In case you missed it, yesterday’s LA Times had an excellent article written by Jason Song about the near impossibility of firing even the most inadequate and, in certain cases, verbally abusive teachers.
Here’s how it opens:
The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.
He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.
Polanco looked at the cuts and said they “were weak,” according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. “Carve deeper next time,” he was said to have told the boy.
“Look,” Polanco allegedly said, “you can’t even kill yourself.”
The boy’s classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.
“See,” Polanco was quoted as saying, “even he knows how to commit suicide better than you.”
The Los Angeles school board, citing Polanco’s poor judgment, voted to fire him.
But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job. A little-known review commission overruled the board, saying that although the teacher had made the statements, he had meant no harm.
In the time I’ve spent reporting in and around LAUSD schools, I’ve heard many equally hair-raising stories about teachers who honestly shouldn’t be in the profession. Certainly we want to see teachers protected from whimsical firings, but a system that protects the adults in the system far ahead of the children those adults are supposedly serving—is overdue for reform.
PS: The photos accompanying the article, taken by Liz O. Baylen, are quite good as well.
**************************************************************************************************************
UPDATE:
Teacher and commenter, Nicolle Fefferman said this in the comments section, and I believe it is worth elevating to the front page:
I witness terrible teaching everyday. I know of teachers who should retire or who should be let go.
However, I am suspicious of the timing of this article. We just voted to go on strike for one day to save the jobs of thousands of new teachers and to protect class size. The LA Times has not done an in depth article like this to explain to the public the ramifications of layoffs on schools like mine- struggling schools in low income, communities of color. Where is the moral outrage over this?
I can rage against the machine about bad teachers. I do almost everyday. What about these new, talented teachers who are being laid off? What will happen to their students?
I’m not suspicious of the timing of the article. I don’t see Jason Wong being a pliant tool of….well….anybody. But as I read the piece yesterday, I too wondered why there has been no in depth article on the affect of these layoffs—which would seem to be the most important issue at hand.
As Ms. Fefferman said, the sad truth is that a great number of those teachers being laid off are exactly the teachers whom we need most to retain—the young, energetic, deeply dedicated teachers who have chosen specifically to teach at LAUSD’s most troubled schools because they have fallen in love with the kids—still rife with potential—but who for years have been so desperately failed by the school system as a whole.
Still, as an outsider, that speaks to the problem of the unions too. In nearly no other industry would the young talented employees be laid off and the burnouts retained.
This is not, for a second to suggest that longtime experienced, dedicated teachers are not the jewels of the teaching profession too. They are. And some young teachers are unsuited to the work, and should be let go too. But merit should call the shots, not seniority. (And surely there is another more nuanced way to assess merit than merely tallying whose students score best on those irritating standardized tests.)
Of course, the real issue is that—whomever gets the pink slips— teacher layoffs are the budget cuts we can least afford if we care for the long-term health of our city, which has everything to do with the educational health of our city’s kids..
This article is great but the timing is terrible. I witness terrible teaching everyday. I know of teachers who should retire or who should be let go.
However, I am suspicious of the timing of this article. We just voted to go on strike for one day to save the jobs of thousands of new teachers and to protect class size. The LA Times has not done an in depth article like this to explain to the public the ramifications of layoffs on schools like mine- struggling schools in low income, communities of color. Where is the moral outrage over this?
I can rage against the machine about bad teachers. I do almost everyday. What about these new, talented teachers who are being laid off? What will happen to their students?
C: I’ve heard many equally hair-raising stories about teachers who honestly shouldn’t be in the profession.
Me too, Celeste! Let’s hear more of them!
But, teaching is no longer a profession, as you called it. It’s a trade run by unions protecting incompetence and garnering high pay for many low achievers.
If a teacher is a complete nut and incompetent, then he could also teach at colleges where there is tenure.
As always, students come last in the education battles of the left.
I suspect Ms. Fefferman is right about this.
I’m no fan of the teachers unions, but an awful lot of the “concern” expressed is politically motivated and aimed at putting opportunistic and, ultimately godawful, “reform” into place like vouchers. Make no mistake – for all of the “concern” about minority students stuck in bad schools, the voucher movement is driven by the hard rightwing that doesn’t want to pay for public education. Under a voucher regime, the doors of good private schools will slam on kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in a minute. It will be a subsidy to the well-off who have abandoned the public school system, and to religious schools that want to suck up public funds.
The fact that the crackpot racist, Woody, laps this one up is evidence of my point. But the unions need to take responsibility for quality education or they’ll lose in the long run, no matter how egregious, selfish and opportunistic their opposition. When a full-fledged bigoted wingnut like Woody – who struggles to seem “normal” and be taken seriously – can seem like he’s on the “right side” of something, somebody has fucked up royally.
reg, why are you afraid to let parents, especially poor ones, decide on whether or not vouchers help their kids?
Do you prefer that parents be forced by government to send their kids to bad schools with bad teachers that are getting worse rather than better? Is parental choice that much to be feared by a government that wants to dictate?
I don’t believe that our kids belong to government but rather their mothers and fathers. Let parents have the last say in their kids’ educations.
Ohhh, great argument, reg! Call me a racist, a crackpot, a bigot and a wingnut — all in three sentences. When that’s the best that you have, then you have nothing.
I agree, the union does need to own up to the fact that there are bad teachers and the system does not work to toss those folks out. I heard Duffy on Patt Morrison a couple of weeks ago. She asked him a simple question- Are there bad teachers? He stammered out some half hearted reply that seemed like a cop out. Just say yes! We don’t have to protect people who do not belong in the profession.
While I appreciate the “expose'”, I worry about the Times political agenda. We JUST voted to hold a one day strike. What is the Times doing to expose the problems with the layoffs?
I think whatever your opinion regarding job security among experienced secondary school teachers (I’m a fan of less security and more pay), we should ditch the term “tenure.” Among colleges and universities, tenure’s primary function is to preserve academic freedom. Additionally, before receiving tenure, a professor is required to demonstrate a high level of competency to his employer, who takes the appointment very seriously. In lower schools, tenure is just job security and comes simply from days on the job. We shouldn’t be conflating the two concepts.
“Ohhh, great argument, reg! Call me a racist, a crackpot, a bigot and a wingnut — all in three sentences.”
You’ve worked hard to earn this…
Ha! I didn’t work hard at it. In fact, it was quite easy to get your goat over anything regarding race.
What do you call the 98% of blacks who voted for Obama, besides dependents on the Democratic plantation? I don’t guess that race had anything to do with their choice.
Still, when your best is to call someone names, then your best is worthless.
I think that as a start, we institute Charter Schools for 100% of the schools at large districts like LAUSD.
Leave LAUSD to manage the Charters, buses and school construction.
The running of the schools and the curriculum should be handled by charter organizations as long as meeting state requirements for education.
This means that a Charter Schools could also teach and run the school from a Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or Atheist perspective.
The annual Stanford Achievement Test administered to first through eighth grade religious based school students in the western states shows these students to be seven to nineteen months ahead of the national norm in reading, and seven to thirteen months ahead of the national norm in all subject areas.
Religious based schools support the family as the number one institution of society. Religious school educators train students to respect their parents.
The largest group of parents who send their children to Religious schools are public school teachers and principals.
Religious school educators maintain discipline in the classroom and on the playground. Without a reasonable standard of discipline, the process of education is severely hampered.
Lack of discipline in the public schools again heads the list of problems cited most often by survey respondents. Discipline has, in fact, been named the number one problem of the schools in seven of the last eight years. New evidence of its importance comes from the special survey of high school juniors and seniors. An even higher percentage of this group names discipline as the leading problem faced by the public school.
Pokey, you presume that charter schools won’t let their their doors “slam on kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in a minute.” But sadly, there are a lot of ways to game the system when it comes to which students get taken in & which students are retained in a charter school. That’s one of the reasons why prominent education reformers such as Jonathan Kozol & Deborah Meier are wary of charter schools being a miracle cure for the woes of public education. Personally, I think it kind of depends on the intent of the charter operator. If the funders are all about test scores, then the operator will be all about test scores. And in that scenario, who is going to want, say, the 18-year-old who hasn’t been to school in three years? Or the girl who is going to have a baby in the middle of the school year? Some charters embrace these students. Others, not so much.
Obama, the Democrats, and the unions put power first and kids last.
VIDEO LINK – Barack Obama & The DC School Voucher Program
Charter School Teacher,
I agree with you that there are a lot of ways to game the system.
But if all of LAUSD was required to be ALL charter schools, it might be possible for example to pay more per student to take the tougher cases, special needs etc. This would game the system to harder for those who need it.
It is not impossible to put (financial and other) incentives into the system to help the kids that are struggling and improve every childs education.
We don’t need charter schools. What we need is the financial and pedagogical support of our district. My school has been broken up into four Small Learning Communities. It has helped immensely. The universe is much smaller for these kids and for us teachers. Everyday I am interacting and assisting students from this year and the past three years. They know me, know I can help (with everything except for Geometry) and this has created a while new dynamic at our school. I help students apply for college, let them print out papers and just listen with a sympathetic ear.
Our API score went up almost 60 points last year. If we could just get the support we need- we would be kicking ass and taking names.
Instead of giving us what we need- we are getting RIFs and budget cuts. My students would thrive with the appropriate resources and supported teaching.
FYI, I have been in correspondence with Jason Song. He said that the timing of the article was purely coincidental….. and he offered to speak with me- at some point- about RIFs. We will see.
“Still, as an outsider, that speaks to the problem of the unions too. In nearly no other industry would the young talented employees be laid off and the burnouts retained.”
Writing about the issues with unions and the issues with layoffs at kind of unnerves me. There is a nuanced article to be written about where these two issues collide — because they do — but I always feel like it’s two sides speaking over one another’s heads.
I happen to work in a nonunionized sector of an industry (journalism!) where people are being laid off. Here, we gripe about the older, better-paid, more experienced reporters being laid off in favor of young, inexperienced (maybe one day talented) but ultimately cheaper reporters.
Not having unions didn’t save quality here — I don’t know if it would have helped or hindered in our newsroom.
Unions do affect quality, because they affect hiring and firing practices, but I think people overestimate what breaking up unions would do for quality in teaching. This idea that you can either have unions or quality is a false dichotomy and I wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for one side over another.
“I think people overestimate what breaking up unions would do for quality in teaching.”
Ya think ????
Nicole, I worked at Jefferson a few years back. We did have a nearly 60-point API gain one year. The following year, district officials directed the school to remove almost all of the supports (& corresponding funding) that had been put in place leading up to the jump. You can imagine what happened to the API the year after that. So you are right –good things are possible anywhere. But sadly, large, dysfunctional systems have a strange way of strangling themselves slowly sometimes.
Pokey, I think one caveat of having all of LAUSD “go charter” would have to include stipulations that the schools take on the responsibility of accepting or finding placement for every student in their attendance boundaries regardless of age, academic history, & time of year they are entering. Also, parents really have to know their legal rights in regards to enrollment & retention of their children or those rights can be quite blatantly violated. I’m not sure how to “systemize” that. I think if you have people at the helm of the schools who value the rights of all parents, regardless of educational or ethnic background, that’s a start. Of course, that is not always the case in “regular” public schools or charter schools. But sometimes it is, and in these cases (surprise!), even students with long histories of failure can “make it.”
“it was quite easy to get your goat over anything regarding race”
Yeah – I despise racists such as yourself. Truly despise you.
Incidentally Woody, I called you a crackpot because you constantly produced “evidence” here from wingnut websites that have zero credibility and you are incapable of conducting a rational discussion. I called you a homophobe because you express contempt for gay people, use words like “queer”, “fag” and are desperate to deny them equal rights. I called you a racist because you posted racist cartoons and constantly disparage minorities (including some very nasty stuff about my wife, who is your superior in every way imaginable). You call me “gay” because…you actually think you’re engaged in some huge put-down, rather than exposing yourself as a very small, bigoted, childish creep.
You forgot the most telling – I’ve consistently called you a coward because you will never admit error when you’ve been proven wrong. That may be the ultimate measure of who you are as a “man” – and I use the term loosely, because you come off like someone who never made it past adolescence.
charterschoolteacher- We have welcomed back plenty of charter school “rejects.” In fact, I have actually welcomed back students from the New Tech on our campus! Certainly in South Central, these schools provide good pressure on us. The small class sizes, committed teaching staffs and access to technology really does make a difference. Most of the students who attend charters create a self selected group- with the parent and student buy in necessary for long term success.
Jeff is on its way. These layoffs will drain us of vital staff and force our SLC model to change. The small school model works. I worked with the same student population in New Haven, CT.. It was a public school that had only 400 students. My students ended up going to UConn, Howard, RISD, and other liberal arts colleges. Public school works! Maybe not on the scale of LAUSD….
Nicolle, I have a hunch that many of those “charter school rejects” were not rejected for legal (California Education Code) reasons. So good for you for welcoming them in, but shame on the educators who take advantage of disempowered students & parents to force out students “because it’s not the right fit” or whatever other euphemism they use for it.
[…] we can’t seem to fire any bad teachers. The other side of that coin is our wonderful union, who promotes the status quo […]