Haley Dallas

Features Editor

   “You’ve got tenure; you pretty much have to kill someone to get fired.” That’s essentially what having tenure means. Every teacher dreams of it, the security, the guaranteed paycheck, the carefree summer, the bliss of tenure. The students love when their favorite teachers just keep coming back year after year. But what happens when a terrible teacher tenures…what then? What happens to the students, the expectations, the learning?

    Teachers must sign a contract at the beginning of each year for their jobs. The non-tenured teachers of Lone Oak High School are evaluated four times a year and have a summative evaluation at the end of every year. All evaluations are conducted by an administrator but only Brian Harper may conduct the summative evaluation of all teachers. After having taught four consecutive years, teachers who are offered a fifth contract are considered tenured. Tenured teachers are evaluated once a year and have a summative evaluation once every four years. That is a big difference in evaluation time for just making it through four full years of teaching! It seems to be nearly the same as grading students in 1st through 4th grades on everything, and then in 5th grade using one assignment as the basis for a yearly grade. Evaluation time shouldn’t be cut just because a teacher has been doing it right for a certain amount of time. Why not make the number of evaluations consistent for tenured and non-tenured teachers to maintain quality instruction and continue checking up on those teachers that may be slacking in their tenured bliss?