Bounce dead wood from the rubber room

Randi Kreiss

I was a teacher for years, so I know firsthand the challenges of the classroom, and I continue to be in awe of those who inspire the children they teach and honor the profession they have chosen.

Increasingly, however, I have become impatient with the great number of teachers who refuse to be accountable for their on-the-job performance. In classrooms throughout the country, little towns and big cities, America’s children are not being properly educated.

There are, of course, complex reasons for the decline in education standards. There is not enough money going into the system, too many students are not receiving support and encouragement at home and, most significantly, too many teachers are not doing the job they were hired to do.

And teachers unions, while safeguarding teachers’ rights, have too often become obstructionist, defending policies and procedures that prevent decent schools from getting rid of incompetent teachers.

It is outrageous that teachers resist changes that would make their performance subject to meaningful review. Teachers speak of professionalism as their standard, and that is appropriate. They should receive good starting salaries commensurate with their training, but promotions and raises must depend on a teacher’s individual record. And any teacher who doesn’t do the job should be subject to remediation, warnings and, if there is no improvement, prompt dismissal.

If you want to be a professional, then accept the responsibilities of a professional. Doctors and lawyers don’t receive tenure or guaranteed raises. If they don’t perform, they get fired.

It’s no coincidence that I used the words “dead wood” in my headline. More than 30 years ago I was “excessed” from a two-fifths teaching job because I was the last hired. Despite perfectly good evaluations, I was let go because that’s the way the system works. I wrote a piece for Newsday at the time called “Outstanding but excessed ...” All around me I saw teachers who went through their teaching day like zombies, dull, unenthusiastic, cynical — virtual dead wood. And their jobs were guaranteed until they chose to retire, often years after they had stopped teaching in any meaningful way.

Look at what’s happening in New York City, where some 500 teachers, accused of misconduct or poor performance, show up every day at so-called “rubber rooms,” where they do nothing in exchange for collecting full salaries until their cases are heard and resolved. It is a situation worthy of Dickens’s “Bleak House” — cases that drag on for years, teachers who do nothing for full pay, at a cost of some $30 million a year. In addition, there’s a pool of some 1,100 reserve substitute teachers, recently laid off or awaiting hearings, who don’t have classroom jobs but draw full salaries, at an annual cost to the city of about $100 million.

In our own communities on Long Island, it takes unreasonable amounts of time and legal effort to get rid of a bad teacher.

In Florida, where public education has been notoriously poor, huge gains have been made in recent years. Just last week, the legislature voted on a groundbreaking bill that would have tied teacher performance to salaries and eliminated tenure for new teachers. It would have set a new standard for advancing quality education.

How did the teachers react? In many schools they protested, and in some they conducted walkouts, surely inappropriate and unbecoming to “professionals.” Gov. Charlie Crist put the nail in the coffin of the bill when he used his veto, killing the initiative for now.

I know the arguments the other side proffers: Teachers need tenure to secure their freedom of speech in the classroom. You can’t have merit pay because who will decide which teachers deserve the raises? You can’t tie teacher salaries to student performance because some schools have academically weaker students than others.

These arguments have weight, but not enough to convince me that we should continue to guarantee either teachers’ jobs or their salaries. We can work out the details, but merit pay and promotion are good ideas.

The dead wood must go. There are thousands of young, enthusiastic, talented teachers ready to take their places and do the job they are paid to do — educate our children.

Copyright © 2010 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 304.