Public school teachers are unhappy with the growing campaign to grade their performance. They shouldn’t be. It’s almost impossible to fire a union teacher, even those who are profoundly incompetent. In one example, a teacher who “kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school” was marked for firing, “but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh.”

From IBDeditorials

EXCERPTS:

“In February, LA Weekly exposed the ugly side of civil service in a story headlined: “Why firing the desk sleepers, burnouts, hotheads and other failed teachers is all but impossible.” Its five-month investigation found that LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million in the last 10 years “trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired.” Each of the legal battles to fire the four took roughly five years.

LA Weekly also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were recommended for firing, then “secretly paid $50,000, on average, to leave without a fight.

“Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining.”

As alarming as these numbers are, they’re only a small part of the problem. LA Weekly reckons as many as 1,000 LAUSD teachers responsible for 30,000 children cannot teach and can’t be fired.”

“In one example, a teacher who “kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school” was marked for firing, “but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh.”

FULL STORY at IBDeditorials

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