In Chicago, the fabled “Dance of the Lemons” shuffles ousted public school teachers to charter schools. Wait a minute! I saw “Waiting for Superman.” I though that dance was only for all those “bad” public school teachers.
“More than 160 Chicago Public Schools employees who were barred from the district because of alleged abuse, misconduct or poor performance were found working in new jobs at city charter and contract schools last year, according to a report from the district’s inspector general.
“The list included three workers who were fired or resigned and blocked from being re-hired at CPS because of sexual abuse accusations, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. Twenty-two were put on a “Do Not Hire” list “due to improper corporal punishment or physical abuse of students,” according to the report.
“Nearly 80 others were blocked from returning to the district due to incompetence or violating school rules. That included a list of probationary teachers who were blocked from future employment at CPS because of poor performance.
“The 163 unidentified employees — 98 of them teachers — represented a small fraction of the workforce at the city’s publicly funded but independently operated charter and contract schools, the report noted.
“But Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s office also found that CPS had no system for those schools to determine if their potential employees had been blacklisted by CPS with the “Do Not Hire” designation. Despite preliminary steps taken to fix the problem, the IG’s office said CPS has not finalized a policy on how to handle such situations.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reminds me of sign in the lobby of a hotel catering to professional conferences, in this instance of waste-management specialists. One of the conference presentations was titled SLUDGE: production, management, treatment and disposal.
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Read this article with a grain of salt. Banning teachers, especially probationary teachers who are basically at will employees, is a way of getting rid of teachers vindictive principals can use. They cannot prove malfeasance or the teachers would be facing more than banning from Chicago schools. I would guess that Chicago may not be allowed to share the status of those teachers either (for fear of lawsuits). I would guess that most teachers could cite an example of a teacher who was forced to resign as a result of false or trumped up accusations. I don’t mean to imply that there are not some teachers who were incompetent, but if Chicago is not sharing the information, there are reasons why.
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The teachers may have a nondisparagement clause.
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Typically not much applies to probationary teachers, but the district may not want a lawsuit to bite them in the butt for what may be trumped up charges to begin with. You may be right, but I have never seen a union go to bat for a probationary teacher.
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So- question. When ed reformers say public schools keep “ineffective” teachers don’t they only know that because public schools do central record keeping?
In other words, do they NOT KNOW anything about charter teachers since charters are private entities with less (or no) real regulation or centralized record keeping?
Are they comparing “data” on public school teachers not to “data” on charter teachers but instead to NO available data on charter teachers?
How are charter teachers regulated? Does each school just handle it in-house?
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And, since charter schools are inherently deregulatory won’t there be LESS oversight of teachers, not more? Won’t there be MORE incidents where teachers with problematic records are employed if there’s no central oversight but instead school by school oversight?
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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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According to Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, more than 160 Chicago Public Schools employees who were barred from the district because of alleged abuse, misconduct or poor performance were found working in new jobs at city charter and contract schools.
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The onus is on the charters, not CPS it would seem to me. Didn’t they watch the teachers in the classroom? Didn’t they ask for references from site administrators and ask for more than the dates they worked? And if these people were on do not hire lists how hard is that to share when the charters are wearing their Yes, we are a public school hats?.
In 44 years of teaching only one employer ever asked me for an evaluation of a student and that was before law suits became so common, so I can imagine charters desperate to hire hiring warm bodies. The more things change…etc.
Would seem down right silly if it weren’t a serious oversight.
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DISGUSTING!
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Don’t worry, the mainstream media will report on this “Dance of the Lemons” at charter schools on the First of Never.
After all, unlike charters, where it’s always Miracle Time, it’s only at public schools where bad things happen.
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Michael, cheer up. The press is beginning to see that charters are not miracle schools and that the industry is rife with fraud.
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I hope you are right, Diane, long overdue though it may be…
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Ms Ravitch,
You buried the lede, these teachers were hired at CPS APPROVED CHARTER SCHOOLS. CPS is not doing the right thing by alerting these CPS APPROVED charter and contract schools that their are possible issues with their employment.
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Mrs. Weiss,
Based on your praise for the charter school in Arizona with a one-man board overseeing $18 Million with no accountability, I assume you also applaud Scott Glasrud of New Mexico, whose Southwest Learning Centers got high scores. Unfortunately he admitted stealing $3 Million. Was that wrong? Or do the high scores make it right?
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Ms Ravitch, what does your non-sequitur have to do with CPS not doing the right thing? Do you always assume that a comment poster here implicitly approves of something because they don’t denounce it?
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My response was on the wrong thread. Sorry. It was about your admiration for the Az charter owner who gets $18 Million and never holds an open meeting.
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