My buddy, Suze, and I have had heated debates about the Rubber Room. The Rubber Room is where 615 New York City teachers are warehoused. They have been removed from the classroom because of misconduct, but the union stipulations require that they receive full pay until they can receive a hearing. Several years might elapse before they receive a hearing. And even they are convicted, they still receive a pension until they die; 1/2 of their final year's pay.
New Yorker article on the Rubber Room is pretty devastating. One woman was put in the Rubber Room, because she passed out drunk in the classroom with 34 kids present and couldn't be revived. The union defended her. Randy Weingarten comes out looking like a jerk.
The debate that Suze and I usually have around the Rubber Room goes as follows. I say, "what a waste of money! Get rid of these drunks and pedophiles. Why is money going to these pieces of human garbage rather than to the poor kids. The union is all about protecting teachers and not about the kids."
She says, " the poor teachers might have unfairly fired by principals. They deserve a hearing. It's not their fault that the system can't provide them with a speedy hearing."
And then I say, "that's life. I've dealt with unfair situations before, and nobody looked after me. That's the real world, sister." [Creative license to make me sound grumpier than usual.]
Apt. 11d 
Grumpy rejoinder: I don’t know why people who have been victimized think everyone should be victimized. We should be expanding protections, not making everyone into victims.
I’m with Suze. It’s a necessary “evil,” and what we should be doing is speeding up the hearing process, not firing people.
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“Several years might elapse before they receive a hearing.”
There’s the root of your evil.
Also the pension? Generally the person will have paid into a pension fund. That means getting what they are contractually due is not a privilege, it’s a right.
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“Also the pension? Generally the person will have paid into a pension fund. That means getting what they are contractually due is not a privilege, it’s a right.”
For government employees. Everybody else has a 401k or whichever company was at the other end of the contract went broke or is about to go broke because you can’t actually pay that amount if you can’t take peoples’ houses if they don’t pay you. Given them their contributions as an IRA, plus reasonable interest.
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Sounds like the problem is that it takes so long to schedule and conduct a hearing. Why not get upset about that, instead of suggesting that teachers be fired without one? (Whether tenure should exist is a whole ‘nother issue.)
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Give’em what’s in the contract…
But really, who is responsible for it taking years for a hearing? That’s the totally crazy part.
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I believe in due process and I believe in workers’ rights to organize. I agree with Wendy that we should be more concerned with employees who are treated unfairly or penalized for wanting to organize. I don’t want incompetent teachers in the classroom, but I don’t think teachers should be subject to summary dismissal either.
Let’s remember that these teachers have been removed from the classroom because of accusations of misconduct (or in some cases, incompetence), which may or may not be true. If the allegations are true, the teachers should be fired. Absolutely. But I don’t trust an administrator to be the sole arbiter. There needs to be a system in which teachers can answer the charges against them; I know of cases personally in which false allegations were made by students unhappy with their grades. I also know of a case in which a teacher says she was targeted by the principal only after reporting to him on rumors she was hearing of another teacher’s sexual activity with a student.
The arbitration panel only meets 5 days a month during the school year and 2 days a month in the summer. The arbitration process takes something like 10 times longer than the average criminal trial. That is a huge problem.
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Hmm, while I understand these arguments, I’m struck by the lack of outrage at the total waste of resources this represents. Is this not a school district that is actively cutting programs this year, to make up for budget shortfalls? Has the Rubber Room been protected from those cuts? That just seems wrong to me.
I am not arguing for mass firing of all these teachers, but I also think consideration only of the rights of the teachers is inappropriate.
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I think everybody is outraged by how much money is lost by paying teachers to not teach. Plus, of course, the money for the room and the security guards and DOE supervisors who govern it. But if teachers are not to be fired en masse simply for having been accused, then what should happen?
My suspicion is that the DOE purposefully drags out the process and makes the “rubber rooms” as much like prison as possible in the hopes that the teachers simply quit in disgust. And some do. But many are so convinced of their innocence or feel so unfairly targeted that they refuse to quit. Others I admit are probably just crazy. Perhaps the budget crisis will force a reassessment of the length of the process, because the city’s going to have a tough time paying for this. Already, they’re forcing schools to take teachers as transfers or from the reserve list rather than bring from outside the system (why I haven’t found a job).
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Can they not be asked to do some sort of work while in the Rubber Room. Paint the hallways, make photocopies, develop a webpage, …
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“My suspicion is that the DOE purposefully drags out the process and makes the “rubber rooms” as much like prison as possible in the hopes that the teachers simply quit in disgust.”
Clearly that’s the goal. Especially since they’re required to come in to weight out their time. It’s clearly a form of no-exit torture, where you are being squeezed into withdrawing your opposition to the charges. It’s much easier that way, just like prosecutors would really prefer that criminals plead guilty. They need to ramp up the hearing process, but don’t want to have to take anything to trial.
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And, Jen, the rights that the teachers are invoking are probably meticulously laid out in an employment contract. If on renewal, districts want to change this, they should do so at the negotiating table when the contract is drawn. The problem is that governments have long taken the position of giving away hidden costs — making it difficult to fire teachers even when they are clinically insane, while avoiding the upfront costs — what they actually pay the teachers.
I see a lot of the problems we have with tenure (near life time tenure, lack of evaluation) as being a trade that negotiators have made in return for relatively low pay. I think the market cost of getting someone to teach in a difficult teaching environment (in NYC, for example) is actually quite high. They manage to hire people for the positions by hiding part of the market cost in benefits that don’t appear on the budget bottom line, at least right away.
But arguing, when that budget bottom-line is noticed, after the contracts have already been made, that we should change the agreements is pretty much like demanding your money back when the stock market goes down instead of up.
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Brill’s example of a teacher who may well have been improperly exiled from the classroom is sobering: accused of sexual touching on a girl with no witnesses. He said, she said, then his career is in ashes. What do you do? Sixteen year old girls will say anything, this poor schlub, if innocent, loses it all, on the other hand, you really DON’T want girls getting fondled by teachers. And there are a lot of kids who could be getting taught by good, excited teachers on the wages these folks are consuming.
I’m with everybody else: there needs to be a fair process, but it needs to be faster.
Meanwhile, 3000 miles away, the Other Times (LA) has had a series of articles about the problems for children from the teachers’ union there. (see http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/15/local/me-locke15)
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“Sixteen year old girls will say anything”
?
Why would you say that? In fact, I don’t think anything about the data supports it, and sixteen year old girls (and their advocates) have had to fight for hundreds of years to have their words taken seriously.
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I’m with bj. Not all teachers are innocent, not all charges are unfounded, but the basis of our system is that every case gets a fair hearing. That’s what unions are protecting.
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Two questions that I need answered:
Why is the Board taking so long to go through adjudication process? Is it because it just takes a long time for each case and there are a lot of people to go through? It’s not rational for them to purposely take a long time. Either the teacher is fine and will get put back in the classroom or the teacher is a real problem and will get fired. Either way, the system saves money by getting this process done quickly.
What is the percentage of teachers that are ultimately found innocent? If it’s more than 50%, then the Rubber Room seems justified. If it’s 1%, then this is a multi-million dollar program that is sucking money out of the classroom and should be ended immediately. It’s not worth spending 2 million bucks to help out one teacher. The purpose of schools is to educate kids, not employ teachers.
The teachers are kept in this Rubber Room partially because they hope that the teachers will just quit. Also, because of politics. The teachers are getting PAID. The least that they can do for their money is sit in a chair. The public would go insane if they heard that these teachers were not only getting full salary, but they were free to do whatever they wanted.
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“I’m struck by the lack of outrage at the total waste of resources this represents.”
Outrage at teachers’ unions is usually my job. But I’m having a week at work where I just can be bothered.
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bj – ‘why would you say that?’
1. Tawana Brawley
2. Crystal Mangum (see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,265374,00.html the tales she told when 14)
3. Norman Swerling (http://www.wickedlocal.com/newton/news/opinions/x902754899
I think it’s important to investigate allegations. But it happens often enough that teen girls somehow feel dissed for an innocent remark, or want to postpone a test, or just want some excitement, that you have to have some way to take care that teachers’ lives aren’t ruined by some kid for something they have not done.
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This is all a red herring. The issue is principals. Most of these teachers have NEVER been observed by a principal, and most of those that have been observed by a principal have been observed by someone who knows nothing about instruction (a former gym teacher, most likely). They have certainly not been subject to the kinds of interventions that would enable and encourage them to improve their skills as teachers. District officials should, indeed, negototiate contracts that make it easier to fire incompetent/lazy teachers. But even more so they should create a career path in for administrators which leads people who are interested and knowledgable about instruction and learning to seek to become principals, and a selection process that results in such people getting the jobs. If teachers believed that principals could make semi-informed judgments about these matters they would be much less resistant to measures designed to facilitate getting rid of incompetents. In other words, this is all a sign of something much more outrageous.
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But Harry, it sounds like these people are in the room for more than just being bad teachers. They’ve been put there, because of allegations of misconduct. Kind interventions by a wise administrator is not what’s called for when someone is fall down drunk in a classroom. I want that person marched to the door and chucked out immediately. That’s what would happen at Steve’s office. No second chances for that.
The problem with the NYC teachers union is that they actually stuck up for the fall-down drunk teacher. They have no credibility. I actually trust the incompetent principals more than I trust the NYC teachers union. And I’m not the only one. When I’ve interviewed urban community activists, they’ve been very down on urban teachers unions. You should hear what they say about Phila.’s teachers union.
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Why doesn’t anyone talk about the police unions the same way? Justin Barnett sent a racist poorly thought out e-mail screed to reporters. The police union is still going to get him a fair trial. And honestly, I think we have no idea how much covering up does go on because of the blue wall of silence.
Why do teachers’ unions get criticized more than other unions?
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“Why do teachers’ unions get criticized more than other unions?”
Because the ordinary person has far more dealings with school than with the police?
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This is just me, but I think the teachers have to get comfortable with the idea that they simply sacrifice too much by insisting on tenure. Let’s face it — what we’re talking about here is teachers whose professionalism is constantly questioned, because there’s a sense that they are more protected than anyone else in the economy. It breeds resentment and is just in general totally not helpful. If we’re worried about teachers being summarily fired, then let’s deal with that. I don’t know that going to the opposite extreme of protecting absolutely every teacher is helping.
I also want to strongly respond to Dave S.’s comments about “16-year-olds will say anything”. The research that I see shows false accusations of sexual assault running at a rate of something like 7%.
(http://www.ndaa.org/publications/newsletters/the_voice_vol_3_no_1_2009.pdf)
It is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE to discount an accusation of sexual misconduct based on the age of the accuser. Does it need to be looked into? Absolutely. And do innocent parties always need the opportunity to be cleared? Absolutely. But no way, no how can someone bring up the Tawana Brawley case, for chrissakes, and think that’s a valid argument for not believing any 16-year-old.
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“What is the percentage of teachers that are ultimately found innocent? If it’s more than 50%, then the Rubber Room seems justified. If it’s 1%, then this is a multi-million dollar program that is sucking money out of the classroom and should be ended immediately.”
Should this be true of our court system in general? Of course, loosing a job is not the same as being thrown in jail, but the point here is that the teachers negotiated this protection in their contract.
(And Dave, anecdotal examples of particular 16 year old girls who may have lied, especially with links to fox news sites, does nothing to suggest that 16 year old girls should not be believed. Are you actually arguing that 16 year old girls are more likely to lie than people of other ages? of people of different genders? I think people sometimes lie, but I’ve found no evidence to suggest that one race, age, sex, or gender lies more than others. And that applies to 16 year old girls, too).
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Thanks Jen for finding the data.
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Yes, I agree Laura, but I still think it is a bit of a red herring. A good school manager and instructional leader knows what is going on in his/her school, and has a good sense of whether to trust accusations or not. The problem is that these people are operating in institutions in which no-one really has a handle on what is going on, and that is partly, of course, a function of the crappy structure of the institutions (which has feedback effects on who wants to lead them). Unions do not, in general, function to protect the incompetent/badly behaved; they only seem to function that way when there is no basis for trust between them and the managers. (I say this as someone who has witnessed, at a distance, a good number of teachers being fired, with the cooperation of unions, who TRUSTED the leaders and managers doing the firing (with good reason).
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harry b,
In the American public system, there’s a very bright line between teachers and administrators. That creates (the not entirely unfounded) belief that school administrators are drones who went into administration because they couldn’t deal with the classroom. It doesn’t have to be like that. When I worked at a Russian school, my principal (an absolutely terrifying woman) routinely taught classes in her subject (Russian grammar and literature). The same was true of her assistant principals–they all taught quite a lot. Of course, this is more feasible in a system where the standard teacher’s load was 20 50-minute lessons a week (you could teach twice as much for higher pay). I’m not sure, but I believe principals may also teach in Germany.
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Yes, its the same in every country I know of except the US (increasingly rare for secondary school principals to teach in the UK, but still not unheard of). The problem is much more that teachers don’t manage, than that managers don’t teach. Department chairs, eg, as teachers, lack managerial authority, but in a healthy school would play a key role in instructional leadership, and would be acknowledged for that. They also get almost no training (but then, the training that APs and Ps get leaves a lot, a hell of a lot, to be desired).
Fredrick Hess, in Common Sense School Reform, says that 1/3 of principals are former gym teachers or athlectic coaches (ok, you laugh, but look at the origins of several of your local principals and…).
Anyway, we are now fully off topic, I think. Sorry Laura.
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In grade school, my principal was also the full-time third grade teacher. And my high school principal taught at least one class at all times (and once picked-up a 9th grader with one arm and pinned him to the locker with his little feet flopping in the air).
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Read my novel Confessions of a Rogue Teacher”, iUniverse, 2008. There are two reviews on the net.
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the 3000-mile-away Times says: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-schools26-2009aug26,0,4203620.story?track=rss
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“The problem is much more that teachers don’t manage, than that managers don’t teach.”
It works out to the same thing in the end.
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“Fredrick Hess, in Common Sense School Reform, says that 1/3 of principals are former gym teachers or athlectic coaches…”
My high school vice principal ran a card store (football, baseball, etc.) on the side. I’m not sure what his previous background had been, but take a wild guess.
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Interesting additional info on the article.
Learning that the author was Steven Brill (yes, I commented without reading the underlying article; won’t be the last time) also puts it in a different cast. Not as a hit piece, exactly, but as a piece coming from an author I’d expect to have ingrained disdain for unions in general, and teacher’s unions in particular. So I’d be taking it with even more grains of salt.
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“Grumpy rejoinder: I don’t know why people who have been victimized think everyone should be victimized. We should be expanding protections, not making everyone into victims. ”
According to theory, people always act in their own rational self-interest. Altruism emerges only as a type of informal alliance between people. When a person becomes victimized (or perceives themselves as a victim) – especially when the society watches and does nothing – the alliance is broken. The person believes, at some level, that their is no point in helping people since the other people will not return the favor.
Regarding the article – why shouldn’t the district have the power to fire the teachers for whatever reason they want? This could actually help teachers in the long run since evil cold-hearted conservative bigots like me would no longer be able to claim that the problem is with teachers unions. If my employer locked me a cage every day I’d have enough self-respect to quit and find another job.
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bj – are you asserting that Fox News lies? My general feeling about Fox is that they are usually accurate, though their choice of what they think is news is often different from the choice by other networks.
Yes, I think 16-year-olds often lie. They have grandiose ideas, they don’t have a sense of consequences. They also drive too fast. My own kids are 8, 11, and 12, and they embroider and lie. We had our kids late, so I have a lot of friends whose kids are older. Yes, they lie. They are testing the world, throwing noodles at the wall and seeing what sticks. As it happens, when 16-yo boys lie, it is less likely to be ‘Mr Frebbish put his hand in my shirt’ – so it’s less likely to be a boy who put Frebbish in the rubber room.
Tawana Brawley started her mess because she was afraid her stepfather would beat her for being out all night. Mangum wanted to avoid being arrested for disorderly, etc. (this was on the Duke Lacrosse team thing, not the event when she was 14) And in both cases it snowballed.
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Doug,
Why on earth does Goldstein think that Brill ought to be highlighting “examples of excellence in teaching” in a piece on the rubber rooms? There are already a lot of (often dubious) articles written on the magicalness of particular schools and school personalities. In my opinion, writers all too often fall into the trap of seeing a brightly-decorated classroom full of shiny, eager little faces and assuming that some sort of groundbreaking education is happening there when usually the innovations that they describe are old hat.
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“bj – are you asserting that Fox News lies? My general feeling about Fox is that they are usually accurate, though their choice of what they think is news is often different from the choice by other networks.”
One of my pet peeves is when particular news sources are discounted when their record on accuracy is no worse than average. I especially dislike it when no countervailing evidence is presented.
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You guys have got to be kidding me. Fox’s little habit of putting (D) after the names of Republican wrongdoers is just one example of their crap.
However, I will say that part of the problem is that people seem to get their news from the opinion people, the Hannity/O’Reilly/(gag)Beck stuff. Is it technically “news”? No. But that’s how people get their news.
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“Fox’s little habit of putting (D) after the names of Republican wrongdoers is just one example of their crap.”
I know, I know. Fox ought to do it the traditional way, where you put an R after the name when a Republican walks the Appalachian trail, and then when a Democrat does the same (or takes bribes or is implicated in a murder case), you omit the party affiliation completely or wait until after the jump. That’s the professional way to do it. (On the conservative blogs, they refer to this game as “Name that party!” If you want examples, just google “name that party.”)
TV news is awful. I don’t watch Fox, but whenever I happen to catch CNN (at the gym or the airport) it’s always a shock to see how terrible it is. MSNBC is the current medal holder for turning a black guy with a gun into a racist white Obama-hater, with the help of video editing. Here’s a link, but you probably won’t like this news source either.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/08/18/msnbc-no-mention-black-gun-owner-among-racist-protesters
A student editor I knew as a college student had a sign on his door, “An editor should have a pimp as a brother so he has someone to look up to.”
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As near as I can tell, the difference between the two parties comes down to taxes. Republicans make laws so that rich people don’t have to pay much in taxes. Democrats want more even taxation, apparently because elected Democrats just don’t pay their taxes.
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Doug, if you don’t like Brill in New Yorker, here is NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/nyregion/29teachers.html?_r=3&hp
Principals desperate to avoid hiring badly, unwilling to take risks because they will be stuck with the results if they guess wrong.
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bj, I am going to bring in that old chestnut, ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ – you are forming an image of your high school self, I am guessing, and that nasty old lech Frebbish is grabbing your breast when you are in asking homework advice during free period. My image is that I am Frebbish, and some girl with more sense of drama than moral sense makes up a story about getting fondled and I am in the rubber room for four years. Similarly, I read about the Duke lacrosse case and had a clear image of my sweet #1, athletic groupie that he is, getting into Duke, getting invited to a party by idolized team members, and being tagged by random drunk stripper Crystal Mangum for prosecution and my wife and I have to sell the house to lawyer up to get him off, and maybe even then he gets railroaded. We all think about the disaster which could happen to us.
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