In defense of teacher's tenure

While it’s nice to see education playing a prominent role in the newly convened state legislature, I am disappointed anti-union people are relying too heavily on national criticism of “bad teachers” to attack teacher tenure. My 95-year-old grandfather is fond of saying that the reasons for a law will quickly become apparent in its hasty absence.

The misunderstanding of tenure as a permanent teaching job may exist because of how unusual it is for a local teacher to be fired. How much confidence would the public have in a school district that regularly fired its teachers? The anomaly of firing teachers and administrators is in fact a testament to a school’s hiring and evaluation process. And contrary to what the national pundits believe about tenure, it is simply the list of rules by which a teacher will be evaluated, re-hired, disciplined or fired. 

Local control of our schools is the best safeguard against people who are ill-suited to working with our students. A locally elected school board sets goals for all facets of a school climate, from textbooks to student activities, administrative staff hiring, teaching and support contracts, and school rules. In the three years prior to tenure protection, a teacher may be denied a contract by the employing school district without an explanation of cause. When a teacher is offered his or her fourth contract, the protections that tenure provides are unique to the individual school district, as it is negotiated by the school board and teachers union.

The benefits of tenure are symbiotic. Schools invest in training teachers through local, state and national programs consistent with the education goals adopted by local school board members. With each hiring cycle, new employees must be brought up to speed on classroom equipment, testing procedures, student test score evaluation, curriculum goals and unique scheduling policies. If a teacher is hired from out of state, he or she must also receive guidance on meeting state law expectations of instruction, such as Indian Education for All.

Teachers with relative job security can join community organizations, churches, political groups, art communities or sports programs, or seek higher education without fear that social pressure will cost one’s career. Rules for continued employment include the teacher’s ongoing education and re-certification, and regularly scheduled evaluations of teaching and other duties by the building principal. Deficiencies in teaching are documented and addressed with prescribed improvement or discipline as needed.

A teacher that neglects to correct a problem can be fired. Imminent danger to a student results in immediate removal from a teaching assignment. Any cost savings from hiring an inexperienced teacher must be offset by the self-sufficiency of a career teacher. This is why districts reward higher education and years of experience on the salary schedule. Tenure rules offer students the most highly qualified teachers available as well as reasonable safeguards for professionals who might otherwise be subject to political whims.

My grandmother was teaching in a small rural town in the middle of Montana when the U.S. entered World War II. One day after she and my grandfather announced their plans to be married before he shipped out to Europe, her superintendent came to her classroom and expressed his congratulations before thanking her for her service and announcing that as a married woman her contract would not be renewed. This scenario seems laughable today, thanks to tenure. 

More than likely you know a teacher, administrator, school board member and a union member. If tenure is truly a tool for evil unions to keep unqualified teachers in our classrooms, it seems unbelievable that reasonably intelligent people would ever allow tenure in a locally controlled contract. But our predecessors did adopt standards of professional behavior and negotiate the steps that will be taken to fire a teacher who fails to live up to them. If you understand tenure as rules for employment, agreed upon by the teachers and locally elected leaders from your own neighborhoods, it loses its stigma. National hysteria should not be the basis for Montana law.

Dana Carmichael is a librarian at Whitefish Middle School.