Bad Teachers in Limbo: New Yorker Weighs in on 'Rubber Rooms'

By Tony Ortega Tue., Aug. 25 2009 at 10:30 AM

Categories: Featured, Follow-Up

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This week's New Yorker has an excellent piece on the city's pathetic "rubber rooms" -- where incompetent teachers rot (with pay) as the city tries, in vain, to fire them, a nearly impossible task under the current teachers' union contract.

Writer Steven Brill (yes, that Steven Brill) points out that one case alone has provided a year of testimony -- longer than even capital murder trials -- and despite mountains of evidence of a teacher's complete ineptitude, will still not likely result in her firing.

Two years ago, the Voice took its own shot at the rubber rooms and found many of the same conditions, pointing out that there had to be a better way to end disputes about bad teachers...

Brill points out that the union's byzantine contract is up for renewal this year, and that school chancellor Joel Klein should push for changes that will eliminate some of the red tape preventing the culling of incompetents.

Our Wayne Barrett said something similar in May, pointing out that with a third term virtually assured, Mike Bloomberg can forego sucking up to the union, the United Federation of Teachers, which he's done in both previous election years.

Wrote Barrett: "He can, as he did in 2005, ingratiate himself with the union, which would help him run up the score in a race he's regarded as certain to win. Or he can risk a few percentage points and insist that the teachers' union help him make real structural changes to the city's schools in a new collective bargaining contract."

So that's two local publications urging Bloomberg to push the UFT to change nonsensical rules. Care to pile on, Times?

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This report clearly does not see the forest for the trees. Clearly there is a need for something like the "Rubber Rooms". There are teachers that should be terminated. HOWEVER, the vast majority of teachers should not be terminated. I would say that at best 25% of the teachers there are there for reasons that should lead to termination. In fact in some cases one must wonder why they were hired or given tenure in the first place. Then there are the 25% that are completely innocent. Of the remaining 50%, they fall into a range from a warning or letter in the file up to a fine or suspension. Many of these teachers should have had their issues handled at the school level. Only the 25% that should be terminated should not be allowed to continue teaching. The other 75% should be allowed to continue in their positions, doing what they are paid to do, and doing what they have always desired to do, that is TEACH! In this manner the DOE would not have to hire replacement teachers. In addition lawyers and arbitrators would be freed up to handle those other cases in a shorter period of time. We teachers do not appreciate the inuendos that we wish to drag out this process. Only those 25% of the teachers that know they are guilty and know the axe will eventually fall are more than happy to stretch this process out ad infinitum. There are unions that have their employees suspended pending investigation at HOME! You would see the DOE clear up these cases in 90 days if they thought we were sitting at home. The process of 3020A and the Rubber Rooms are meant to demoralize the teachers. Many retire because they just can't take it any longer. I know I spent 3 years in the Rubber Room. By the time of my hearings, a time when I should have been at my best, I was a drained shell of a person. I was not allowed to know who made the accusations against me. Supervisors called to speak against me by their superiors knew their transcripted statements would be read by their bosses and that they had better say as they were told. From early on, I needed to start anti-depressants. I now take 2 different anti-depressants, an anti-anxiety medicine and an anti-panic medicine. I was a teacher for 22 years of Deaf and Hearing Impaired children. I was a strong advocate for my students. Yes, I was demanding of my department, that they give the children all they needed. They say "the squeaky wheel gets the oil"...sometimes the squeaky wheel gets thrown out! Good reporting necessitates in depth investigation. I know that if you interveiwed more teachers many would promote their own personal agenda (as would Klein and the UFT)...but it is inconceivable that it would all be fabrications. A quality reporter should be able to sift out the valid issues and present a more complete picture than the one I just read.
TC, Not only do you hide behind some ficticious name, but someone forgot to teach you how to read. The entries above are filled with facts including the fact that academic tenure is a constitutionally protected right. Yes, the United States Constitution...read it. Why are you hiding? What is your real name?
Wow, a lot of teacher apologists here. Funny how Brill's fact filled article does not bring out any fact based responses. Does anyone argue with Klein that the cornerstones of teacher unionism are "seniority, tenure, and lockstep pay - all of which are bad for children?"
More anti Teachers Union propaganda from the Village Voice! Many of the teachers in the rubber rooms are there because they are high seniority and the Board - and the principals - want to replace them with low seniority teachers. So, they set them up on trumped up charges, and put them in the hell of the rubber rooms to try and psychologically bully them to quit before they get their day in court. I am appalled and disgusted at how anti labor this supposedly liberal publication has become!
Don't you love how the the writer of this post, Tony Ortega, sets himself up as judge and jury? "Bad teachers" "pathetic 'rubber rooms'" "incompetent teachers" the union's "byzantine contract" "culling of incompetents" Not only that, but saying the city is trying to fire these people is addressing only one side of this story -- the other side being that these people might be either entirely innocent of the allegations or excessively charged. In either case, they are fighting not only for their job but for their whole career. And it's not even true that the city is trying to fire them all. In some cases, being put in a reassignment center is a matter of "better be safe than sorry" during an investigation (a good thing under normal circumstances, because we're dealing with kids.) I've seen statistics that say most reassigned teachers go back to their jobs -- which means that what they supposedly "did" was either unfounded or not so bad as to be terminated. Ortega should tell us if he knows something different. This article is pitiable, but what can you expect when civics courses are purged from high school curricula. We end up with nasty, jump-on-the-bandwagon spew in the name of journalism.
Such a simplistic review of the rubber rooms means you truly haven't a clue what is going with the Dept of Education. Tenure does not guarantee a job, it just guarantees due process, so that being accused does not mean one is guilty. You do know what due process is, Mr. Ortega? There are teachers in the rubber rooms that might be guilty of something or incompetent and no one at the union is arguing that speedy due process would serve all parties better than the current system. There are teachers in the rubber room who are there, falsely accused because of their unionism or because the administration does not like them for one reason or another. It would be nice if both Steve Brill and Mr. Ortega actually did some investigative reporting rather than eye balling the situation and deciding what is going on. I will presume that neither man is a real reporter which the above article and the one in the New Yorker seems to prove.
The article is full of inaccuracies....while the situation with the rubber rooms is unfortunate, teachers worked hard to protect them from vindictive or incompetent Principals, many of whom have been products of Klein's Leadership Academy. But the problem with the ATR's, which was caused 100% by Klein with his idiotic decision to base Principal budgets not on the conept that one teacher is one unit but rather the actual value of the teacher's salary, has led to many Principals refusing to hire very competent excessed teachers who were excessed because of the asinine decision to close many of the large high schools. Teachers who invested 20 or more years of blood, swet and teachers, are then left to go on interviews like they were beginning teachers, with Principals who know nothing about education but who know they can hire two and a half new teachers for the price of a veteran. And then Klein has the gall to claim that if these excessed teachers cannot find a job within a year, they should be fired and blames the teachers. Brill and the rest of you should check your facts before you continue to drink Joel Klein's kool-aid. The man is in a position for which he is not qualified and the damage he has done to the schools will take a generation to undo.
If you can't do the job you're paid to do, then your employer should be able to fire you. Without all this stupid crap. This is not adult daycare. All this hand-holding and molly-coddling doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the inept person who can't learn from being fired (because negative consequences teach us things). It doesn't help the students who aren't getting good teaching. It doesn't help the school systems who waste money on the inept. It doesn't help the Union, who start to look like serious impediments to good education. It doesn't help employers. It sure as hell doens't help the taxpayers whose money is being thrown down the toilet. If the Unions don't see this a very, very seious PR catastrophe they could find themselves in an environment where more people are OK with union-busting. And I don't think they want that. They need to do something to fix this.
Mr. Turner, as much as we disagree on many things, including the racist nature of the rubber rooms which Mulgrew and the UFT leadership refuse to confront, didn't you mean to write the word "tried" not "fired" in a timely manner? After all you are a UFT Special representative making over $100,000. Or was that a Freudian slip? Do you use the rubber rooms and 3020a as a political tool for the UNITY caucus to stay in power? Just asking.
This is absurd. The UFT does everything it can toget teachers fired in atimely manner. Its the DOE that keeps the cases going on forever.
I was raised as a liberal reading the Village Voice, the New Yorker and the NY Times as well as The Nation. I still proudly call myself a liberal. Barrett, Brill and yourself have fail to recognize that teacher tenure is a property right under the United States Constitution as declared by the United States Supreme Court. We have due process rights which were won with blood, sweat and tears by labor unionists for decades. I am in a reasignment center, not by my own choosing. I am a returned U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer having trained educators for the U.S. government proudly in Kenya and Namibia, Africa. I volunteered over 2 and one half years for my country. I do not want to be paid to do nothing and I was never even accused of being incompetent or endangering a child. I am disabled and the City of New York under the Bloomberg/Klein corporate model seeks to ignore not only the U.S. Constitution but the Americans with Disabilities Act and the NY State Human Rights Laws. We teachers are proud of our work and we want to work! Incidentally, you and the others who I thought were liberals consistently fail to mention that most of those of us in the Rubber Rooms are Black and Latino educators! Remember the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause? Brill came to my center which is over 75% Black and Latino and he did not seem to notice or care! Yes, I want to teach! and YES I WANT TO WORK for a living and I care deeply about the future of our city, the students who I teach!