In a response appropriate for Labor Day weekend, a principal comments on a post about “the biggest lie about unions“:
As a principal who has removed several poor performing teachers in the past few years, I agree with this statement. I also agree that behind every poor teacher is a poor administrator.
I support due process, believing that it is not only a right for employees, but that it also provides me with a structure that holds me accountable as I take action. I view this as a form of protection for myself as a professional.
As accomplished as I’ve become as a principal, I am not immune from mistakes and misjudgments. With someone’s career on the line, I appreciate having a process and a partnership with our union that ensures that we do what’s right not only for children, but employees as well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The public has a perception that once a teacher receives tenure she/he can read the paper during class while the students watch porn videos and no one can fire him/her.
I’ve tried over the years to explain to people exactly what tenure actually means but it’s a hard sell.
Over the years I have worked with many administrators. I can remember several teachers who in the first three years of their teaching careers struggled. The administration provided support through meaningful conversations with experienced teachers, changed their grade, and sent them for classes.
At the end of the three years several teachers were counseled out of teaching. One teacher I knew personally said it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She tried and realized this was not a career for her and went on to a different and better suited for her career as a para-legal.
Teachers don’t give themselves tenure. It is earned, or at least it should be, and even then it doesn’t promise a life time job. The administrators need to do their job also.
We in the profession know this to be true. The public, however, only seems to focus on the teacher and the unions regarding tenure. Not all aspects of this.
I wish there was a like button for these stories and comments.
Administrators always had the ability to get rid of poor teachers. This is not a new concept as reformers want you to believe.
They don’t get rid of the “poor” ones. They typically get rid of the older teachers, the veteran teachers, the teachers who refuse to shut up, the teachers who are targeted by the central office for some petty nonsense when the central office doesn’t have all the facts. I can tell commenters here haven’t been through those farces called “due process” hearings which are anything BUT.
I work in one of those newly created small schools in nyc. The big school I was in phased out in 2004. I started teaching as a paraprofessional when I was 19 in 1974 when special ed just began and when I graduated I got a teaching job immediately. I had to interview for my job in the new school in my old building and I am the highest paid teacher there. I love what I do and I work my ass off. My principal has gotten rid of new poor teachers (not enough of them in my book) before getting rid of me. I do believe some principals do what you said and I’m thankful for the principal that I have.
Principals have always had the ability to get rid of teachers, period, regardless of ability, while having ironclad job security for themselves. BTW, as supervisors they should NOT be allowed to have “due process” rights. This makes it virtually impossible to get rid of lousy principals.
I am very disgusted when people say principals remove teachers for “poor performance.” Nobody defines what that is, but it is whatever a deranged or incompetent principal says it is. Usually it is the better teachers who are forced out of their careers or teachers who refuse to carry out illegal directives.
“At the end of the three years several teachers were counseled out of teaching.” What does THAT mean? Let’s quit sugarcoating what principals do. BTW, I was wrongfully fired–not “counseled out of teaching,” FIRED–when the DISTRICT SCREWED UP. This happens every single day, in school districts around the country. Principals FORCE teachers out because they don’t like them–that’s called “counseling out” of teaching. What a load of garbage. Don’t hand me any nonsense that being forced out of a career you spend YEARS preparing for can be “the best thing that ever happened.” Those people must have been married and had another income. In this economy, it is virtually impossible to “retrain” for another career. Try doing it, Anne Harvey, when you are 57 years old when the jerks who committed misconduct are allowed to keep their jobs in the district.
You are rightfully upset, but it is not fair to attack another commenter for sharing her experience. Not every administrator is good at his/her job, but not every administrator is as incompetant and downright vindictive as you state. I’m truly sorry for your experience.
I’m sorry susannunes that you were fired from your teaching position. We teachers deserve better than what happened to you.
Our school district does have a good system for removing teachers. It’s a system that the union and the board of education collaborated on. I described it under Diane’s entry about Josh Starr, Montgomery County’s PAR system.
Yet, we still have very poor administrators here. We have a vice-principal that has stated clearly that he favors teachers of his own race over teachers of other races, and his actions bear that out. He has been reported to the union, but he’s still at the school. He’s vindictive, he lies to teachers, and he has no concept of what makes a good teacher. I resorted to having my union representative present at every conversation I had with him. Luckily, at the end of that year, I escaped to another school that has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.
I hope you are able to find a job that enables you to use your gifts.
The big “debate” is about tenure, seniority, LIFO. Where’s the big debate about poverty, about kids coping with a very poor environment such as that experienced by the kids in cities like Camden, NJ? It seems that the cure for poverty is to get rid of tenure and unions.
Joe,
You hit the nail on the head. These so-called reformers think that if they get rid of tenure, seniority, unions, and all job protections for teachers, then students will learn more. There is no evidence for this claim. Finland has tenure, seniority, unions, etc and it is on top of the world. This whole issue is about blaming teachers for students’ low performance. Diane
I know of no other group less tolerant of incompetent or inappropriate teaching than other teachers.
But teachers have literally zero say in the matter. Speaking as someone who is a teacher, and a Union representative, we would LOVE for the administration to actually do their jobs and remove some of the incompetent teachers (usually nepotism/patronage hires). The Union can do nothing about their hiring, and we guaranty them the right to due process in any proceedings, but we can’t make them better teachers, or even apply any pressure…that’s all administration, and they are never willing to actually do that.
Yes, we teachers have zero say in the matter. I was implying that we should.
Poverty is a lot harder to fix, will take more effort, time, and money. It is more expedient politically to blame teachers, run a psy-op campaign to convince the public, then ignore poverty because there is no profit in addressing poverty. I don’t think most of the reformers really believe what they are peddling, the results have been so contrary they would have to be absolutely blind.
I do agree- I have a principal who is harassing a parent but bullying the child, interfering with custody issues ( told the ex husband about “what the parent is doing to her” all because the parent filed a complaint about safety issues and non compliance with the law. She also coerced some teachers say the child was truant. The SD knows about it but does nothing