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New Study Shows That Firing Bad Teachers Hasn't Gotten Much Easier
Topic Started: Dec 22 2016, 07:11 AM (313 Views)
Pat
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This is bad news, the parents and students are not made aware of teachers that districts are trying to fire. So the student ends up in a classroom with inferior instruction. The taxpayers and students keep getting punished by the failings of public education and their unions.


New Study Shows That Firing Bad Teachers Hasn’t Gotten Much Easier

December 21, 2016 5:05 PM @P_CROOKSTON

A new study from the Fordham Institute elucidates the central challenge of reforming public schools: Bad teachers are extremely hard to fire. This has been a widely recognized problem for some time, but this study demonstrates how thick regulations create unfeasible “due process” requirements that in practice serve as a shield allowing terrible teachers to stick around. The group’s research showed that tenure in particular “protects ineffective veteran teachers from performance-based dismissal.”

Given that tenure is conferred automatically on teachers after only a few years in most states, its benefits fall on many undeserving teachers. Administrators face serious obstacles in the firing process. They are usually required to do more observations than are necessary, and even after rating a teacher “ineffective,” they often must place them in remediation before removing them.

Students suffer when they are stuck with poor teachers, yet everything tends to be stacked against enforcing serious teaching standards. As the authors discuss in the study’s introduction, President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative was intended to help solve this problem by providing grants to schools that adopted new teacher-evaluation policies, but “the return on that investment to date has been underwhelming.” The amount of teachers rated ineffective has increased only slightly since Race to the Top was implemented.

In a majority of the districts studied, the process for removing an ineffective teacher takes over a year, with many taking two or more. Los Angeles and San Francisco have a process that takes a minimum of five years. It is hard to imagine a human endeavor succeeding where ineffective participants must be paid and retained for five years. Tenured teachers can challenge negative evaluations “on virtually any grounds” in many districts, making the termination process “unreasonably protracted,” write the authors. They argue that existing public schools are not beyond saving. They suggest that reformers “commit to taking the tenure process seriously, rather than rubber stamping every eligible teacher for approval” and explain how this has been done in some New York City schools, where teachers immediately granted tenure fell from 94 percent to 56 percent.

Such reforms are welcome, but they usually run into roadblocks from unions and stubborn regulators. In the face of data showing how difficult it is to make modest improvements to existing schools, it is easy to understand why reformers usually choose a different course. Charters, private-school vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and other school-choice measures put freedom into families’ hands when excessively regulated district schools won’t. Change often depends on getting past regulations to produce results. If the simple act of firing a failing teacher can take five years, why would anyone seeking to effect change sign up to lead a traditional school?

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/443262/ineffective-public-school-teachers-proving-difficult-fire-due-regulations
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colo_crawdad
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I can only speak for the Dist4rict in whilch I have spent 53 years. If a principal does his job removing a poor or bad teacher is not a problem nor a difficult task. In fact, as a union representative, I have assisted in such removals.
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Neutral
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Can you document how many teachers in your district have been removed in 53 years?
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Pat
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colo_crawdad
Dec 22 2016, 08:02 AM
I can only speak for the Dist4rict in whilch I have spent 53 years. If a principal does his job removing a poor or bad teacher is not a problem nor a difficult task. In fact, as a union representative, I have assisted in such removals.
It says here Colo--quote:

"In a majority of the districts studied, the process for removing an ineffective teacher takes over a year, with many taking two or more. Los Angeles and San Francisco have a process that takes a minimum of five years. It is hard to imagine a human endeavor succeeding where ineffective participants must be paid and retained for five years."

Do you recall how long the process takes in your district?
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Berton
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I don't understand why "tenure" is bestowed because of the number of years a teacher has been on the job. It would seem to me that it should only be given to teachers who are outstanding in their job.

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Jim Miller
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It took very little time to document and prove a case to get rid of a drunk from our staff. Probably less than a month. Otherwise, it takes more time to observe and document cases of teacher ineffectiveness to get rid of a bad teacher. Certainly not a year or two. Most of all it depends on whether the administration wants to go through the effort required by contract to get rid of a teacher. Without tenure even good teachers could be eliminated for no other reason than their superior doesn't like them. I have heard of an administrator getting rid of a second year teacher who was doing a good job because the administrator had a relative that just graduated and needed a job. At one time there was a great need for tenure laws, probably not so much anymore. It is much easier to transfer a bad teacher out, for example, from a high school down to the junior high schools.
Edited by Jim Miller, Dec 22 2016, 11:38 PM.
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Berton
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Quote:
 
It is much easier to transfer a bad teacher out, for example, from a high school down to the junior high schools.


That is not a good idea either.

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Neutral
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That is a terrible idea I think.
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Jim Miller
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No, it sure isn't a good idea but it is a whole lot easier than attacking the problem. The other alternative is to kick them upstairs. Education is a great place to exercise the Peter Principle.
Edited by Jim Miller, Dec 22 2016, 11:44 PM.
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How about give them another chance with close supervision and then kick them out of teaching? This sounds like what the Catholics do, if they find a pedophile priest they move him somewhere else.
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