I am a conservative teaching world history, economics, and government at a public high school.
It amazes me how the structure of pay in public education incentivizes poor performance because counselors and administrators will not direct high-achieving, nor students with disabilities to poor performing teachers because both groups require an enormous amount of effort and quality teaching.
In effect, many teachers are rewarded with general education students, whose interest is mediocre, and will tolerate the same type of instruction.
If there is a conservative case for tenure, it is to prevent hard working teachers who challenge their students with heavy work loads and the potential of lower student grades from administrators and counselors who simply want to prevent angry parent communications (via e-mail and voice mail).
It’s much easier to ‘go with the flow’, and collect your pay check with recycled worksheets than truly work at it, and get ‘rewarded’ with advanced students, general ed students, and students with disabilities.
Selective tenure may be the answer, but it still relies on administrators being competent, which is a big stretch for people who hated the classroom, but were attracted by the high pay, and minimal take-home work.
