Parents Seek Damage Control in the Classroom

The summer before second grade, Emily Burke bubbled with excitement, daydreaming about a reunion with school friends and a return to her studies.

But Emily’s enthusiasm soon turned to dread. Bored by one teacher’s lessons and frightened by another’s yelling, Emily was shuttled from one classroom to another. After two months, her mother, Monica Burke, removed Emily from Garden Grove Elementary School in Simi Valley for eight days.

“She went from, ‘I can’t wait for school to start,’ to ‘I hate school,’ ” recounted Burke, a registered nurse. “Every morning, it was a battle to get her to school. Her stomach always hurt.”

By January, Emily was reassigned to a third classroom, one where she flourished. Lost was a half-year of schooling.

Emily is just one child in one school. But Burke believes her daughter’s experience illustrates a nagging problem: the damage wrought by bad teachers.

With California’s standardized test scores in the tank, many blame poorly performing teachers for California’s decades-long tumble from the heights of public education to the pits.

A statewide survey of 2,022 residents released by the Public Policy Institute of California this year found that Californians fault teachers--more than crowding, crime, a lack of funding or non-English speakers--for

low-performing schools. Looking to mend the broken system, Gov. Gray Davis recently signed into law a four-bill, $470-million education reform package. But only one of the bills--creating a program where teachers evaluate one another and help their weakest peers to improve--directly tackles the tricky topic of teacher quality.

“There aren’t that many bad teachers, but the union protects them, the school covers for them and you can’t get rid of them, it seems,” Burke said. “Once they’re in, year after year goes by, and these teachers are still there.”

Identifying and getting rid of bad teachers can be difficult in part because assessing teacher quality is so subjective--as Burke’s case illustrates.

The problem was not bad teaching in Emily’s case, but a bad fit, an administrator said. While she would not discuss specific teachers, the school’s principal said Burke’s concerns were taken seriously but could not be substantiated. Emily and her teacher simply did not mesh.

“The reality is that there isn’t always a good match between student and teacher, or parent and teacher,” the principal said. “It doesn’t mean the teacher isn’t a good or quality teacher. It doesn’t mean the kid isn’t a good kid. It’s just not a good fit.”

Indeed, a teacher who coaxes slow learners to excel at their own pace could bore gifted kids right into the nearest private school. Conversely, an instructor good at challenging burgeoning aerospace engineers may lack the patience to nurture the child still plugging away at basic math. But both are good teachers in their own right.

“A definition of a good or bad teacher varies from one person to another,” said Lane Jackson, an assistant principal at Balboa Middle School in Ventura. “And sometimes a good teacher can have a few bad months--maybe they’re going through a divorce, they’ve lost a child, they’re having money problems or they’re dealing with an illness.”

In a given year, school administrators here dismiss only a handful of tenured teachers--educators who have been given permanent employment status after a probationary period. The dismissal tally is significantly higher for probationary teachers, who can be let go without cause in their first two years.

“It’s harder to get rid of a tenured teacher than a marriage,” said Oxnard School District Assistant Supt. David Gomez. An official with the state’s school administrators association, Gomez favors reforms that would make the dismissal of a bad teacher cheaper and quicker.

Low dismissal numbers underscore Gomez’s point.

The Ventura Unified School District dismissed or bought out 26 of its roughly 600 teachers in the last five years--19 of them probationary employees. In the 300-teacher Hueneme School District, 40 instructors--two of them tenured--were asked or forced to leave in the same time period. Conejo Valley school administrators ousted only 12 employees--none of them tenured. And in the last two years, the county’s largest school district, Simi Valley Unified, let go seven probationary teachers and no permanent ones.

Since 1996, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing stripped eight Ventura County instructors of their licenses--all of whom either declined comment for this story or could not be reached. Usually, teachers lose their credentials not for poor performance, but for more egregious acts, such as being arrested for drug offenses or having sexual relations with students.

Harder to find are teachers whose problems are less obvious--those who have never studied the subject matter they are teaching or those who have lost their passion for the profession. Too often, many parents and administrators gripe, these lagging teachers are bounced from school to school in a “dance of the lemons.”

Just ask the Ventura father whose son, once an excited elementary school pupil, started tuning out when his instructor bored him with nonstop lectures. Or the Thousand Oaks mother whose science-loving son doubts whether his middle school teacher actually understands the subject he is teaching. Or the Simi Valley mother whose chatty son had his mouth sealed shut with electrical tape in class.

“Education is our biggest consumer industry, and it’s the only one where the customer is never right,” complained Simi Valley mom Nan Mostacciuolo, who helps parents struggling with school-related problems. “The customer--the parent--doesn’t have a say. We don’t get to choose [teachers]; we’re given what we get. It’s a gamble, a roll of the dice. . . . Every year, the biggest crap shoot is the fear that you’ll get that bad teacher.”

Teachers Help Referred Peers

The governor’s solution for improving educator quality is a system in which teachers help struggling colleagues referred by an administrator. Several Ventura County school districts have already begun planning their peer review programs; districts that do not participate stand to lose state funding.

Similar peer review programs are already in place in school districts across the country. A peer review program in Columbus, Ohio, is credited with lowering the attrition rate of new teachers and increasing the number of teachers dismissed.

Increasing pay for new instructors is another way to improve the caliber of teachers, said state Sen. Jack O’Connell, (D--San Luis Obispo), a former high school teacher in Oxnard. In a bill pending before the Legislature, he proposes raising salaries for beginning credentialed teachers to $33,000 next fiscal year and to $36,000 the next year.

Currently, salary schedules vary around the county, but most starting salaries are between $30,000 and $33,000 annually. With a decade or more of service, and an advanced degree, salaries max out between $53,000 and $68,000, depending on the school system.

“I’m trying to ratchet that [salary] up so we can attract the best and the brightest to the teaching profession,” O’Connell said.

The idea appeals to many teachers--and to parent Janice Daniels, whose children attend Glenwood Elementary School in Thousand Oaks. “My opinion of a person who becomes a teacher is very, very favorable,” Daniels said recently. “I admire teachers tremendously--I think they should be six-figure people.”

Daniels also favors merit pay for teachers. She is not alone. The statewide survey by the public policy institute found that 84% support increasing teachers’ pay based on merit.

Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) is proposing a pilot merit or bonus pay program for teachers who demonstrate superior classroom performance.

“In every other industry, you’re judged by performance,” Strickland said. “For sheriffs, you look at the crime rate; for district attorneys, the conviction rate; business people, the product. We should do the same with teachers, review them by the product. Is this the end-all of education reform? No, but it’s a major step in the right direction.”

Under Strickland’s proposal, the criteria used to identify high performing teachers would be negotiated locally in the eight districts participating in the pilot program. Districts could determine award amounts of up to $10,000. Strickland’s bill is scheduled to be discussed by the Legislature in January.

But measuring teacher performance can be difficult. After all, teaching children their parts of speech is a far cry from car sales, where the best salesman gets the highest commission, educators are quick to point out.

By their very nature, public schools and their teachers accept all comers--the poor and those who don’t speak English, the gifted and the developmentally disabled.

Many teachers wonder how you can measure whether a child who grew up speaking Spanish or Tagalog is making adequate progress in school, when the state’s standardized test is given in English. What measuring instrument can gauge whether a special education teacher is really getting through to an autistic child? More to the point, would merit pay discourage teachers from working with the neediest kids--those who require the most help but are least likely to show progress?

Merit pay could hurt school morale, by letting principals reward their pet teachers and forcing educators to compete for a limited pot of money, fears Ginny Jannotto, a Simi Valley computer and math teacher and union president. It is an idea that sounds good in concept until you try to put it into practice, added Hal Vick, executive director of the teachers unions in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.

“Is this really going to improve education, pitting teachers against each other, creating a caste system?” Jannotto asked.

Concerns notwithstanding, some teachers and administrators are willing to give it a shot.

“I absolutely believe in merit pay,” said Yolanda Benitez, superintendent of the Rio School District, north of Oxnard. “There are some teachers worth their weight in gold, because they do absolutely wonderful things. Others beat the kids to the door to get on the freeways.”

Locally, teachers who obtain certification from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards receive a one-time $10,000 stipend from the federal government. School districts in Ventura and Santa Paula help teachers pay for the testing process and offer raises to teachers upon certification.

That could soon change. Last month, the Los Angeles Unified school board approved a policy statement that would link pay increases to specific training, such as early literacy. The details have yet to be worked out, but district officials cite as an inspiration a pay plan in place at a charter school in Pacoima.

Tenure Reform Favored by Some

Tinkering with pay scales doesn’t go far enough for some activists. They favor reforming tenure, either by expanding the definition of dismissible offenses or creating multiyear, renewable contracts for teachers, as opposed to the present presumption of lifetime employment.

Now, teachers spend two years on probation before achieving what educators call permanency.

Tenured teachers may only be dismissed with cause. They also have due process rights, allowing them the right to fight a termination and present their case before an objective outsider.

The downside is that due process can stretch out for years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Jerry Dannenberg said.

An assistant superintendent in Ventura, Dannenberg said his school district recently tried to fire a teacher suspected of cruelty and verbal abuse toward children.

The teacher, whose name Dannenberg wouldn’t disclose because it’s a personnel issue, fought the dismissal every step of the way and won the right to return to the classroom. It was only a month later--when the district attorney’s office threatened to file child abuse charges--that the teacher resigned. The school district’s tab: $300,000.

“Before that, I was opposed to buyouts,” Dannenberg said. “But I learned real quickly that a buyout of, say, $25,000 was a more cost-effective way to resolve some matters, and it will help kids sooner.”

Tenure is not to blame for bad teachers who stay on the job too long, said gym teacher Steve Blum, president of Ventura’s teachers union. Fewer bad teachers would gain tenure if their shortcomings were identified in the first two years of employment.

“Show me a bad teacher and I’ll show you a bad administrator who gave them tenure,” Blum said. “If you guarantee me a good principal, you can loosen up tenure.”

Rank-and-file teachers say they view the job protection of tenure as a buffer against the whims of capricious bosses and as a counterbalance to poor pay.

“For me, personally, I wouldn’t have a problem being [nontenured],”said longtime Rio School District teacher Wanda Kelly. “But I have to say, I like the protection. It makes me feel safer in case there’s a personality conflict with a principal.”

While politicians and school administrators debate tenure reform, Ventura parent Beth McGrath has a more pragmatic concern--keeping the profession attractive to newcomers. She would rather focus on the bulk of the teachers who are good rather than the few who are bad.

“My fear is that the teachers will be pushed so hard that a lot of people won’t want to go into education,” she said.

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Disciplining Tenured Teachers

Dismissing a tenured teacher--one who has been granted permanent employment based on certain requirements--can be tough. If a teacher fights termination, the process can drag out years and cost $200,000 or more. However, the task of letting go an unfit instructor got easier in 1995, when one standard for dismissal was changed from incompetence to unsatisfactory performance. Here are the grounds for firing a teacher, as set out in the state’s Education Code:

* Immoral or unprofessional conduct.

* Participation in criminal syndicalism.

* Dishonesty.

* Unsatisfactory performance.

* Evident unfitness for service.

* Physical or mental condition rendering an instructor unfit to work with children.

* Persistent violation of state and local school laws.

* Conviction of a felony or any crime involving moral turpitude.

* Advocating communism for the purpose of indoctrination or knowing membership in the Communist Party.

* Alcoholism or drug abuse that hinders the ability to work with children.

Source: California Education Code