At the beginning of the 20th century teacher tenure took hold in our country, with a noble thought. Teachers should be able to discuss controversial subjects and not be subject to firing for talking about such things. Today 2.3 million secondary teachers have tenure, most college professors do also.
The news is riddled with stories of teachers who speak out against something, say same sex marriage, and are suspended, or fired for having the political-or religious belief (John McAdams, Marquette University). So tenure really isn’t fulfilling its’ role. So maybe we should do away with it.
Great ideas to right a wrong usually go this way, unions are good example. A great idea to start with, protect workers from abuse. Then they get big and abuse their power. With the overwhelming tendency of teachers to support progressive political views it makes sense that they would want tenure to continue, they don’t want to be held accountable for producing outputs that benefit society.
Tenure has outlived its’ purpose, teachers should be held accountable for improving the knowledge and skills of students. The vast majority of them will do just fine when it goes away, probably get paid more also. Let the market come to education, no one deserves a job for life.