without losing it.
Mariano Rajoy owns a property registrar position in the province of Alicante; he spent so much time on unpaid leave that the job description changed while he was off politicking (property registrars and notarios have now merged), but when he retired from politics he was able to just move to Alicante and take up his vacant job. People were joking that as hard as it is to become President, the exam to get a job as Registrar is probably harder.
In Georgia public schools, it’s called “fair dismissal” rights. For the first three years, a teacher can be let go for any reason, or no reason at all. No explanation is legally due the fired teacher. Starting with the fourth contract, there must be cause to fire the teacher. Causes could be ethics violations, insubordination, or incompetence, among many others. If a principal doesn’t like a decent teacher, all he has to do is assign the teacher to classes with the worst students, then document discipline problems and failure rates. That would be enough to fire an otherwise good teacher, and I’ve seen it done. However, if no administrator has a grudge against you and you’re competent at your job, you’ll probably last 'til retirement if you make it through the first three years. If you really want to.
Yes, in Canada anyone who is “laid off” of a job - let go without a serious reason - is entitled to separation pay. Depending on province and the job, this can be from 2 weeks to up to 2 years - depends on years of service, job requirements and professional level and how easy to find replacement employment, age, etc.
the joke about real tenure - for college professors - is that about the only reason you could be fired was for sleeping with a student. Tenure for university faculty was a side effect of the demand that “free-thinkers” will of course occasionally say or do controversial things, an since university administration tended to be totally lacking backbone dealing with the public and government or donors, they needed some protection.
So basically, “PS” seems to be the same protection anyone in Canada gets for being a union member from about 30 to 90 days after hire (after probation period is over). You can’t be fired except for cause, and layoffs go by reverse seniority provided qualifications match. (and of course, everyone gets free health care).
Plus, between cost of separation pay and the risk of being sued if there’s a discriminatory pattern, Canadian employers have to be very careful about layoffs. however, the contract worker gig economy seems to be coming here too.
(Although there was a landmark contract employment case a decade or two ago - a rabbi who was let go after 20 years sued. the court said no, you can’t pretend he was only a one-year employee if you’d renewed his contract annually for 20 years. )
Exactly. This is one of the reasons I’d never teach anywhere but California. Most of my cousins are/were teachers, and the crap they have to tolerate in Texas, Arkansas and the like boggles my mind. California has the most powerful teacher union in the country. But even here, a wide variety of certifications will keep you employed when things get tight, like your district is in “declining enrollment” and layoffs have to happen. My district is in that position as I type. I’m not worried, because 1) I have more Single Subject teaching credentials than anyone in the district, 2) I have more special certifications (CLAD, GATE, etc.) than most of the district, and 3) I’m #4 on the district seniority list,
