<p><a href=“http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/10/BAG0CL2UJ01.DTL[/url]”>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/10/BAG0CL2UJ01.DTL</a></p>
<p>I will cut and paste some of the article into the thread. For the remainder, go to the URL (above).</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO
Schools may get break from bad teachers
‘Dance of the Lemons’ from one campus to another would be curtailed under bill
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Imagine a company president being ordered by the board of directors to hire any misfit who knocks on the door.
It’s a crazy scenario – but it’s exactly the way many California school districts operate when an unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school. As long as the teacher agrees to leave voluntarily, union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher.
The practice, common in large and mid-size urban districts, is so reviled by principals that they’ve given it a derogatory name.
“It’s called the Dance of the Lemons,” said state Sen. Jack Scott, a Pasadena Democrat who wrote a bill to ban the practice in low-scoring schools and to limit it in others.
Scott, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, got the Democrat-controlled Legislature to pass his bill despite opposition from two traditional party allies: the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers.
The bill was approved 33-1 by the Senate in May and 59-12 by the Assembly last month. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.
If the governor signs it as expected, California will become the first state in the nation to rein in the practice.
“There are a lot of states watching what’s happening in California, and I think it’ll have significant ramifications nationwide,” said Michelle Rhee, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit group that worked on the Scott bill.
Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association, called the bill “insulting to teachers,” because it implies that every teacher who voluntarily leaves a school is a poor one. Some teachers leave a school for reasons unrelated to performance, such as a personality clash with a principal.
Disapproval from the teachers unions often can kill a bill. But their opposition was counterbalanced this time by a constituency that proved just as persuasive: advocates for poor and minority students, who most often attend the schools where the lemons land.
“Right now, poor kids and kids of color don’t have their fair share of the state’s experienced, credentialed teachers,” said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Oakland advocacy group Education Trust-West. “By giving a principal in a high-poverty, high-minority school some power to recruit those teachers, we can finally make headway on closing that teacher-quality gap.”
Principals also love the idea.
“I believe in the teachers union, but some things protect ineffective employees. We’ve got to put children first,” said Principal Patricia Gray of Balboa High in San Francisco.
“It’s not just about good and bad teachers,” Gray said. “Sometimes there’s chemistry and a fit – personalities that work better together. I’ve got a wonderful staff. I’d like to have some choice in who comes and who’s going to be a good fit for the school.”
Under the Scott bill, SB1655, existing labor contracts with teachers would be honored, but future agreements would largely disallow the forced hiring.
The new law would no longer require principals in low-scoring schools to hire unwanted teachers. Like Balboa, these schools rank 1, 2, or 3 on the state’s 10-point Academic Performance Index.
Principals in higher-scoring schools would have a window of time each year to hire whom they please – beginning on April 15 and running through the summer.
Under current law, principals don’t have that window. They are forced to give unwanted teachers hiring priority throughout the summer, forcing more desirable candidates to look for jobs elsewhere, usually in suburbia.
The so-called Dance of the Lemons is not just a California problem – it goes on across the country.
“It is the students who lose the most,” according to a recent study by the New Teacher Project, which found that the forced hiring results in the placement of “hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of teachers in urban classrooms each year with little regard for the appropriateness of the match, the quality of the teacher, or the overall impact on schools.”
The New Teacher Project looked at the impact of forced hires in five urban districts across the country. It found:
– City schools have large numbers of unwanted teachers;
– Teachers who should be fired are instead passed from school to school;
– Good teachers are unable to wait all summer for the chance to be considered, so they apply elsewhere, usually by June.
The practice of forced hiring has been a part of labor contracts since the early 1960s, beginning with districts on the East Coast and growing in popularity over the years, according to the New Teacher Project.
In San Francisco, Balboa High was one of those schools that could never get ahead. In 1999, Gray was hired as principal and was asked to turn the school around.
But it was slow going.
Gray wanted to transform the school’s chaotic atmosphere by setting clear expectations for students and teachers and aligning the curriculum with the state’s expectations for high school students.
Though it sounded simple, Gray said it took the cooperation and enthusiasm of every staff member.
Under Gray’s new system, all Balboa students could look at the blackboard and know immediately what they were expected to do because every teacher wrote a “Do Now” list for every class.
Teachers also wrote the “Aim for the Day,” the “Lesson Steps” and the homework assignment on the board for all to see.
“You find that in every room,” Gray said.
The idea was to lessen confusion and help students improve.
One day, a new teacher started at Balboa who had been “consolidated” – teacher talk for squeezed out – from another high school. Gray had no choice but to hire her.
“I was forced to take a consolidated teacher on more than one occasion,” Gray recalled.
When this particular teacher arrived at Balboa, Gray said, she refused to follow the school-improvement plan that every other teacher had agreed to do and that students had come to rely on.
“She felt it stifled her creativity,” Gray said.
Since then, Gray and a few other San Francisco principals trying to turn around low-scoring schools have received a district waiver from forced hiring.
“It did make a difference,” Gray said. “If you’ve got a teacher who has had problems in another school because she was ineffective, then of course the children are not getting the instruction they need. So the children absolutely benefited.”</p>
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