Teachers have always been evaluated on an annual basis. In fact, I just signed my annual evaluation today. Administrators observe teachers formally several times a year, and informally more frequently.

Tenure for teachers is a complete joke. It is a flimsy ruse intended to protect teachers from the normal market pressures that everyone else in the economy is subject to. What exactly makes teachers so special, to warrant tenure as an entitlement that nobody else has? Nothing, absolutely nothing!

Humboldt's view of higher education was to create an environment that would be conducive to both teaching and research. The freedom of research, the close relationship between research and teaching, the integration of scholarship with practical application, and the pre-eminence of scholarship over specialized professional training are some of the principles of the Humboldtian tradition.

The concept of tenure has no relevance today. If you consider B-Schools as an example, tenure is often related to publishing in top-tier journals. How many managers read these journals and how many actually understand the terminologies used in them is anybody's guess. How often do we come across ground-breaking research? The answer is: not very often, not in the way we want it to, and not nearly to the extent that we want it to (Hartwig, 2007). Business practitioners argue that sometimes researchers get paid to state the obvious, and their studies do not really have any implications in the real world. Some of the most critical issues like the sub-prime mortgage crisis, high-profile bankruptcies, and pressing environmental issues have all been looked at from ivory towers rather than at the ground level.

Now the haloed accrediting body AACSB has recommended that business schools be required to demonstrate the impact of their faculties' research on real world problems and not just be restricted to achieve papers in "top" journals. If this is indeed implemented, how many accredited schools would be able to retain their accreditation? Not many I am afraid.

So much for the usefulness of the tenure system. The sooner we do away with it and have annual reviews as in any industry, the better it would be for everyone. Sure, some oversight would be necessary to check abuse. Let us not skirt a solution because the problem is too big. Or that too many vested interests are involved.

Teachers are not the only profession that enjoys tenure. Last time I checked judges are granted tenure, probably for many of the same reasons that teachers are.

Last night, a local high school principal reported that it costs $100,000 or more to remove a lousy tenured teacher from the classroom.

In every case, the teacher goes to the union, which brings in the lawyers, and the meter starts running. The principal is forced to fund making the case.

Kids are the casualties--either because of the lousy teacher, or the diversion of so much money from other school needs.

Tenure for teachers should be ended.

Our upper middle class high school was essentially run by a small group of parents who were able to dictate which administrators, teachers, and counselors had to leave.

Whoever said that the age of "capricious administrators and trustees" was in the past? The current proposal to evaluate teachers based "partly" on student test scores is one example of why teachers need tenure. Administrators would have to track the scores of every student in a class (for 2-3 years) to see if a teacher was not adequately meeting the educational needs of the students. This is a time consuming and labor intensive job. Most administrators just compare this year's total class score with those of the previous year. Furthermore, any teacher can be terminated if the administrator is willing to document the teacher for a period of two years, something that I have never seen!

Tenure should only be applied to professors who are conducting front line research. They should be permitted to conduct basic, rather than applied, research. If forced to adhere to bottomline concerns, such researchers would focus on how to make the pill easier to swallow than investigating new avenues that may or may not lead to the next breakthrough. They should be permitted to investigate avenues of research that politicians or certain religions may find offensive, things like evolution or round earths.

Just after WWII, the education 'industry' was in panic. Many returning vets were more qualified than old guys held over during the war, at least in chemistry, physics, and advanced math, we were more than a threat -- many of us demanded proper placement, but politics and a form of seniority doomed our careers. Fortunately, industries needed us, and most vets advanced rapidly. As a long-ago lab academic, I left teaching/mentoring, which i really enjoyed. I mentored several PhD candidates who followed me out the door to the surprise of cobwebbed dept. chairman, and university press. I have always felt tenure was a very questionable approach to maintaining a quality professional teacher corp. A comment on teacher who taught algebra, but was 'uncomfortable' teaching calculus. This indicates this teacher was underqualified to teach algebra as well. And these people cry for tenure, exactly my reason for my commentary. In public high school, i had a wonderful Latin teacher, who would every several years visit the Vatican to learn how ancient Latin was used in describing modern changes to life. ie, an automobile, airplane, a matchstick. WWII brought an end to her adventures. What a teacher! Now when I tell this story to prospective teachers I can usually tell by the reaction the individual who will be outstanding and exciting to their students. at least until the p.c. school systems destroy initiative. A teacher must always be learning, not stagnant. Yep, I am back to no on tenure

Tenure,originally, a supp to lower salaries than what most teachers could receive in the private sector, is long overdue for abolition. Along with merit pay, dismissal for poor performance,standards for promotion and graduation (of students) and vouchers as well as a charter school expansion are all needed to improve the education system. Simply throwing money at the problem will not solve it. Tenure in today's schools augurs for more of the same and does more for the teachers' unions than the teachers and certainly more for the teachers than the students.

Yes, it's possible for politics to affect decisions on hiring and firing teachers, but as in the business world, such decisions will eventually be overturned, while qualified teachers (like qualified employees) will always find work.

At the same time, unions have fought for rules so stringent that a tenured teacher is virtually impossible to remove. To say one can fire a tenured teacher is a fallacy. They've simply been protected from poor performance by their powerful and politically astute unions.

If you think the days of teachers needing protection from unfair firings from the administration are over, you may be in for a shock. I got to watch a teacher a few years ago lose his position after his third year. He was a young teacher, did a pretty good job, and was working his butt off all the time to get better. His evaluations were good and really there was no reason to fire him. At the end of the third year the superintendent released the teacher and brought in a new teacher to replace him. An old buddy of his. This guy was terrible. The kids hated him. He did an awful job and did not care about teaching at all. Guess what, he's still there. Oh, and he now has tenure. This crap would happen all the time if teachers aren't protected. People get fired from their "industry" jobs and jump into teaching until they're ready to retire, and do a terrible job the whole time. It pays to know a guy.

While the town could obviously just vote out the superintendent, they don't. They have no idea this crap is going on, so why would they vote him out?

Indeed there are tenured teachers enjoying their stay in public schools despite of their being incompetent. Administrators must make an effort in ensuring that teachers must be screened well; observation must be done before they gain the tenurity in this field. Principals must review the records of the tenured teachers in all public schools to make sure that they are still performing well. Seminars, trainings, and counselings must be given to nonperformer teachers and must be under a personal improvement program and will be evaluated again and will be judged accordingly.

Having been a pupil with tenured teachers, I think the students at the end of the year should have to evaluate all of their teachers. Many should not be near children as they are a bad influence. Tenure should go the way of the Dodo bird.

Teachers are a joke. Their salaries are too high for having 3 months a year off, plus all the holiday vacations during the year students get. Their pension is too much of a cake walk for people who have no stress in their lives and don't have a clue what a real days work is. I think Christie in NJ is doing a great job trying to get them to pay into their benefits as well, why shouldn't they? Only jobs where you are safe no matter how you perform, have the best benefits, and you can retire after 25 years with 80% of what you made in your final year. Joke! I think all teachers should have to spend a year getting chewed out in Corporate America because they definitely would not be able to handle it. I'm not saying there aren't good teachers and bad teachers, but the benefits used to be so extraordianary because their salaries were low. Now that they have climbed the ladder and reached median level income, their benefits should be truncated.

The school as a community is built on consistency. Keeping teachers from year to year enhances consistency and strengthens community. Threatening teachers with their jobs and firing teachers disturbs the consistency and hurts student well being and performance. I have noticed that the teachers who do not like teaching or are not good at it usually leave anyway.

If tenure attracts the best and brightest, why is our system failing?

Why should government employees whose earnings and benefits come from tax dollars be so well protected? When tax payers can be dismissed from their jobs or career so easily simply because of the economy. Secured jobs should be based on their performance and effective.

Up to high school I can count only 4 teachers that I thought were effective in my education. There were even fewer in college.

The sense of entitlement from many teachers is outrageous to me.

Tenure is a socialist entitlement that none of us in the private sector have or should have. If we do not produce and do not meet the needs of customers, then we are dismissed from our job and it impacts our carrier. Not so with tenure, which is why you have terrible teachers in classrooms that get moved from class to class and in some cases school to school. Schools continue to put out students that are not prepared to make it in this new competitive business environment.
The free market system is self-correcting in that those that provide good customer service at a good value succeed; those that do not add value and serve customers will fail. Failure is good for those that do not give their best or help others succeed, and drain finances because they have been around for a long time.

The truth is that our public school and university system is a joke in comparison with developing nations, because of the most powerful unions are the teacher unions and their tenure policy. We have Marxist professor after professor that is more interested in keeping their jobs and indoctrinating our children than helping build balanced, honest young people that want to make this country a better place than their parents left it to them.This is why private schools and home schooling are exploding in growth, because people realize the terrible education their children receive from the most expensive education system in the world. My wife is a teacher and we are both against tenure.

Why are the only options here (A) removing tenure completely, or (B) keeping it unchanged? I'm going with (C): Fix the system to make it easier to fire incompetent teachers while keeping the protections from nepotism/ageism/ideological prejudice/etc intact. In fact, there's a proposal in California right now suggesting just that!

RJ, private school teachers can also attain tenure. Thus, your argument that it's an entitlement "none of us in the private sector have" is incorrect.