Did you have a chance to see John Stossel’s 20/20 special on this subject?
Chris - 09:02am on 02/15/2006
From the article, Hundreds of teachers the city calls incompetent, racist, or dangerous have been paid millions.
And what do they do while they get paid? They sit in rubber rooms.
They’re not really made of rubber, of course. They are big, empty rooms where they store the teachers they are afraid to let near the kids. The teachers go there and sit, hang around, read magazines, and waste time. The city pays $20 million a year to house teachers in rubber rooms.
Remember this the next time someone comes along (like Oliver Willis) saying that education is not "fully funded" while spewing idiotic mutterences that conservatives are "anti-education". Point them to this article.
likwidshoe - 10:02am on 02/15/2006
What’s even scarier is that large companies are getting the same kind of difficulty in firing people for cause. Due to the threat of lawsuits (with or without unions), many large companies fail utterly to get rid of vile or poorly performing employees, or take months/years to do so.
Robert Perry - 10:02am on 02/15/2006
Mutterences can’t find that anywhere, are you really a teacher in disguise?
richard - 11:02am on 02/15/2006
Here, it’s not just in contracts, it’s in the law. Teachers contracts are automatically renewed by law. I often joke that it takes a teacher killing someone to get rid of him/her and even then, I would suspect that it’s hard. Teachers are bureaucrats in the classic, nastiest sense of the word. Their ultimate goal is a system where they cannot be fired no m,atter what and get paid 12-moths salary for 9-months work.
Steve L. - 11:02am on 02/15/2006
The really unfortunate thing is NOT how difficult it is to fire a teacher like this. I was an administrator. A guy like this will wind up in the "rubber room" where he will get paid for years but can do very little damage.
The bad news is that it is almost impossible to get rid of a teacher who is simply incompetent. The union years ago got an arbitrator to rule that the word "mediorce" meant "satisfactory" so that being not very good or interesting meant you were fine.
But the really weak teachers usually wind up in bad schools where they need bodies. Better a poor teacher than none at all. So they wait around, get licensed and tenured, and then ensure that several generations of students learn relatively little.
As a former supervisor I had a teacher in a history class who taught whatever he wanted. While everyone else had moved through time and was working on the Renaissance he was dealing with minutae of the Punic Wars.
As a result, his students at the end of the first course in world history would usually have missed out on any event that happened between 1400 and 1900. That drove all the teachers for the second course crazy. But he was protected.
When I tried to get him removed (after three years of conferences, demonstration lessons, requests for daily updates on what he was teaching, observation of classes all of which went for naught...he handed in what I wanted then taught what he wanted), it took twelve hearings in front of the Principal, twelve in front of a representative of the Superintendent of the local area and twelve in front of a representative of the NYC Chancellor to have him rated "unsatisfactory."
All that meant was that I had the teacher the following year and went through the same procedures. He refused to change and I kept working at documenting it. I might add that most of the hearings were done after school hours on my own time and I was not paid.
When he was rated unsatisfactory for a second time, he was transferred to a neighboring school. He filed a law suit demanding that he be allowed to stay. The union argued that I had a grudge against the man because I had done so much documentation. Later, they charged me with being a racist since the man was Hispanic. That stopped being effective when I noted that my wife was Hispanic.
Finally, the man was transferred. Another administrator had to check up on his work and he was again rated unsatisfactory. He filed another lawsuit and was given another chance.
The person in charge at the third school had a hear attack in the middle of the school year and stopped observing and checking on this teacher because the supervisor was out. As a result, the teacher was rated satisfactory.
That rating meant that all the earlier ratrings were tossed out. It took five more years before the teacher finally was dismissed.
He had been teaching for sixteen years and had done whatever he wanted in all of that time. Thousands of students had been cheated of their education.
And had he merely been pedestrian instead of wilfully disobedient he would have lasted a full career.
Leonard Wechsler - 11:02am on 02/15/2006
The real problem is teacher pay. I mean if they paid teachers enough to get a classy prostitute instead of a $20 crackhead hooker, they would not need to resort to propositioning students via e-mail. And another problem is the lack of technology in the classrooms. Surely, the teacher should have the ability to text message the student via cell phone instead of soliciting her sexually via e-mail.
All of this is George Bush’s fault for not fully funding No Child Left Behind. Now our kids will not learn how to fight off suggestive text messages from those in authority above them, especially our most disadvantaged children who don’t have access to text messaging at home. This puts our kids at a huge disadvantage in the workforce, especially if they take jobs working in the Clinton whitehouse.
Justin B - 11:02am on 02/15/2006
I was at my son’s school two days ago talking to his third grade teacher. He complained of similar issues. He makes the same money as any other teacher with similar time in the district and time in the profession. He can work longer hours and take night classes to get a PhD so that one day he can move up to being an Administrator and making a whopping $60k a year or so while working 60 hour weeks and having to deal with incompetent teachers like the guy Leonard described.
The NEA is getting their wish. But there is a huge backlash in states like Arizona because charter schools are popping up due to the massive growth. There are waiting lists at most charters and sooner or later Vouchers are going to be a reality.
I wish I had the time to home school, but short of that, I am forced to simply be an extremely active parent and keep my son learning in alternative programs. He learns more watching the history channel or PBS than most classrooms teach nowdays.
Justin B - 11:02am on 02/15/2006
If the SOB had sent that email to my daughter and I found out about it, they wouldn’t have to worry about firing him. He would be found mysteriously unable to breath with a huge hole where his lungs should be.
Did you have a chance to see John Stossel’s 20/20 special on this subject?
From the article, Hundreds of teachers the city calls incompetent, racist, or dangerous have been paid millions.
And what do they do while they get paid? They sit in rubber rooms.
They’re not really made of rubber, of course. They are big, empty rooms where they store the teachers they are afraid to let near the kids. The teachers go there and sit, hang around, read magazines, and waste time. The city pays $20 million a year to house teachers in rubber rooms.
Remember this the next time someone comes along (like Oliver Willis) saying that education is not "fully funded" while spewing idiotic mutterences that conservatives are "anti-education". Point them to this article.
What’s even scarier is that large companies are getting the same kind of difficulty in firing people for cause. Due to the threat of lawsuits (with or without unions), many large companies fail utterly to get rid of vile or poorly performing employees, or take months/years to do so.
Mutterences can’t find that anywhere, are you really a teacher in disguise?
Here, it’s not just in contracts, it’s in the law. Teachers contracts are automatically renewed by law. I often joke that it takes a teacher killing someone to get rid of him/her and even then, I would suspect that it’s hard. Teachers are bureaucrats in the classic, nastiest sense of the word. Their ultimate goal is a system where they cannot be fired no m,atter what and get paid 12-moths salary for 9-months work.
The really unfortunate thing is NOT how difficult it is to fire a teacher like this. I was an administrator. A guy like this will wind up in the "rubber room" where he will get paid for years but can do very little damage.
The bad news is that it is almost impossible to get rid of a teacher who is simply incompetent. The union years ago got an arbitrator to rule that the word "mediorce" meant "satisfactory" so that being not very good or interesting meant you were fine.
But the really weak teachers usually wind up in bad schools where they need bodies. Better a poor teacher than none at all. So they wait around, get licensed and tenured, and then ensure that several generations of students learn relatively little.
As a former supervisor I had a teacher in a history class who taught whatever he wanted. While everyone else had moved through time and was working on the Renaissance he was dealing with minutae of the Punic Wars.
As a result, his students at the end of the first course in world history would usually have missed out on any event that happened between 1400 and 1900. That drove all the teachers for the second course crazy. But he was protected.
When I tried to get him removed (after three years of conferences, demonstration lessons, requests for daily updates on what he was teaching, observation of classes all of which went for naught...he handed in what I wanted then taught what he wanted), it took twelve hearings in front of the Principal, twelve in front of a representative of the Superintendent of the local area and twelve in front of a representative of the NYC Chancellor to have him rated "unsatisfactory."
All that meant was that I had the teacher the following year and went through the same procedures. He refused to change and I kept working at documenting it. I might add that most of the hearings were done after school hours on my own time and I was not paid.
When he was rated unsatisfactory for a second time, he was transferred to a neighboring school. He filed a law suit demanding that he be allowed to stay. The union argued that I had a grudge against the man because I had done so much documentation. Later, they charged me with being a racist since the man was Hispanic. That stopped being effective when I noted that my wife was Hispanic.
Finally, the man was transferred. Another administrator had to check up on his work and he was again rated unsatisfactory. He filed another lawsuit and was given another chance.
The person in charge at the third school had a hear attack in the middle of the school year and stopped observing and checking on this teacher because the supervisor was out. As a result, the teacher was rated satisfactory.
That rating meant that all the earlier ratrings were tossed out. It took five more years before the teacher finally was dismissed.
He had been teaching for sixteen years and had done whatever he wanted in all of that time. Thousands of students had been cheated of their education.
And had he merely been pedestrian instead of wilfully disobedient he would have lasted a full career.
The real problem is teacher pay. I mean if they paid teachers enough to get a classy prostitute instead of a $20 crackhead hooker, they would not need to resort to propositioning students via e-mail. And another problem is the lack of technology in the classrooms. Surely, the teacher should have the ability to text message the student via cell phone instead of soliciting her sexually via e-mail.
All of this is George Bush’s fault for not fully funding No Child Left Behind. Now our kids will not learn how to fight off suggestive text messages from those in authority above them, especially our most disadvantaged children who don’t have access to text messaging at home. This puts our kids at a huge disadvantage in the workforce, especially if they take jobs working in the Clinton whitehouse.
I was at my son’s school two days ago talking to his third grade teacher. He complained of similar issues. He makes the same money as any other teacher with similar time in the district and time in the profession. He can work longer hours and take night classes to get a PhD so that one day he can move up to being an Administrator and making a whopping $60k a year or so while working 60 hour weeks and having to deal with incompetent teachers like the guy Leonard described.
The NEA is getting their wish. But there is a huge backlash in states like Arizona because charter schools are popping up due to the massive growth. There are waiting lists at most charters and sooner or later Vouchers are going to be a reality.
I wish I had the time to home school, but short of that, I am forced to simply be an extremely active parent and keep my son learning in alternative programs. He learns more watching the history channel or PBS than most classrooms teach nowdays.
If the SOB had sent that email to my daughter and I found out about it, they wouldn’t have to worry about firing him. He would be found mysteriously unable to breath with a huge hole where his lungs should be.
Same story http://magyartruth.blogspot.com/2006/01/public-education-problem.html different problem. Unions are part of the problem. I taught for 28 years in a non-union state. Here, the administrators were corrupt and only out for themselves.