I’m in a PHD program, and a lot of my peers are worried about their prospects.  There are so few academic jobs out there, they’ll need to take whatever is offered to them.  And then there is the struggle for tenure—they’ll be expected to publish articles, write books and kiss senior faculty ass simultaneously.  How funny!  As a New York City public school teacher, I received tenure automatically after three years.  I am basically unfireable.

And this is not a good thing. A study by the New Teacher Project called “The Widget Effect,” notes that  ”less than 1% of teachers receive unsatisfactory ratings, even in schools where students fail to meet basic academic standards, year after year.” It goes on to note that in Los Angeles (to give just one example), less that 2% of tenure applications are denied—even though the percentage of students dropping out is 35%

In her New York Times piece, “Progress Slow in City Goal to Fire Bad Teachers,” Jennifer Medina shows that despite strong efforts from schools chancellor Joel Klein—including the creation of a special Teacher Performance Unit, the city has only managed to fire only three teachers for incompetence.

Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, said that the team, whose annual budget is $1 million, had been “successful at a far too modest level” but that it was “an attempt to work around a broken system.”

Anyone who has ever spent anytime kicking a can down the halls of a New York City public school knows that a significant percentage of all teachers are incompetent—just as a significant percentage of all workers in all areas of the economy are incompetent.  But unlike most other areas of the economy, New York City has agreed (under duress from the union) to a cumbersome firing and arbitration process that makes it almost impossible to get poor educators out of the classroom.

Medina’s piece shows how hard it is to remove teachers for plain old incompetence, as opposed to misconduct.  It’s not exciting for arbitrators to have to sit through observation report after observation report listing typos and misinformation spread by bad teachers.  Indeed, it is so hard to find qualified and interested arbitrators that the panel meets only five days a month.

This is not to say that it is any easier way to remove teachers who are engaged in misconduct.  They are out there as well, causing even more problems.

The real tragedy is that the biggest victims of teacher incompetence and misconduct are students who are from disadvantaged backgrounds.  They are less likely to push administrators for transfers into better classrooms and are less likely expect good teaching as a right.  And yet these are the groups that need good teachers more than anyone.

Easy tenure was great for me, but it’s not great for the schools, the city or the nation.  At some point, some courageous reformer is going to have to end this ridiculous process. Everyone should have to worry about keeping their job—especially teachers.