When it comes to education, one issue in particular comes to everyone’s minds: tenure.

Whether you are in support or in opposition to tenure, people have very strong opinions of this process, which is said to protect bad teachers.

However, the simple fact is the general public has a limited understanding of what teacher tenure is or what it does.

A poll by Time published in September 2010 shows even Time is confused by the tenure process. They asked participants, “Do you support or oppose tenure for teachers, the practice of guaranteeing teachers lifetime job security after they have worked for a certain amount of time?” Sixty-six percent of people said that they oppose tenure.

But according to Kevin Hart of the National Education Association, “Tenure does not guarantee teachers a job, but instead mandates that due process be followed before tenured teachers are dismissed.”

Unlike a private corporation where success is measured by the amount of money an employee makes for the company, there is still no definite way to determine the efficacy of teachers.

The answer is tenure. Since there is no valid way to measure teachers, we have two options: Either we can fire any teacher no matter the reason or we can put in a tenure process to ensure there is a reason to terminate.

I will admit that there are problems with the current tenure process; however, they lie within the execution aspect.

“Bad teachers can be weeded out much quicker before gaining tenure. School officials need to use this time window appropriately,” said Erik Kain of Forbes.com.

I think he hit the nail on the head.

Those are very good points. Administrators do not navigate the tenure system well enough to fire bad teachers before they are tenured. In fact, Hart said an untenured teacher can be fired at any time for any reason.

This makes me skeptical of administrators who complain about not being able to fire incompetent teachers.

It’s not the process that is flawed; it’s the execution of that process.

But getting rid of teacher tenure is not the answer. Kain said tenure protects more expensive teachers (veteran teachers) from being replaced simply because they are contracted to have a higher salary.

That means tenure protects teachers with more experience in the field.

So the tenure process does not protect bad teachers, but rather protects good ones. Unless you want our teachers to come straight out of college with little experience, tenure needs to stay.

Teachers who ask to keep tenure are not asking for a guaranteed job but just the guarantee that they won’t be fired without a reason.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.