Due-Process Rights of Tenure Protect Teachers' Rights to Protect their Students

Most teachers join the profession to help children.  In the first few years on the job, teachers are often "learning the ropes," working tirelessly to create lesson plans from scratch, prepare for observations, please their supervisors and keep their heads above water.  Teachers without tenure are usually least likely to question school policy or stand up for students' rights.  

Teachers need tenure.  It guarantees the due-process rights which are particularly important in a field in which the safety and health of public-school children are at risk.  Too often, a teacher questions some school policy, some safety issue, or, perhaps, whether the state-mandated services for special-needs students are being given, and then the harassment begins.  Without the due-process rights of tenure, teachers may be summarily dismissed for trying to protect the interests of students or the school in general.

Some administrators are petty.  Some will use their power to intimidate and, ultimately, if possible silence critics, watchdogs or whistle blowers.  In one of the more outlandish examples, in an ongoing story, a Manhattan principal has been repeatedly accused of fabricating letters of complaint against teachers, accusing them, in some cases, of pedophilia.   I do not know whether he is guilty or innocent.  I am glad that he and any of those whom may have been victims of his accusations, however, share in a system that respects the due-process rights of the accused.

Tenure is so important for so many reasons central to teaching.  Tenure protects academic freedom.  So many ideas that now seem commonplace had to be championed in the past through trials by fire.  In the past, female teachers were fired for getting married or becoming pregnant.  Teachers were fired for refusing to take loyalty oaths.  Today, teachers are more likely to be targeted, it seems, as they become more expensive to employ, especially given the current practice of applying business-minded principles of cost cutting to education.  Tenure protects teachers from vindictive students unhappy with their grades.  Tenure protects teachers from principals who wish to use their positions as patronage machines.  

If the due-process rights of tenure are stripped away, it may be quicker and cheaper to fire a few perverts who have already been removed from contact with students, but it will also be easier to fire the innocent and intimidate all those who might otherwise more easily stand up for the rights of students.  It will also accentuate the loss of dignity in the profession and cause many worthy candidates to turn away.  I can promise you, if tenure is revoked, much more harm than good will come of it.  Teachers will suffer, but their students will suffer even more.