The Bottom Line
Most teachers absolutely deserve to keep their jobs and some have begun to speak out about the absurdity of teacher tenure, but it’s impossible to pretend that the number of firings actually reflects the number of bad teachers protected by tenure. As long as union leaders possess the legal ability to drag out termination proceedings for months or even years — during which time districts must continue paying teachers, substitute teachers to replace them, and lawyers to arbitrate the proceedings — the situation for students will not improve.
Even Al Shanker, the legendary former president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted, “a lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent.”