You’re a poor college student trying to graduate; you’re trying to finish up your last semester. Your teacher gives you a project worth 50% of your grade due in less than 48 hours on a subject you have never been taught. You try to go to an administrator but they can’t do anything about it and why? Because this professor has tenure and now you have two choices. One, do your best and hope the teacher is lenient or two, fail the class, delaying your graduation making you pay more money to take another semester.

To me, teacher tenure is like communism, it looks good on paper but once it is applied to real life it is taken advantage of. Except in one case it is making people suffer and in the other it is not as life threatening but it is still can take away a lot of time and or money. Teachers tend to become more lethargic in their teaching when given tenure, even if it is not on purpose.

Not only is this a problem in college but also in High Schools and even Middle Schools. According to ProCon.org, “As of 2008, 2.3 million teachers have tenure.” My own sister had a teacher who would always give out packets on material she had never learned, when she would go to ask for help the teacher would say “Figure it out, we will correct what you have in class.” My sister along with some classmates would get together to try to figure it out. When it was corrected, the points were marked against her, with no chance of a redo. Basically, she was being graded on how well she used Google.

Yes, there are some upsides to tenure, it protects the teacher giving them the confidence to report cheating students, however if a student must cheat to pass a class, there might be fault in the teaching, not always, but at times.

On the same ProCon.org article mentioned before it mentions both of these sides of the argument. “Proponents of tenure argue that it protects teachers from being fired for personal or political reasons, and prevents the firing of experienced teachers to hire less expensive new teachers… Opponents of tenure argue that this job protection makes the removal of poorly performing teachers so difficult and costly that most schools end up retaining their bad teachers. They contend that tenure encourages complacency among teachers who do not fear losing their jobs, and that tenure is no longer needed given current laws against job discrimination.”

The proponents have a very valid argument, however, the opponents have a stronger one. Yes teachers may have needed protection in the past but we now have laws that protect them in every case in which the teacher will need protection. All of which can be accessed at http://www.educationrights.com/teacherrights.php. Because of these laws there is no need for tenure.

Tenure was a great idea when it was first thought of. But it has now been abused and is unnecessary because of the laws protecting teachers. A solution would be to not back out of any agreements schools and teaches may have now but to stop offering that which is unnecessary in future contracts.

 
"Teacher Tenure - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2015. .
"Teacher and School Staff Rights." Teacher Rights. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2015. .
Marresa Bovee: poor college student/sister.