Firing offenses: why is the quality of teachers so low? Just try getting rid of a bad one

National Review, August 17, 1998 by Peter Schweizer

Mr. Schweizer is a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and co-author of the forthcoming book The Mouse Betrayed: Greed, Corruption, and Children at Risk in Disney's Secret World (Regnery).

NATIONAL Education Association President Bob Chase, undaunted by the news that more than half of Massachusetts teachers had failed their competency tests, characterizes the problem of bad teachers as a matter of ''a few bad apples.'' But when America's children return to the classroom this fall, many of them will be instructed by teachers who are not only incompetent, but sometimes actively dangerous. And the teachers unions make removing them nearly impossible. In recent years, the unions have gone to bat for felons and for teachers who have had sexual relations with their students, as well as for teachers who demonstrably could not teach. For the unions, apparently no apple is so bad that it need be tossed from the barrel.

The process of getting rid of problem teachers, especially those with tenure, can be so arduous and expensive that many school districts don't even bother anymore. ''Getting rid of a problem teacher can make the O.J. trial look like a cake walk,'' says Mary Jo McGrath, an attorney in Santa Barbara, California, who helps administrators deal with bad teachers. ''For a principal, it can seem a lot easier to hang on to the dead wood. Teachers are more protected than any other class of employees, with all the procedural rights that can drag a civil case out for years.''

''Legally, the union doesn't need to take every case we make against a teacher,'' explains Stephen M. Robinson, a former teacher who is now an attorney representing six school districts in Rhode Island. ''But they do. They'll defend even the worst offenders.''

Michael Levin, an attorney for several suburban Philadelphia school districts, says: ''I've been in this business for 25 years. Nothing surprises me any more. I just had my first cannibalism case.''

Much of the problem stems from the tenure system, which means that after three or four years it is virtually impossible in most states for a teacher to get fired. ''Tenure was originally designed to protect the best teachers from wrongful termination,'' says the reform-minded Frank Brogan, Florida's first Republican education commissioner. (Brogan was recently chosen as Jeb Bush's running mate in this year's race for governor and lieutenant governor.) ''Today it protects the worst teachers from rightful termination.'' And teachers can expect their unions almost always to back them up no matter what they have done. As Kathleen Winter, co-president of the Scituate Teachers Association in Rhode Island, admitted to the Providence Journal-Bulletin, ''Teachers pay substantial amounts of money to the union. If I'm paying $450 a year [in dues], if I get into a jam, I want something for my money.''

In 1994 a teacher in Florida was in just such a jam. Florida Department of Education investigators were alerted by local officials that a student had been coaxed by a teacher into a sexual relationship, including oral and anal sex. When confronted with the evidence, the teacher resigned. But he insisted on keeping his teacher's license so that he could work in a classroom somewhere else. ''Naturally, we didn't think it was a good idea to have this guy near kids,'' the investigator who handled the case says. So the FDOE pushed to have his license permanently revoked. But the local NEA affiliate supported the teacher. An administrative-law court finally ruled that he should lose his certification permanently, but it had taken more than two years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal and administrative costs to reach that point.

In 1989, police officers in the same Florida county had caught a female teacher and one of her students naked in a car near a public park. In this case too the FDOE pushed to take away the teacher's license. But the local NEA affiliate argued that she should be allowed to teach again. The FDOE prevailed, but it took more than three years and close to $100,000.

In 1996 school administrators in San Francisco discovered that a teacher was placing her 6-year-old students in a trash can, closing the lid, and kicking the can. She was finally suspended when a fellow teacher overheard her threatening to cut off a child's private parts with a pair of scissors. Thanks to heavy resistance from the local affiliate of the NEA, pursuing her dismissal cost the district more than $100,000, and the woman later got a teaching job elsewhere.

Michael Levin, the attorney for the Philadelphia schools, says these cases are typical: ''The teacher fights you and doesn't just walk away,'' he told me. ''The union will back them.'' A recent study by the New York State School Boards Association found that the average termination in the Empire State took 319 days and cost $112,000. If the teacher appeals the decision, the cost is likely to top $300,000. In Illinois, the average contested dismissal case takes three years and costs at least $70,000 -- more if the teacher appeals. Given the cost in time and money, few teachers actually get terminated. In the entire state of New York only 219 termination cases were brought in the 1996 - 97 school year.