New reports show teachers nationwide are allowed to continue teaching, or are paid not to teach, after being found guilty of misconduct. Expensive, difficult, union-mandated rules prevent them from being dismissed.
Over the course of a two-year investigation culminating in mid-December 2007, Florida’s Herald Tribune newspaper uncovered what likely is the tip of an iceberg–a confidential, nationwide list of 24,500 teachers who have been punished for a wide array of offenses.
The list, gathered and maintained by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC), does not tell why the teachers were disciplined, but criminal convictions, insubordination, sexual misconduct, and student abuse are common causes for such actions.
Unfortunately, where abusive and incompetent teachers are concerned, the system is rigged against victims–that is, students.
Many Obstacles
The major obstacle to obtaining a complete picture of the widespread scope of teacher incompetence and misbehavior is that such information in almost all states is considered confidential either by state regulation or local school board policy. The only exceptions are Florida, Ohio, South Carolina, and Vermont.
Any such information in NASDTEC files has come from school districts on a voluntary basis, with the promise that it will remain confidential. In almost every state, there is no practical way to find out how many unsatisfactory teachers remain in classrooms, how many of the offending teachers have been transferred to no-student-contact jobs, or how many have been allowed to resign with a clean record (to avoid prolonged, politically risky, and expensive dismissal procedures) only to be hired in other school districts.
According to the Herald Tribune investigative report, “Broken Trust,” more than 750 Florida teachers have been punished for misconduct toward students over the past 10 years. At least 150 from that group are still teaching today.
Buyouts, Rubber Rooms
Another investigation, published in late December by the Detroit Free Press, found dozens of tenured teachers in the metro area were unfit to stay in the classroom but were paid to resign and had allegations of impropriety and incompetence removed from their records.
A quarter of these bought-out teachers went on to teach in other districts, likely without their new employers being aware of prior allegations.
In the fall of 2007, more than 500 New York City teachers, assistant principals, and principals had records so dismal they were deemed unfit for any school and were placed in a dozen reassignment rooms, often referred to as “rubber rooms,” where they idle away their time on full salaries and benefits while waiting to enter or complete a dismissal procedure rendered endless and unworkable by union contracts.
Rigged System
In his award-winning series on “The Hidden Costs of Tenure,” investigative reporter Scott Reeder of the Small Newspaper Group, which publishes three newspapers in Illinois, revealed just how tough it is to discover what happens to incompetent teachers in that state.
Reeder told me about the frustration of obtaining information that should be easily accessible to the public. He was forced to lodge 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests with various government agencies and interview hundreds of educators, union officials, and experts. This is not a user-friendly procedure for the average citizen.
Shocking Cover-Up
One of Reeder’s big discoveries was that procedure trumps everything when it comes to dismissing an incompetent tenured teacher. The slightest deviation from a meaningless bureaucratic procedure can lose a case–resulting in another incompetent teacher remaining in the classroom.
It’s also very expensive. Because of due process requirements, complicated by union contract impediments, one dismissal can cost a school district $100,000 to $400,000. That’s why so many districts decide to leave incompetent teachers in the classroom or buy them off with a promise of a clean record if they resign.
Reeder found in the previous 19 years, 94 percent of the 876 school districts in Illinois have never even attempted to fire any tenured teacher. And of every 930 evaluations of tenured teachers, only one resulted in an “unsatisfactory” rating–without which there can be no dismissal.
Richard G. Neal ([email protected]) writes from North Carolina.
For more information …
“Broken Trust,” by Chris Davis, Matthew Doig, and Tiffany Lankes, Herald Tribune, December 19, 2007: http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=news12
“Paid off, they simply move,” by Peggy Walsh Sarnecki, Detroit Free Press, December 30, 2007: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20071230/news06/712300593/1007/news05
“Rubber Rooms, NYC’s Holding Pens for Nonteaching Teachers,” by David W. Kirkpatrick, EdNews.org, May 10, 2007: http://www.ednews.org/articles/11315/1/quotRubber-Rooms-NYCs
“The Hidden Costs of Tenure,” by Scott Reeder, Small Newspaper Group, December 2005: http://www.thehiddencostsoftenure.com
