Government and public employee unions in action.
Note in addition to the numbers related to teachers, the 1% dismissal rate for other public employees. Ineffective performance evaluation systems are not unique to one state. Public employees generally receive much higher evaluations than would be tolerated in the private sector.
For example, in Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or highly effective in the most recent evaluations. In Tennessee, 98 percent of teachers were judged to be “at expectations.” In Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated effective or better. [Source NYT December 2013.] In New York nearly 92 percent of teachers were rated highly effective or effective in the first year of a new evaluation system, the state Education Department said today. Just 1 percent was deemed ineffective, and 4 percent were characterized as developing.
Based on the above, our educational system should be top notch. But it’s not, here is the reality.
So, based on the above performance figures the problem is not our teachers, but something else. What could that be?
In my opinion, while those high satisfactory ratings for teachers are surely bogus, teachers are not the real problem. That belongs to the parents and the family structure and it’s priorities. Learning does not occur only for six hours five days a week. Work and study ethics are not taught in school. Discipline is not a teachers job. Encouraging and requiring achievement of goals and setting appropriate expectations is the parents job. Setting examples is the parents job. Monitoring performance and activities is the parents jobs.
Vergara v. State of California was brought in May 2012 by nine public school students who contended that iron-clad teacher job protections and “last-in-first-out” policies undermine the quality of education. Supporting their argument was testimony that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu wrote “shocks the conscience.” To wit: In the past 10 years, only 91 teachers in California have been fired, and only 19 for unsatisfactory performance. Yet according to one state witness, between 2,750 to 8,250 California teachers rank as grossly ineffective…
Unwieldy dismissal procedures, which Judge Treu describes as “uber due process,” then make it nearly impossible to fire teachers even for egregious misconduct. Fewer than 0.002% of California teachers are dismissed for unprofessional conduct or poor performance in any given year compared to 1% of other California public employees and 8% of workers in the private economy…
L.A. spent $3.5 million between 2000 and 2010 to fire seven teachers for poor performance. Yet only four of the seven were ultimately dismissed. Two received large settlement payouts, and one was retained. Chief of Human Resources Vivian Ekchian testified that the district employs 350 grossly ineffective teachers it hasn’t even sought to dismiss. WSJ 6-11-14
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