Education is the Only Field

where people think, just because they have been a student or have kids in school, they are experts. And if they are actors or other non-educators who just happen to be well-known, we are supposed to take their ill-informed or outright ignorant opinions as gospel.

Someday people will understand public school "tenure" isn't in any way similar or identical to college and university tenure; the latter is an arduous process with a guaranteed lifetime job at the end of seven years of service, and many people don't receive it. University tenure is decided by a panel, not by one individual as in public education (the principal), and, if a college instructor is denied it, it doesn't kill his or her career, unlike teaching in a public school. Public school "tenure" is merely the right to have a rigged hearing if a vindictive or unscrupulous principal or other administrator wants to get rid of you. If the principal screws up, as mine did, the district will rig the proceedings--supposedly legal proceedings which in theory the "award" can be appealed to a higher court--by committing criminal acts in order to protect the negligent, vindictive, or incompetent principal. Principals, on the other hand, are almost never gotten rid of unless they are caught committing crimes. Then it makes the news. Remember, principals also have unions.