Letters to the Tribune on Their "Fire 'em" Editorial.

This is regarding the Dec. 9 editorial “Protecting mediocre teachers,” which ended with, “ . . . (T)here is no compelling reason to keep the tenure system in public schools. It doesn’t protect good teachers. It protects incompetent ones.”

There is a glaring problem with your argument. While you cite considerable evidence for your conclusion that the system protects incompetent teachers, you provide none that it fails to protect competent ones. To make that case you would have had to show that we have such fair and discerning politicians in Illinois that we no longer need to fear that, if they could, many would use their positions to threaten the jobs of competent teachers who criticize and otherwise distress them. That, as you indicate earlier in the editorial, was the reason for legislating tenure in the first place. Nothing printed in your paper in recent months—or even years—would suggest that such is the case.

Please, the next time you decide to editorialize about our educational system, try to remember what you were taught in school that so many today seem to have forgotten: Conclusions based on evidence tend to be more compelling than those that are not.

Robert Suchner
DeKalb



I read with great interest your Dec. 9 editorial advocating the elimination of tenure for public school teachers.
Although it is difficult to disagree with the contention that retaining incompetent teachers is a problem, the editorial fails to address an important issue: Who defines incompetence?

Is it a principal who has never taught a particular discipline and has no idea how to evaluate teachers in a specific subject area? Is it a department chair so firmly rooted in traditional pedagogy that he or she rejects cutting-edge methodology? Is it a school board or local school council, often made up of people who have not set foot inside a classroom since they took their last class as students? Is it the Illinois State Board of Education, an organization in such disarray that the governor saw fit to take it over and completely restructure it?

The reason such safeguards as tenure are in place is because no one has clearly delineated effective criteria by which a teacher’s ability may be judged.

Furthermore the editorial states, “The Illinois tenure system was created 64 years ago, ostensibly to protect veteran educators against political reprisal by their bosses. Today, though, tenure seems to protect only mediocrity."
Anyone who thinks that political reprisal and economic expediency would not rear their ugly heads without the protection of tenure is disingenuous.

An 18-year veteran of private schools who now teaches in a public high school, I have seen firsthand what can happen to unprotected teachers who speak their minds and/or reach a point at which they are deemed too expensive to retain. In private schools it is euphemistically called “non-renewal of contract.”

It is easy to sit in a cubicle in the Tribune Tower, to examine school report cards, to determine that tenure is a bad idea and to write an opinion piece suggesting the removal of tenure protection for the state’s public school teachers. It is a bit more challenging to get the facts. I would suggest that the writer of the piece do a bit more “homework” before expounding further on the topic.

Michael Conroy
Chicago