There are only a few institutions which use tenure as a replacement for high salaries.  Granting tenure to teachers is the favorite target of those who believe that the market place should be the measure of a teacher's ability.  Some teachers are well-liked either by disposition or by plot in order to achieve tenure.  In my time as a public school teacher, new teachers waited for the axe to fall when announcements of next year's appointments or granting of tenure would be made.  I was granted tenure twice, once as a public school teacher in Newark where I taught for twelve years and the second as an Associate Professor in Monmouth College, raised to that high level when tenure was granted after years as an Assistant Professor who had not yet received his doctorate.  I got the tenure, the doctorate and the Associate rank at the same time.

Now, I have marched on picket lines demanding rights for teachers and was the President of the Teacher's Union we started at Monmouth College because of the Byzantine methods of appointments to higher ranks and there being no sensible system of raises for teaching.  I was told many years ago that teaching pay was so low was because you were on a schedule for automatic raises over the years.  That sounded a bit off but everyone swore that it was a fair system.  Despite my being told I was a good teacher regularly and once marked as a "crack" teacher by a principal who was neither good nor principled, no one recommended me for a bonus.

My understanding about tenure was that you were granted being left alone to just teach.  You didn't need to publish or perish as many of my colleagues and I thought was fine for those who could research and write.  I got my full professorship when I had a paper published and went to an international congress on Utopian Studies. For others it was who you knew rather than performance.

But, this business of tenure should not be abandoned as many are suggesting with differing plans for recertification and bonuses and such.  Everyone is in a hissy fit over poor teaching and because tenure "protects" them, they are principal targets in times like these.  I would like to explain why tenure does not protect poor teachers who, while having tenure, CAN BE ELIMINATED.

Tenure simply says it is granted until taken away FOR CAUSE.  A case has to be made to prove the teacher is so poor that he and she will be removed - IF the case is made and proven AND the teacher has the right to make a case for him or her to be retained.  I have participated in a case Monmouth made against a professor who absolutely disqualified himself.

Get rid of the sycophants who know how to snuggle up to power.  Get rid of teachers whose students complain year after year.  It should not take that long.  But, in each case, a cause must be stated and, like in a court procedure, evidence for and against must be provided by both sides.  Vendettas against union organizers and complainers about the abuses of Administrations should be well known by the general public as the way some educational systems police themselves.

I would hope that inoffensive and not particularly energetic but knowledgeable teachers would be left alone to teach as best they can.  No matter how much they raise teacher's pay nor how many bonuses are promised you cannot make the meek and mild act like tigers all the time in activist classrooms.  Then, too, it is the student who must perform to earn the grades that are still with us.  The onus is on them, not the teachers.  Teachers assign A and B to learn and the students must show they have mastered A and B. Grading teachers and schools on how they grade is absurd.

Leave teaching to teachers not lawyers in political office and raise the standards both for teachers and what students must show they have mastered.