Deviating from its usually diplomatic
stance in Boston's quest to overhaul its troubled schools, a well-respected education
group is releasing a report today that condemns the way new teachers are hired.
Under the terms of the current teachers
contract, new teachers are often pushed out of their jobs by veteran teachers, according
to the report from the Boston Plan for Excellence, a 16-year-old private education
foundation that has been heavily involved in the city's schools. This year, as many as 417
first-year teachers will have their positions offered to veteran teachers, even veterans
who were pushed out of another school for poor performance.
The complex process of hiring teachers
can take so long, nontenured teachers may not find out if they have a job until late
August, the report notes. Many promising candidates often choose instead to go to suburban
districts where jobs are filled earlier. In August 1999, Boston schools still had 105
vacancies, while most suburban districts had finished their hiring.
With the city in the middle of tense
negotiations for a new teachers contract, the Boston Plan for Excellence report calls for
an open hiring process that would allow schools to simply choose the best candidate for a
job as quickly as possible.
"The current contract and district
policies make seniority, rather than expertise and commitment, the first consideration in
filling positions," according to the report, written by Boston Plan policy director
John K. DiPaolo. "It's a major roadblock," he added in an interview Friday.
The end result: teachers in positions
they don't want, and schools with teachers they don't want. In a school system whose new
mantra is team effort, "being forced to hire a teacher who is not willing or able to
(support a school's strategies) is a serious blow," the report reads.
Boston Teachers Union president Ed
Doherty declined to comment on the report because of current contract negotiations.
The report concluded with two key
recommendations to replace the hiring process that takes a four-page flow chart to
explain:
Allow all teacher candidates, regardless
of their seniority, to compete equally for jobs.
Allow principals to refuse to hire
tenured teachers who have lost jobs at other schools. Those teachers still would have the
right to their full salaries but would be placed in substitute teaching positions or
administrative jobs.
Boston school officials, even though they
were criticized in the report, largely agreed with DiPaolo's findings.
"The transfer process is at best
cumbersome and at worst idiotic," said Michael Contompasis, chief operating officer
for Boston schools.
Although the city hailed the current
teachers contract, negotiated three years ago, as ground-breaking in allowing schools to
hire the most qualified candidate, the report bluntly states that the changes have not
worked.
Some highly praised overhauls require
following procedures that "are so demanding it is often unusable," the report
notes. In one instance, a principal would need the approval of 60 percent of the faculty
to even post a job.
"The entire hiring process is so, so
frustrating and it happens all the time," said Jane O'Leary, assistant headmaster for
East Boston High School. Every year, O'Leary can lose one, two, or three promising
teachers because of complex rules.
The report comes as the nation's teachers
unions are facing mounting pressure from school districts to hold their members more
accountable for what goes on in the classroom. In Texas, for example, teachers are now
partly evaluated based on student test scores.
In the Northeast, however, strong unions
have resisted any attempt to link teacher evaluations to student performance. Instead,
entire new districts -- charter schools -- have been created in part to override teachers
union rules. In Boston, which expects to hire 3,500 new teachers in the next decade,
ensuring schools keep valuable new teachers is vital, the report notes.
The report documents a true teacher
hiring case, although the names of the school and staff have been changed.
First, an English teacher announced she
would leave her job. "Mrs. Smith," a veteran teacher in another school,
eventually became the only in-house candidate with seniority. During the interview with
the principal, Smith expressed indifference to the school's mission. She had a history of
conflicts with the staff at her previous schools.
The principal asked for a follow-up
interview, but Smith refused, telling the principal "she would be at his school in
September whether he liked it or not. She did come ... had a number of conflicts with
other staff ... and has refused to participate in school meetings," the report notes.
The report also criticizes Boston public
schools for not pushing hard enough in contract negotiations to be able to fire bad
teachers. Now, many poorly performing teachers strike deals with principals to simply
transfer to another school instead of going through the long process of being fired.
"It's time we had a change,"
said Patricia O'Brien, assistant headmaster at English High School in Jamaica Plain.
"Sometimes, we can't keep passionate teachers ... and we need them."
The report is posted on the Boston Plan for Excellence's Web site.
