Why Teachers Need Tenure
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| Source: Stephen Sawchuk, "States Strive to Overhaul Teacher Tenure," www.edweek.org, Apr. 7, 2010 |
Diane Ravitch responds to a particularly bad piece in The New Republic (did I really used to subscribe to this rag?) calling for the gutting of tenure:
In an editorial called “Making the Grade: The Case Against Tenure in Public Schools,” the editors argued that it was a fine idea to remove any job protections from public school teachers because they don’t need them. In making this assertion, the editors of this once-liberal magazine were giving support to the far-right Virginia legislature, which was at that moment not only trying to strip teachers of tenure but to require women to have “a trans-vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion.” The editorial of course condemned the latter as harsh, but thought that the far-right effort to remove job protection from public school teachers as a “halfway decent idea.” Indeed, the editorial went on to decry teacher tenure as “the least sane element” in our country’s education system.The editorial claimed that after a few years, teachers get job protection that “makes it