Educational Reform

I think that a major step in educational reform should be getting rid of the tenure position at schools. I feel for the most part or at least at my school some of the worst teachers are the so called "veterans" of the teaching world. They can be terrible teachers but are protected at there job because they have taught for a while. On the other hand, some of the best teachers at our school are veteran teachers also. This proves to me that even when you have been teaching for a lone time you can still be an excellent teacher or a terrible teacher. I feel like we are one of the only professions where if you are bad at your job you can still keep it if you have been teaching for a long time. In most jobs if you begin to slack off at your job you get the boot but not in teaching. I also feel that many people who cannot cut it in their first professions end up in teaching because of the job security and this is how you end up with a ton a terrible teachers working. If this tenure position was thrown out and a performance pay system was set up I believe you would be able to get rid of bad teachers and retain and pull in better teachers who can actually help our students. Why shouldn't we go to a performance pay style. In any other job when you are good at your job you can get raises but in teaching it is highly dependent on how long you have taught for. I believe we should be able to pay good teachers very well and the bad ones lower as this may create an environment where teachers try very hard to help thier students. I feel that sometimes teachers good or bad get lazy in teaching but if thier pay could be tied to how well they are doing I think it would create a more competetive environment at the schools.