And this is in addition to the two suits that were filed by TEA last year on behalf of Knox County teachers.

The significance of the newer suits is that they are raising significant 14th Amendment equal protection issues and addressing the most significant, to my mind, design flaw in the TEAM evaluation system--basing 25% of a teacher's evaluation on TVAAS data from students that the teacher does not teach.

It appears you don't know much about tenure, how it works, and why it exists. Tenure is not about just "keeping the oldest people." It's a right to due process. That's all. And it takes years to earn tenure (see "probationary period.").

Tenure is, put simply, the right of an instructor (teacher, professor, etc) not to be terminated without just cause. That's it. You can't be fired or let go without an appropriate reason, and that reason can include being incompetence or unprofessional conduct. But again, you are protected by an open process, not one person's whim.

The purpose is to guarantee the right to academic freedom. It protects teachers and researchers when their opinion differs from the personal opinions of their administrator (principal, department head). Otherwise, the administrator could decide they don't like a teacher and run them out, or pressure the teacher or researcher to change their methods, or in the case of a researcher, bend their data to reach an incorrect conclusion. It allows more original ideas and TEACHING METHODS to be developed, which is a good thing.

That being said, even with tenure (and tenure in public schools isn't the same as a university tenure), there are tactics a principal can use to run out a teacher. But with tenure, the teacher gets more warning time, and can react to protect themselves from a personal vendetta. As one teacher put it:

Tenure only means that they must give us due process before firing us here and that they cannot fire us for doing something that someone else did and was not fired for. For example, last year I was written up for taking a cell phone from a student (I had an easy grab as she tried to pull it away without even touching her) yet we have a teacher in the building who not only takes the cell phone in the manner which I did, she texts the student's friends about how they are sitting in class not paying attention or reads their texts. She's a darling of the principal so nothing is said. She's done this for years. The kids know she does it. In my case, after I never took a cell phone again and then it was noted that I didn't police cell phone use in my classes. Once I tenure, they can't do this to me. All I have to do is find another teacher who either takes cell phones or doesn't police cell phone use and the union is going to ask "Why didn't you write them up?".

However, tenure does not stop them from firing me. They can still give me incompetent ratings because it's my word against my evaluator. It will take them three years to fire me that way. Year one, I'd have to go on an improvement plan. Years two and three it would have to shown that I did not improve enough and then I would be dismissed. Tenure also means they have to give me a chance to fix the problem. It does not mean that I have a job for life. It has never meant that we have jobs for life. It means we are owed due process before being fired. It means we can't be fired for something others do who are not fired for it and it means I'm owed a chance to fix the problem after I'm notified of the problem before being fired.