Now many of you have been lead to believe that once a teacher or a professor receives tenure they have that position for life.
That is not true. All tenure gets you is a level of due process that you did not have before. For the first three years of teaching, I could be let go on the spot, and I, and everyone else in my system had to prove in our first three years that we were worthy of being a teacher in our system. Once we accomplished that we were given tenure, and from then on, we had to meet yearly goals and proper evaluations.
If at anytime after we received tenure an administrator felt that we were not doing right by the school or our students, they could call us in and give us a warning. Most likely the first one being a verbal one without a letter in our file. The second infraction would result in a letter and a time period to show change, and so on. This was all spelled out in our system-wide contract. Our teacher's association would make sure that the contract was followed, but they did not support our position other than our right to due process.
I believe this is how most employees are treated when they have a union contract, so when they go after teachers and/or professors for having tenure, know that all that means is they have the right to due process that a person without tenure does not have.
During my thirty three years of teaching many teachers in my system with tenure were let go, and most teachers supported this because we did not want teachers that did not perform well for our students in our school. Our kids were too important for that to happen, but it was the administrators that failed the students more than the teachers because it was their job to weed out the poor teacher or help them improve.
So know that tenure is not what you have been told.