The innocence project

Someone sent me a great article. It is at http://tinyurl.com/3dg9ns. The article is in ed news. My blog has seemed to have sparked a nice debate about who is responsible for what happens to us.

I was a chapter chair and have always considered myself a good union person. I went to CSA demonstrations and was the CSA rep at my school. (I wonder if there is a CSA rep now?) I do think however that there is a complicity between the UFT and the DoE when it comes to the rubber rooms. The DoE thinks it is saving the schools and the UFT thinks it is saving jobs. Both sides are doing this on the backs of the over 600 teachers and administrators stuck in this system. At no point does either side think about these people as human beings.

The question that must be constantly asked is, who benefits from the existence of the rubber rooms? I have tried to figure this out and have not been very successful. I would like to throw out some possibilities.

It could be just a bureaucracy run amok. Someone was given a mandate to deal with teachers accused of things and developed a system that is a joke, but because no one really cares or because the top people in this system have power, the system just continues. It does provide employment for a lot of people.

It is possible that Joel Klein likes having these big numbers. This allows him to go to parents and tell them that if it was easier to fire bad teachers than the DoE would not be forced to waste all of this money and the money would be available for their kids.

It is possible that the UFT likes being able to go to its members and show them how they protect them from the evils of the administrators. The UFT can say how they fought for these teachers for years and kept them from being fired. The fail to mention that the years happened because they didn't work very hard to help the teachers in the rubber room solve their problems. Even the UFT benefits from the assumption that we are all guilty. If we are all guilty and so few of us get convicted it must be because of the genius of the UFT representatives and lawyers. If we are seen as really innocent than this argument doesn't work.

The ACLU has been running a major campaign to restore Habeus Corpus rights. If the UFT were to insist that teachers have the same types or rights the rubber room would not be the kind of place it is. The number of people sitting in this room who have never been charged is only surpassed by the people in Guantanamo. Unfortunately we are treated the same way. The concept that seems to have permeated America is that guilty people need to be kept away from the general population. The fact that no one can prover they are guilty is of no concern to the majority of Americans. We seemed to be fine with the appearance of guilt being enough.

If you did not read the comment to my last blog regarding Kathy Blythe you should. The comment brings out the best and worse of the system. Kathy got caught in a dispute with what seemed like a lunatic parent. Lunatic parents want to blame everyone. Good principals learn how to deal with them without capitulating or without antagonizing them. Good principals keep their teachers from taking all of the heat from these people. That is what supporting teachers means. It does not mean sacrificing teachers to preserve your job and avoid conflict. This is what the principal institute should be teaching new principals.

The second guy spent 7 1/2 years out of 10 years in the rubber rooms. This is the bad side. This teacher probably did not deserve to be teaching. He seemed to have had multiple supervisors who thought this and pushed him from school to school. The problem here is that the supervisors have not learned how to create a good case for removing these teachers. Anyone who has supervised knows about these teachers. They can be removed if you work hard enough and if you have the support of the principal and superintendent. At first other teachers are upset when you go after these guys. When they see that attacking incompetent teachers is not a threat to them then they get over their fear. Other teachers know who is bad and know that their life is better when there are fewer bad teachers.