Changing attitudes toward tenure and post-tenure review models

Tenure

Changing Attitudes Toward and Approaches to Tenure

and the Emergence of Post-Tenure Review Models

The institution of tenure is designed to protect teachers against the various pitfalls of the educational profession, including political pressures, district resource shortfall and the host of other conditions which can threaten the stability of a teaching job. The acquisition of tenure for an individual instructor can provide an assurance of job security, a freedom to act according to more individualized educational premises and the opportunity to project long-term plans and expectations within the confines of the position. On the other hand, tenure also frequently acts to insulate veteran instructors from criticism, to protect them from accountability and to allow academic shortcomings or behavioral divergences to go unchecked. These conditions produce the difficulty encountered in this discussion, which addresses the pressing questions currently engaged by administrators over how best to approach perceived failures in this system. One of the popularly adopted but frequently criticized approaches to contending with this issue has been through the post-tenure review. This model holds the teacher up to a microscope even following the achievement of tenure with the expectation of assessing the qualifications and suitability of the teacher in question. However, this approach has also been regarded by many teachers in particular as a negative development which robs educational professionals of the security implied by tenure while simultaneously forcing teachers to appeal to specific expectations while pursuing professional goals. This can mean a detraction from curricular focus and can bear a stultifying effect on the creativity, energy and individuality which the teacher brings to the job.

The difficulty in resolving this issue of post-tenure review underscores the research endeavor hereafter, which is primarily concerned with the positive implications that this might bear on the effectiveness, accountability and consistency of educators as well as the negative implications which this could bear on job security, educational freedom and academic integrity. The literature review and discussion hereafter will touch on various related issues while attempting to resolve this ongoing debate with balance and sensibility.

Purpose of Research:

The concept of post-tenure review has become increasingly popular and, in the last decade, has also achieved widespread adoption. This is true in spite of the fact that teacher communities and educational researcher have by and large rejected the presumed value of associating performance review and penalty with the security implied by tenure. Therefore, the research here is intended to explicate in greater detail the position held by professors and educational researchers as it tends to generally discount the perceived value in post-tenure review. This purpose will be attended by various related discussions, particularly concerning the implications of tenure itself, the various institutional issues which have prompted the response suggested in post-tenure review and the counterpoint offered to the strenuous objection voiced by instructors. This discussion should produce recommendations for improvement in an area which most evidence will suggest is sorely in need of such.

Methodology:

There is a great deal of available literature on this subject, and much of it drawn from the universities themselves which are currently grappling with the issue. Therefore, the study here will be based on a review of available literature designed to illuminate and support the argument that post-tenure review is inherently destructive and that, furthermore, tenure is already a process which inherently holds professors and educators up to academic scrutiny. Therefore, the gathered literature will be selected with the intent to take on the rationale and imperatives which have allowed for the adoption of an inappropriately suited policy.

Literature Review:

Post-tenure review is a deeply controversial topic, particularly where teachers and educators are concerned. The bulk of literature on the subject denotes that while there has been a legitimate imperative to move toward some system which provides both accountability and improvement where tenured teachers are concerned, there also are a great many reasons to view the post-tenure review process with skepticism and, on the part of many teachers, hostility. This discussion points significantly to these sentiments amongst educators, teachers unions and various educational support groups, which collectively perceive post-tenure review as a direct threat to those things which tenure was designed to protect.

This is a perspective which is well-captured in the exhaustive discussion provided by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) (1999). Here, the largely negative light in which post-tenure review is cast tends to resonate with most educators and teachers. The AAUP contends that there are inherent misnomers which apply to post-tenure review and which render it a dubious process. Particular among them, the AAUP indicates that "lurking within the phrase are often two misconceptions: that tenured faculty are not already recurrently subject to a variety of forms of evaluation of their work, and that the presumption of merit that attaches to tenure should be periodically cast aside so that the faculty member must bear the burden of justifying retention." (AAUP 1999; 1) This is an aspect of the discussion to which we will return hereafter as it captures one of the core issues impacting perceptions and approaches taken to the review. Namely, there is a semantic importance to the manner in which language is used and discussion is shaped as we attempt to more fully understand that which teachers feel is at stake for them. This is to say that because most universities and school districts already provide some sort of performance review through which different incentives are at stake, the creation of more streamlined standards for post-tenure review suggests a higher level of oversight, micromanagement and evaluative scrutiny that lends to the impression of the administration's low confidence in teacher abilities. Moreover and most importantly, the explicit association made between the review and the concept of tenure suggests a connectivity between the consequences of the review and the security which the veteran teacher has essentially earned.

To reinforce this point-of-view, the AAUP also published within the context of this article a reflection on the original post-tenure perspective which it had authored in 1983. Here, there is a clear and aggressive set of objections raised which as a first point of order indicates that effective measures for review already exited which neither required nor justified the intensification of penalty to the extent of threatening tenure security. According to its own published account, "the Association believes that periodic formal institutional evaluation of each postprobationary faculty member would bring scant benefit, would incur unacceptable costs, not only in money and time but also in dampening of creativity and of collegial relationships, and would threaten academic freedom." (AAUP 1999; 1) Almost three decades hence, this remains very much the consensus from within the teaching community, where years of policy change have imposed even greater standardization and curricular streamlining upon educators and institutions by affiliating these with public financial incentives, the establishment of any condition threatening the security of teachers would be a great threat to professional excellence, personal dedication and institutional quality.

In spite of this fact, all indications are that the curricular streamlining of the last decade has coalesced with the administrative treatment of teachers. The politicized call for more aggressive post-tenure review policies has taken hold for the larger part throughout the educational community. And in spite of protests and the construction of compelling arguments to dispel its perceived value, post-tenure review is currently on the uptake. Indeed, according to Euben (2005), this is an increasingly common approach to evaluation and accountability where veteran educators are concerned. The Euben article denotes that "post-tenure-review policies are on the increase. By 2000, thirty-seven states had established some form of post-tenure review. Tenured faculty generally have not fared well in the few court challenges to post-tenure-review policies." (Euben 2000; p. 1) This is troubling as it compounds the fear on the part of educators that there may be no recourse to the dismissal of their security. Where tenure is explicitly undermined by the review process and where there yet exists little hope of mounting a successful legal challenge against the implications of a negative review, it is clear that those confidences earned by tenure are inherently diminished or dismissed. Today, this push continues in full throttle against the impulses of teachers and the arguments of educational researchers who perceive this is an obstacle to instructional effectiveness.

In addition to the negative impact which it is likely to have on the psyche and security of teachers, the streamlining of post-tenure review in higher education institutions also seems ill-suited and arbitrarily selected as a way to address institutional shortcomings and disappointments in the experience of the student. Indeed, Allen (2000) notes that "despite attempts by some critics of higher education to use tenure as a scapegoat for a plethora of institutional shortcomings, there is no persuasive evidence that tenured faculty aren't doing their jobs." (Allen 2000; p. 95) Rather, there is cause to argue that administrators have simply found in teachers the most immediate point of action where lagging student performances, shortfalls amongst schools in achieving academic aims and a rising higher education expense which has to an extent artificially empowered the student as a consumer rather than a pupil. In taking the approach that improvement in these areas can be achieved by establishing some form of post-tenure review, institutions are sending the signal that the blame for school-wide failures falls upon the teachers. A failure on the part of the institution to take this responsibility and the eroding of its confidence in its teachers promotes a deeply unhealthy context for academic freedom or creativity.

This is to say that such a policy is demonstrated by the present research to invoke a negative atmosphere for teachers and does not appear to be justified by any real or empirical evidence. Allen continues on to indicate that "nothing in the data on faculty workload and performance, gathered across all types of postsecondary institutions, suggests that faculty with tenure neglect reaching their students, rest on their laurels and no longer produce relevant research or scholarship, promote dangerous ideologies in the classroom or anywhere else, or act as stumbling blocks in decision-making." (Allen 2000; p. 95) Indeed, as we have proceed with the research process and literature review, it is unclear that any evidence has been provided to support the connection made in this policy between the presence of tenure and the need for institutional improvement. If a lack of accountability is emergent and appears connected to the issue of tenure, most universities appear to have taken on the policy based on perception and popular sway rather than based on the provocation based on empirical observation of professor performance.

Indeed, Allen is also troubled by the lack of thorough research before the rush to pass judgment on the concept of tenure. Where an array of institutional failures may be related to any number of social, economic, political or practical obstructions, the implementation of the post-tenure review tends to decontextualize teacher performance at the expense of the teacher. Allen expresses concern over this imbalance, indicating that "those who chide tenured faculty for failing to teach undergraduates effective neglect to inform us how this situation has come about. What specific organizational stimuli or conditions diluted the instructional performance of tenured faculty members? Which behavioral mechanisms and social processes where involved, under what conditions?" (Allen 2000; p. 99) the result is a disservice to both the instructors who have worked so hard to obtain their security and to the students who will continue to suffer a set of negative institutional conditions which have gone unacknowledged.

It is the former of these two points which perhaps most emphatically recommends the work by Allen as a definitive point of rejection for post-tenure review models. Indeed, Allen makes the compelling argument that tenure is by its original nature only awarded to those who have earned it by time, experience, positive review and an evasion of any negative review. This means that no small amount of personal sacrifice and professional dedication will have been entered into the acquisition of tenure, particularly if we are to invest so much confidence in the institution as to suggest that its capacity for review may be trusted. Where that is the case, it should be presumed that tenure is a status retaining of its positive professional implications. Therefore, to compromise the achievement of this status is categorically underhanded and contrary to the promise implied by the acquisition of tenure. For those teachers who have, by virtue of their lack of tenure in the early years of a developing career, falling by the axe of frequent lay-offs, the obstruction of this promise can be seen as particularly unfair. As Allen states it, "the academic career has always been fragile and risky for most of the professoriate. Faculty over the course of many years, invest disproportionate economic, psychological, and other resources to obtain their positions. They do so with little prospect of ever attaining the wealth that flows to professionals in more lucrative fields such as law or medicine -- regardless of their effort, merit, or productivity. Tenure is a small reward for many years against enormous practical odds to acquire a particular area of expertise." (Allen 2000; p. 96)

It is with this understanding that professors and educators as a whole are so emotionally driven to obstruct efforts and instituting post-tenure review. Specifically, in those contexts where such review is inherently reinforced by certain penalty systems, educator communities have voiced strenuous resistance to such change. This is demonstrated by the heated debate in any number of large university settings, where efforts at imposing post-tenure review tend to reveal unanimous professorial rejection. Indeed, Jaschick (2009) tells that "the University of Maryland at College Park found that out this month when the faculty considered a proposal that would have required annual reviews of tenured faculty performance, and would have allowed sanctions, including pay cuts for some professors who receive three consecutive years of negative reviews. The faculty overwhelmingly rejected the plan, seeing it as unnecessary, unfair and a diminishment of tenure." (Jaschik 2009; p. 1)

This underscores a view overwhelmingly held by professors and teachers. However, the view is challenged by a sense on the part of administrators that there is a need for some level of serious action in terms of improving the accountability and quality of instructors. Even more so, there is an indication in the available research that while failures may be institutionally or even socially constructed, the first line of contact for students is with the instructor. Therefore, to many students, the perceptions of institutional shortcoming or the diminished quality of curriculum and instruction will tend to be channeled to the instructor, even where blame may be more justifiably widespread. Still, in higher education, the paying status of the student does reflect some degree of power. This has been evidenced by the above-noted case at the University of Maryland, where "the leading public advocates for the plan were not administrators, but students. The leaders of both the undergraduate and graduate student governments both came out strongly for the plan, saying that students are more likely to have problems with tenured than non-tenured professors." (Jaschik 2009; p. 1)

This underscores what is a realistic concern of course, with the implications of an underqualified or unqualified professor to a student's education representing a real concern for most universities. And indeed, there is a need for individualized behavior on the part of professors to be monitored and controlled. For most university students, there is a perception that their future is at stake in this educational context and it would be unfair and unethical to allow poor professor accountability to compromise this opportunity. This is explicated in some university policies, which as an explicit statement in party to the establishment of post-tenure, may make note that "there are individual professors known to the campus community to be ineffective or otherwise non-meritorious in their teaching performance, and campus politics often prevent affirmative action for their remediation or separation." (CSSA 1996; p. 1) However, this is a decidedly negative point of entrance into the discussion on improving educational outcomes. Moreover, there is nothing in the above set of concessions which justifies affiliating the concept of tenure and a threat thereto with the prospect of improved educational performance.

Indeed, though the challenges imposed upon school districts based on the ineffectiveness of some instructors has had a negative impact on the perception of tenure in the public and political spheres, the approach taken by many advocates of post-tenure review is itself to be seen as greatly problematic. However, the research here conducted leads not just to critical regard for the post-tenure review model but also provides a number of guide-points for achieving reformation in this area of administration. Most positive recommendations in this are concern the provision of some form of continuing educational and professional development training as the chief objective of the post-tenure review process. To this end, a useful template is provided by any number of universities already engaged in efforts to improve the current approach taken. A positive example is found at San Jose State University, where post-tenure review is specifically acknowledged as a process centered on professional development rather than on evaluation and penalty. Accordingly, its official policy on the subject "is to provide a process whereby faculty performance is reviewed for the purpose of acknowledging, maintaining and improving a tenured faculty unit employee's performance. At San Jose

State University the emphasis in post tenure review will be on providing opportunities to take a proactive approach that will lead to an enhancement of professional practice, with a focus on faculty career paths and the professorial 'life cycle.'" (McNeil 1997; p. 1)

This is a focus which removes many of the stigmatizing implications of a negative review and the pressures of performing simply according to that which is monitored as a function of the review process. This not only changes the practical mode of the review but it also alters the psychological impact and general connotation thereby constructed. Under the conditions more commonly in place, there is a perception for many older teachers or for those who for various reasons which may be separate from personal qualification do not fare positively on post-tenure reviews, that these represent an approaching end-point in the career. This negative impression that the review represents a threat to the continuation of a career must be removed from the review process if it is to produce positive and permeating effects on a staff rather than to simply function as a process of weeding out instructors perceived as ineffective. As the San Jose State University policy denotes, "rather than following the traditional 'summative' model of faculty evaluation employed in the RTP process, faculty involved in post tenure review are to be provided the opportunity to participate in reflection about career development; the review is to be of a formative or prospective nature." (McNeil 1997; p. 1)

The emphasis here is on the review as instead representing a point of initiation into new and improving instructional practices and educational theories, taking the perspective that all teachers may be benefited by continued training and education within the field. Moreover, there is something of an implicit recognition in the text for the San Jose policy that evaluative post-tenure review processes will tend to be inherently negative, focusing on maintaining high academic standards by imposing implied or explicit penalties upon those failing to achieve certain review marks. The policy described here differs in that it explicitly makes note of the connotation intended by its review process, indicating a focus on extending confidence in its faculty rather than eroding it through the threatening process of performance evaluation. Accordingly, its policy denotes that "the purpose of post tenure review shall be to promote and maintain excellence in professional effectiveness. These reviews should be conducted in a positive atmosphere of constructive and beneficial communication between all involved. As based on these guidelines, the review of tenured faculty shall be conducted in such a way as to protect the principle of academic freedom in conformity with American Association of University Professors' policies of academic freedom and due process and the right of each faculty member to such protection." (McNeil 1997; 2) This makes direct address to the areas in which post-tenure reviews have fallen short both practically and ethically in serving the shared interests of teacher, student and institution. Quite to the point, there is a great deal more benefit to be had in harnessing the abilities and experience of veteran educators through continuing training and professional development rather than in threatening the stability of their contributions.

Further investigation to the importance of connotation and implication in such a discussion is provided in compelling exchange on the subject engaging the president of Michigan University in 1997. Here, President Bollinger was quoted in a debate over the subject of post-tenure review and the choice of language offered by the university president was both compelling and spelled out a ringing endorsement for the security and protection of his teachers and teachers in general. To the perception expressed by Bollinger, post-tenure review policies are a reactionary and ineffective way of using instructors as a way of scapegoating broader institutional and educational failures. His strongly worded statement also implies that the very idea of couching performance review in the tenure construct is to threaten the element of the profession designed to provide security. It is thus that Bollinger indicates "first of all I have spoken out publicly in favor of tenure. I have a variety of reasons for this position. It was my sense as a faculty member that we've always had post tenure review. I certainly felt, as a faculty member, that I was under review and never felt for a minute that if I decided I'd rather not publish or rather not teach my classes, or did not do either of these very well, that I could make that choice without facing the consequences." (SACUA 1998; p. 1)