Academic Tenure

There is very little to be said for guaranteed job security. Typically, organizations such as Federal, State, and Local governments, as well as certain highly unionized industries provide a very high degree of job security unrelated to performance. As a consequence, they suffer from low productivity and poor quality work.

A reasonable exception to the pure rule of demanding performance in return for continued employment is the practice of granting academic tenure to university professors who spend a significant part of their time engaged in research.

New ideas, whether in the humanities or the physical and social sciences, are frequently unpopular because they challenge authority and conventional wisdom. Absent tenure, or some other form of job security, there will be instances when researchers are fired for their opinions and conclusions, avoid controversial topics, or engage in self censorship. While offering a high level of job security risks paying for poor or no performance, the cost is reasonable compared to the dangers of intimidation and the avoidance of controversial topics.

Providing job security to those engaged in research is one thing but is almost impossible to make a coherent and logical case for granting tenure to teachers of children in Grades K - 12. These teachers do little or no research so there is little risk of adverse action arising from unpopular ideas and, since there is almost no risk of that they will be fired for failure to perform, their performance is all too often less than adequate.

While too many School Districts have ineffective, and sometimes outright unfair, systems for evaluating teachers, that is not the point. What is needed is the development of reasonably fair and effective systems for evaluating teachers, and the prompt removal of those who do not measure up to the required standard. Such systems are not easy to develop but Unions know that unreasonable demands for a perfect system will ensure that nothing changes.

The current system merely ensures that raw union power is used for the benefit of poorly qualified teachers.

Meanwhile, our children suffer and that is wrong if not immoral.