It is not about one teacher possibly being treated unfairly, it is more about the loss to students of a great teacher for no stated reason except “you don’t fit” and the likelihood of this type of thing happening more and more.

Additionally, it seems there is a disconnect concerning the assumption that because more teachers aren’t being fired, that unions and tenure are at fault for perpetuating bad schools. In fact, a community member of mine recently commented that unions are ruining education and we ought to immediately replace twenty percent of the staff because they’re obviously not all good teacher. I found this perspective disturbing, as our school is considered one of the best in the country. Newsweek consistently ranks it in the top 250 and Pew says it’s in the top thirty for college preparation – we had twenty-six National Merit Scholars this year. Obviously, unions and tenure are not causing problems here.

Mort Zuckerman of US News recently noted, “nearly 90 percent of adults today complete high school compared with 33 percent in 1947.” Additionally, nearly 30 percent of the American population today has a college degree compared with 5 percent in 1947. That seems like some rather impressive progress. It’s hardly a ruined education system. While Americans regularly cite concerns about public schools, Gallup polls show seventy-five percent of Americans are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their children’s school. An even greater percentage of Americans (85%) are satisfied with their own education. So why all the criticism? Well, they’re obviously talking about other people’s schools.

That is the problem of looking at unions, tenure, and low dismissal rates and blaming them for poor performance in public schools.

So this isn’t a case of ineffective management. It’s a case of very effective management – if by “effective” we mean that they accomplish what they want to accomplish and please their primary constituency.

I have heard about the incredibly convoluted contracts that some school districts have which, in turn, make dismissing ineffective teachers cumbersome. In fact, John Stossel made a point of posting the New York City public school’s ridiculous contract during his show “Stupid in America.”

This, again, is the product of completely ineffective management. Who signs a contract that makes it impossible to effectively manage workers and dismiss incompetent ones? Agreeing to such a contract just makes no sense.

To Alsadius — The .007% is 7 out of 95,500 teachers who are fired in a year in Illinois. It’s true that 1 in 930 (or .107%) receive an unsatisfactory review but only .007% are let go.

To Margo/Mom — I agree that any organization needs to have some mix of trying to improve the employees they have, tolerating the limitations of the ones they can’t improve, and terminating the ones that aren’t acceptable. My point is that schools are way out of balance, neither doing much to identify and improve sub-par teachers or terminating them.

Frankly, I’m not sure what Art Siemens exemplifies because there seems to be a crucial factoid or two missing. I can only surmise that his talent at pushing kids over the AP mark was not balanced in other areas deemed to be more critical to the mission of the organization. But you’re right, as the case is now known, it does little to support either those who favor tenure or those who feel hamstrung by it.

In addition, saying that it is “pretty reasonable” that one has to show cause underestimates the burden of demonstrating cause. If I were to say that anyone who wanted to stop reading this blog only had to show cause to stop reading, that would be anything but reasonable. Despite this blog’s obsession with pop culture, endless inside jokes, and rapant sophistry you would have a hard time “proving” that it was not worthwhile. : )

The stats referenced by Jay in this post tell the story – do you really think that only 0.007% of all teachers need to be fired? With the system failing the way it is?