Chicago Schools Flirt With Chaos : System Protects Incompetent Teachers, Ignores Students

A whole class of fourth-graders whose teacher failed to make the grade must go to summer school before they can be promoted, says their principal, one of four who tried unsuccessfully to fire the teacher.

“It is really a joke that the system allows this to happen,” said Dyanne Dandridge-Alexander, principal of Spencer Elementary School, where Grace Currin teaches. “Those children deserve a better teacher, a better education.”

Currin “has not handed in a lesson plan all year,” Dandridge-Alexander said, “and when you ask her about it, she says ‘I left it at home.’

“The noise level in the class is unbelievable. Kids are fighting. Children are rolling around on the floor. They are throwing chairs across the room. One day I walked into her classroom and said, ‘Did you see that chair fly across the room?’ and she said, ‘I told them not to do that.’ ”

The city’s schools are saddled with too many students and too little money, and the result too often is chaos, the Chicago Tribune concluded after a seven-month examination of a system that Secretary of Education William Bennett has called the worst in the nation.

Incompetence Protected

In addition, a lenient administration, a powerful teachers union and a misguided state law have created an environment that protects incompetent teachers and ignores the children the teachers are supposed to educate, the Tribune said in its weeklong series on the system.

The newspaper found that of 139 teachers who, over the last five years, were so lacking in attendance, discipline, teaching ability or relationships with their students that their principals moved to fire them, 99 are still in the classroom.

“I am part of the problem, but remember, you can’t expect miracles when you have low achievers,” said Currin, 56, who has taught for 30 years.

“There always will be discipline problems in that class,” said Currin, whose most recent assignment is at Spencer, in an impoverished neighborhood on the city’s near Northwest Side. “It’s the kind of children I teach.”

During her career, Currin has received at least 12 “excellent” ratings and five “superior” ratings. But she also has received four unsatisfactory ratings since the 1983-84 school year, the last this March from Dandridge-Alexander, the newspaper reported.

First Step Toward Termination

Since a new state law took effect in January, an unsatisfactory rating is the first step in the termination procedure, which could take a year or longer. The newspaper reported three of Currin’s principals attempted to have her fired under previous guidelines.

Currin told the Tribune her career goal now is retiring “at full pension.”

“Incompetent teachers are a disservice to everyone, especially the teaching profession,” Chicago Teachers Union spokesman Chuck Burdeen said. “Any principal who says he can’t get rid of an obviously bad teacher is either lazy or must think assassination is the only answer.

“Secondly, those who are critical of urban school systems are usually the ones like Bennett and the Reagan administration, who are taking away the very same resources needed to meet the tremendous needs of these kids,” he said.

Dandridge-Alexander said she isn’t concerned as much with blame as she is with correcting the problem. Last month she called parents in to monitor Currin’s classes, and “they are at a point where they think it is hopeless,” she said.

Because of the new state law giving teachers rated unsatisfactory a year’s work before they can be dismissed, Currin will be able to continue teaching until at least March, 1989.

The new law was part of a 1985 state school reform package, its intent to give school management better tools to weed out weak teachers. But lobbying by teachers unions made the law into yet another measure making it even more difficult to fire teachers, according to the Tribune.

“It’s a terrible shame,” said Dandridge-Alexander. “Those children have suffered because they have a totally inept teacher that no one has been able to fire.”