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Say what you will about ABC News corresopndent John Stossel (and there's a lot to say), but his piece in The Reason about the difficulty in firing a NYC public school teacher is pretty great. There is an extensive two-page PDF that shows the complicated-beyond-belief process of how an administrator would fire a teacher - basically you need an iron-clad reason, nerves of steel, and a few years of patience.
The regulations are so onerous that principals rarely even try to fire a teacher. Most just put the bad ones in pretend-work jobs, or sucker another school into taking them. (They call that the "dance of the lemons.") The city payrolls include hundreds of teachers who have been deemed incompetent, violent, or guilty of sexual misconduct. Since the schools are afraid to let them teach, they put them in so-called "rubber rooms" instead. There they read magazines, play cards, and chat, at a cost to New York taxpayers of $20 million a year.And the PDF is wonderfully illustrated by Terry Colon.Once, Klein reports, the school system discovered that a teacher was sending sexual e-mails to a 16-year-old student. "This was the most unbelievable case to me," he says, "because the e-mail was there, he admitted to it. It was so thoroughly offensive." Even with the teacher's confession, it took six years of expensive litigation before the school could fire him. He didn't teach during those six years, but he still got paid—more than $350,000 total.
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How is that any different in getting anything else done in this City bureaucracy?
You want efficient terminations, go see the private sector.
What would it take for Stossel to get fired from ABC? It only took Elizabeth Vargas one pregnancy.
Give me a break.
The system was probably set up that way to protect teachers from being randomly accused of things. Untenured teachers, who are not afforded the luxury of grinding bureaucracy, have no rights and can be fired at will for little to no reason. Does anyone remember the Bronx middle school teacher who was fired back in '99? He was fired because a student who was supposed to be in his classroom sexually assaulted a girl in the hallway. (The kid had never shown up to class in the first place.) It was reported at the time that there were more than 35 kids in the room (a violation of the UFT contract... and common sense) and that it was his first day with this particular set of kids. So he didn't even know enough to know that a kid was missing. He didn't get the luxury of the "rubber room." Hopefully he's gone on to a more rewarding career.
if teachers get fired for sexually inappropriate behavior, there's always room in congress.
its also there to protect teachers from politically motivated firings, but like many things with good intentions the regulations around hiring & firing teachers probably do a lot more harm than good.
did the cartoon make anyone else here miss the old suck.com?
Ladies and gentlemen: your union system at work.
The same system which has sleeping MTA booth operators sleeping on the job, trains continually running late (if at all), the same system which has wrecked the airline industry, the auto industry, and just about every other industry that is held hostage by organized labor.
anonydumass -
There's a difference between bad bureaucracy and a good union... do you hang with hitler?
RatherBe,
Awww...bitter much? I'm sorry you lack the skills to hang in a competitive market economy.
Must be nice to keep a job solely because you had the connections to get it in the first place and not because you perform at a high level.
Maybe you should considering relocating to China. The government will take care of you.
Anonymass 5:08: You have a beef with unions? Maybe you'd be happier under a regime where they're illegal, like in China or North Korea.
You think unions wrecked the auto industry. I think it was the incompetent overcompensated CEOs who decided to build lousy cars that nobody wanted. They walk away from the wreck they made of that industry with multi-million dollar parachutes.
Unions created the middle class in this country. As they are destroyed by this right wing adminstration and people like you, so the middle class is destroyed. We will soon be a society of masters and servants. But that's what idiots like you pine for, right?
That's right anonymass. Much better to have a Wal-Mart style system where the workers are totally fucked over. Let's fire all the old workers. Let's take away everyone's health coverage. Let's keep minimum wage at $5.15. And let's have taxpayers shoulder the burden.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tue3.html
What always gets me is whether or not people think all these regulations and union activities came out of nowhere? Do anti-union folks have any clue as to how these hurdles for firing or worker treatment came about?
These road blocks to firing people or what have you, are the result of collective bargaining on the part of workers in response to management activities. That is, management/company owners were fucking over their employees and then the employees got their act together and fought back.
If most companies exercised a little civic responsibility, like Costco, then I could see a stronger argument against unions. But there's a long history of companies like Wal-Mart abusing the workers to within an inch of the law. Costco is the exception, not the rule.
Management is reaping what is has sown with the unions.
Turning to Stossel's idiotic flow chart, what if we change "incompetent teacher" to "fantastic and loved teacher that new administration wants out so they can appoint a unqualified crony"? All of a sudden, these checks on firing look pretty great.
"do you hang with hitler?"
And...scene.
The discussion ended with ratherbe. See Godwin's Law.
I'm sure all these union cheerleaders send their kids to public school here in the city.
It's heartening to read so many lucid comments on the subject of unionism. It's easy to union bash, but with art teachers getting canned in Texas for taking their students to the museum (http://thomashawk.com/2006/09/frisco-texas-art-teacher-fired-for.html), I think it's clear that the benefits outweigh the costs.
This is exactly why I support school vouchers.
I have a brilliant idea. Lets pay the teachers salaries to the level of the suburbs so that in hiring techers, principals could select from the most qualified applicant instead of putting bodies infront of classrooms to baby sit the kids. How about some support for young teachers. I dont have the data but I am sure the burn out rate for new teachers is more than 50%.
Teachers too are to blame. They took job seniority/security over merit based pay and the risk of hiring and firing. Frankly, paying them more is never going to get better teaching unless they are willing to be accountable to some extent.
Some of us NYC public school teachers throw our hearts and souls into the job and are not there for security or seniority or a pension. Some of us eat, sleep, dream, and breathe this job, doing anything that we possibly can to give our students an optimum learning experience in the face of enormous obstacles. I agree that there are many who abuse the system and whose actions (or lack thereof) in the schools are reprehensible. I also agree that, as with many other longstanding issues in the nation's largest school system, the tenure issue needs revisiting at the least and excessive revision at the most. But please do not lump all NYC teachers together in your assumptions about our unwillingness to be held accountable. I hold my students up to high standards and they are held accountable for all that they do; I should be, too.
I'm not against employee protections, but let's face facts: in the current day and age, unions are gluttonous and exist entirely to shield the weak and talentless, not to ensure that the hard-working 20% of the union workforce is protected from unfair labor practice. In a mature capitalist society, talent and hard work are recognized and rewarded more often than they are not. People worth their merit don't need unions. Period.
I know you organized labor hacks will find this nearly impossible to fathom, but lots of people have actually managed to keep their high-paying jobs without the union security blanket.
And frankly, I agree with the poster who pointed out that if you join a union, you deserve a much lower salary as you benefit from ironclad job security and retirement benefits that will eclipse what most in the upper middle class will enjoy (and typically at a much younger age).
For the person who whined about CEO compensation being out of whack, nice non sequitur. CEO compensation - which I agree is despicable and needs to be lassoed in - has nothing to do with the unions having hijacked the auto and airline industries. Did you see how much TWU workers are making in this city? If you're wondering why there is no middle class it's because these uneducated blue collar workers who used to compose the middle class are making upper middle class salaries.
I think that stories like these are urban legends, like alligators in the sewer. Not too long ago, a school chancellor, Harold Levy, reported that the reason he was unable to lead children to reading skills was that one single labor arbitrator interfered with his right to fire teachers. As I see it, the current report, like many before, stems from bad outcomes that the Bloomberg-Klein misleaders want to explain away.
You can't take John Stossel seriously.
Like other has beens with no talent he switched sides after he found out his schtick is getting old.
Unions are bad not having a union is worse!!!!
(Some of us NYC public school teachers throw our hearts and souls into the job and are not there for security or seniority or a pension. Some of us eat, sleep, dream, and breathe this job, doing anything that we possibly can to give our students an optimum learning experience in the face of enormous obstacles.)
Sounds like you need a union.
The group that the city takes money out of your paycheck for, in exchange for political support for incumbents, has consistently sought enriched pensions for those cashing in and moving out, followed by lower wages and benefits and less support for those working in the classroom.
You know what the UFT wants to use CFE money for? A temporary early retirement incentive to allow all those older teachers to retire at 55 with full benefits. The state legislature passed it without a single no vote. Pataki has refused to sign it thus far, but they are still negotiating.
Higher wages for those in tougher schools, or smaller class sizes? Naaaah.
By the way, the reason Pataki might sign the bill or a more expensive one, leading to tax increases, school cuts, and wage freezes, is so his own cronies can retire with increased benefits.
The same Pataki who believes have has to continue to provide New York with less than a pro-rata share of school aid because the state can't afford to do otherwise.
Which is fine with the union, as long as they get an early retirement (just for those now over 50, not for you) they can take the money out of the classroom.
You have no idea how much our state government is killing us.
I will be getting my union card later this year after working for nearly ten years in my chosen industry. It took me a long time to decide to "go union" (in my industry I actually have a choice), but I finally decided to choose the union for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the package of compensation and health benefits was too good to pass up. The second reason was the job protection and security offered by joining the union (opening myself up to thousands of potentential jobs within the city). Third (and not less important) was the fact that working on a union job assured me of a level of safety and protection from hazardous conditions that I had previously not experienced in my industry. This is not to say that my union is perfect, nor is it's membership particualrly enlightened. There have been a number of frustrations, but for me the good far outweighs the bad.
It will come as no surprise that my job is technically a "blue collar" job, but that said, there is no reason to assume that it requires any less brain power than what goes on in all the cubicles and corner offices around the country.
The need for unions is still very real (more so in today's enviornment of corporate consolidation than ever). However, many unions suffer from grievous short-sightedness and corrupt internal political structures that make meaningful forward looking change difficult if not impossible.
I am no fan of Randi Weingarten, or the UFT, but I do respect the teacher's need to band together for protection. However, the mistake that most unions make (and my particular beef with the UFT) is that they fear exposing individual members to rational, necessary, and sometimes painful accountability. For any industry to thrive it's workers must be well educated, morally competant, and reasonably well compensated. The more a union seeks to shield itself from the reasonable demands of the people who utilize their services, the more that union weakens its ability to thrive in the long term.
As in all things there must be balance. Unions such as the UFT and the TWU must reckognize that the people who rely on their expertise (i.e. the public at large) demand a higher standard of behavior (and accountability) than they have lately received. Should unions stubbornly refuse to acknowledge these reasonable expectations they will find themselves becoming more and more marginalized as they become known not for the good that they do, but rather the bad that they harbor. And, before long they will be ostracized and demolished by a public sick and tired of not getting what they pay for.
The illustration in John Stossel's piece is based off of research Common Good, a bipartisan legal reform organization, conducted in 2004 on the New York City public schools.
If you are interested in seeing similar charts and learning about how schools are overburdened by laws, rules, and regulations, please visit Common Good at www.cgood.org for more information.