How To Fire An Incompetent Teacher? Not Easy

The series of steps a principal must take to dismiss a public school teach is Byzantine. "It's almost impossible," Klein complains.

The regulations are so onerous that principals rarely even try to fire a teacher. Most just put the bad ones in pretend-work jobs, or sucker another school into taking them. (They call that the "dance of the lemons.") The city payrolls include hundreds of teachers who have been deemed incompetent, violent, or guilty of sexual misconduct. Since the schools are afraid to let them teach, they put them in so-called "rubber rooms" instead. There they read magazines, play cards, and chat, at a cost to New York taxpayers of $20 million a year.

Click on the link here to see a file that shows the dozens and dozens of steps involved to remove an incompetent unionized public shool teacher in NYC. You'll see why principals rarely even try to fire a bad teacher.