Steven Brill in The New Yorker:
It’s a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.
These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.
The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.
“You can never appreciate how irrational the system is until you’ve lived with it,” says Joel Klein, the city’s schools chancellor, who was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg seven years ago.
But that’s only a symbol of what reformers think is the larger problem: namely that virtually no one is ever fired for poor job performance after their three-year probationary period is up and they have tenure.
“In seven years [...] unsatisfactory ratings for tenured teachers have risen from less than one per cent to 1.8 per cent. “Any human-resources professional will tell you that rating only 1.8 per cent of any workforce unsatisfactory is ridiculous,” [Dan] Weisberg says.”
Is this prima facie evidence that the system isn’t working? Based on my experience, I’d say yes. On the other hand, I’d also say that, at least in the places I’m familiar with, virtually everyone who got fired was let go within the first year or two they were with the company. Very few who had been around for more than three years got fired. On the third hand, occasional layoffs often provided excuses to get rid of poor performers, so perhaps that shrank the pool of people who would otherwise have eventually been axed.
People who blame the teacher’s union for every single thing that is wrong in urban schools are way off the mark. But the fact remains that this shouldn’t happen. The union shouldn’t protect teachers who pass out drunk in their classroom. Hearings should not take a year to go through. People should not collect paychecks for doing nothing, simply because they’re too awful to keep teaching. This is madness. If Barack Obama is serious about changing this ridiculous reality, he will do wonders for his party, and maybe even for education.
Read the entire article and it will become clear that this is a system totally devoted to protecting teachers, whether they be incompetent or criminal. The amount of documentation and time required of a principal to try to get rid of such teachers is so onerous that only the very worst are in this situation. The interests of children are not of any concern to the union. Other school systems don’t have rubber rooms. Other businesses can get rid of incompetent employees. And with the damage done to children who spend even one year in an incompetent teacher’s classroom shouldn’t we err on the side of the children rather than on the side of the accused teachers?
UPDATE: Dana Goldstein in Tapped:
All that said, the Brill piece, in its relentless depiction of teachers as bad guys and principals and administrators as good guys, leaves readers with a few misconceptions. It highlights no examples of excellence in teaching, while admitting that only 1.8 percent of New York teachers have been rated “unsatisfactory.” Brill also gives the impression that the Obama administration, under Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, maintains an attitude of pure confrontation with teachers’ unions. In fact, the White House has been careful to formulate policies that can earn at least begrudging acceptance from Randi Weingarten, the most influential national teachers’ union leader, and a villain in Brill’s piece. The latest example of such compromise lies in the fine print of the “Race to the Top” education reform grant guidelines: States whose applications include a signed statement of support from a union leader will earn a leg up in the process.
From a public relations perspective, the appearance of this article is certainly disastrous for teachers’ unions. A lot of influential people read The New Yorker, people who may not bother to learn more about the nuances of education policy. And those readers have just been treated to a scathing — though incomplete — review of teacher contracts and the state of urban education.
UPDATE #2: Conor Friedersdorf at American Scene
UPDATE #3: Jennifer Medina at NYT
Sonny Bunch at Doublethink
UPDATE #4: Jennifer Medina at NYT
Pingback: What We’ve Built Today « Around The Sphere
Pingback: What We’ve Built This Weekend « Around The Sphere