Tenure Protects Good Teachers from Bad People

Another positive of tenure in K-12 public education is that it helps to insulate teachers from being dismissed because of political pressures.  Since all the public school divisions here in Virginia are managed by a board of individuals who are either elected or appointed by people who are elected, there exists the possibility that teachers could be fired for teaching or acting in a way that those school board members do not approve of.  A possible example of this is if you had an overly conservative school board which made it a point of trying to fire teachers who were registered and active in a more liberal political party.  Tenure provides an additional layer of protection from the political process. 

Another way in which tenure offers protection to teachers is from administrators who hold some kind of grudge against an individual.  With tenure, good teachers would be more protected from abritrary firings if a bad principal came along or from an overly emotional principal.  One could argue that this helps to keep good teachers in a school division even in a principal is not so good.

The final bad person that tenure protects teachers from, are parents.  Because teachers are typically responsible for a wide range of students, the odds of coming across a parent who disagrees with the teacher or their methods are pretty good.  Tenure provides an additional protection to teachers from parents who might make a considerable protest in an attempt to remove a teacher that they don't agree with or like.

What do you think about these arguments?  Do they make sense?   

Coming up next, the negatives of tenure.  Thanks for reading.