Giving Compass' Take:

• The Red for Ed movement encourages educators and community members to speak out for better teacher pay, school funding and now tenure protections. 

• Why are tenure protections for teachers important to maintain teacher stability and retention? What will happen if protections become limited?  

• Read more about the teacher strikes to better understand what is going on and how to help. 

The Red for Ed movement has prompted educators to rise up and speak out for fair wages and fair school funding from West Virginia to Arizona, and now, across the country.

After enduring decades of resource-starved classrooms and falling wages, educators are saying enough is enough. They are marching and running for political office for the sake of their schools, colleagues, communities and — most important — for their students.

Teacher job protections — commonly called tenure — play a critical role in ensuring that when we fulfill our role as advocates and leaders, we cannot be pushed out of our jobs.

They are speaking out because they can’t keep working second and third jobs to make up for paychecks that don’t pay the bills. They’re speaking up because they can’t inspire students to love learning when they are forced to teach to a standardized test. They can’t cultivate tomorrow’s thinkers, leaders and artists when schools aren’t providing basic supplies necessary to excite students’ creativity. They can’t create the learning environments students deserve with 25-year-old textbooks, 30-plus students to a class, and dilapidated buildings that lack heat, air conditioning and clean air, let alone modern technology.

But the facts about tenure are simple. Tenure protections — the scope of which vary — simply provide protection and a process for ensuring that good teachers are not fired for bad reasons. Unfortunately, there are many examples of this.

At the end of the day, tenure protections should be preserved because they are good for our students and our communities. Now that many states are repealing or limiting tenure, it is critical that we renew our commitment to it. We need to recognize that just as we ask our teachers to have our students’ backs, we must have theirs.

Read the full article about tenure protections for teachers by Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Michael Graham  at InsideSources