July 17, 2008
USA Today Editorial: Teacher Protection Racket
New York City's school system is among the nation's leaders in trying to root out ineffective teachers. Under the aggressive leadership of Chancellor Joel Klein, here's what those efforts have reaped: In the 2006-07 school year, exactly eight teachers were fired for incompetence.
That's eight out of 55,000, or 0.01%. Each of those firings burned up an average 25 days of hearings and 150 hours of principal time. The cost to get rid of each bad teacher totaled $225,000.
It's no wonder most school districts don't even bother trying to oust incompetent teachers.
Superintendents have a hard enough time getting sex offenders and drunks out of the classroom. Yet more forceful efforts to weed out ineffective instructors are a key to making schools better.
Klein and other reformers agree that outstanding teachers are the single most important factor in turning around struggling schools. Years ago, researchers settled on effective teaching as the most powerful of education reforms. A child who has three good teachers in a row has a head start on success; three lousy teachers can trigger devastating consequences.
Despite these findings, firing burned out or incompetent teachers is considered next to impossible. Why? Largely because of the power of teachers' unions. New York state is typical. Years of inept contract bargaining at the district level matched by years of effective union lobbying produced a system where all the power lies with the accused teacher.
This imbalance isn't limited to states with teachers' unions. In non-union states, bureaucratic inertia creates a similar effect. In either case, the tragedy is that children get stuck with ineffective teachers.
The New Teacher Project, which studied Chicago's schools over several years and also interviewed principals from several states, found that administrators have little incentive to remove incompetent teachers. A bad teacher can also be a popular teacher, creating conflict. Given the time and effort required to process a bad teacher through the system, it's easier to encourage the poor teacher to transfer — which merely shifts the problem to someone else's classroom.
The researchers also found that performance evaluations can be meaningless. In Chicago, only three of every 1,000 teachers get an unsatisfactory rating. About 90% of teachers get the top ratings. If all these teachers are so great, why is Chicago one of the nation's most troubled urban districts?
Something needs to change. Unions have to realize that educating kids is more important than protecting inept members. Superintendents and principals have to be willing to take on battles they'd rather avoid. All sides can come together to build on current programs that use teacher peer groups to ease bad teachers out of the profession.
If politicians, teachers and administrators really believe in putting children first, they won't let the status quo continue.
