This week the Cleveland Plain Dealer announced that the district and teachers union will begin working on a new teacher evaluation that will include ?evidence of student learning.? Meanwhile, Cincinnati's long-disputed teacher contract?to take effect in early 2011 if approved?is purportedly ?progressive? and also will overhaul the current teacher evaluation system.
Of course teacher evaluation remodeling isn't exactly breaking news; it's happening all over the place. But it's an important step for Ohio and some of its large urban districts. Hopefully the new teacher contracts adequately address (among many other things) teacher dismissal.
It's a touchy subject, with reformers (or anyone with common sense, really) pointing out ludicrous stats showing the minuscule number of teachers who are let go (especially compared to other professions) and arguing that chronic ineffectiveness should be grounds for dismissal. Meanwhile, Diane Ravitch types call the notion of firing the lowest tier of teachers ?tabloid think,? suggesting instead that all teachers receive opportunities to improve. (By the way, kudos to Mike for staying on point in his Twitter debate with Ravitch.)
It's probably obvious which side of the fence I fall on, but if ever there was doubt in my mind about whether teacher evaluations systems and dismissal procedures are truly broken, some documents from the State Board of Education meeting earlier this week offer some compelling evidence.
The Board meets each month and among its duties is to review the licenses of teachers in question and recommend their revocation (or not). In this month's packet was a grand total of seven teachers. From the entire state.? Their offenses include:
- Attempting to engage in an inappropriate relationship with a student and writing an inappropriate letter to a student
- One misdemeanor count of menacing by stalking
- Attempting to engage in sexual activity with a student
- One misdemeanor count of aggravated menacing
- One felony count of attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor
- Misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct plus petit larceny and at least four other counts of felony theft
- Unprofessional behavior including contacting students through Myspace, ?being with students at a local restaurant after a school dance,? and texting a student 156 times in a few days.
Ok, let's put our math caps on. If the Board meets monthly (except August), how many teachers' licenses are revoked annually across the entire state? If seven is average, that'd be seventy-seven teachers a year deemed unsuitable to teach. Or, let's round up to one hundred (accounting for summer months where teachers might do more texting/Myspacing with students, as well as school-dance-months where teachers may hang out at restaurants with students). That's one hundred teachers out of total of over 118,000 teachers last year, or .08 percent. In probability-speak, that means I have a greater chance of swallowing a quarter over breakfast or getting attacked by a rabid flying squirrel on my way to work than of getting fired as a teacher. How does the education establishment not see something wrong with this?
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
