Columbus district cited as protecting worst instructors

By Mark Jewell

The Columbus Dispatch

3/11/2008

Associated Press

BOSTON — An advocacy group that has targeted unions representing grocery employees and service-industry workers is setting its sights on public teachers unions — with a pledge to offer 10 teachers it deems the nation’s worst $10,000 each to quit teaching.

The Center for Union Facts is to launch a campaign today arguing that teachers unions block education reform such as teacher merit pay and impose rules that make it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers.

Teachers unions say the group is spreading misinformation.

The Washington-based nonprofit group is spending $1 million on ads and a billboard in New York’s Times Square. It’s also launching a Web site with data it says it collected from public-records requests documenting what it considers extreme lengths that unions go to protect bad teachers.

It’s also inviting nominations for a contest to determine the nation’s worst unionized teachers. The “winners” will be offered $10,000 each if they permanently resign or retire from any career in education — if they sign a release agreeing to have their name and the reasons for their selection published by the group.

The head of the nation’s second-largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, called the Center for Union Facts’ executive director, Rick Berman, an “ethically challenged attack dog” and “a shameless lobbyist who has shilled for pesticide, alcohol and tobacco companies.”

“Berman has a record of using hidden funders to attack groups that contribute a great deal to society,” said Edward McElroy, president of the federation. “Now, he is coming after teachers at a time when most Americans support education and want to make improving education a top national priority.”

Reg Weaver, a spokesman for the largest teachers union, the National Education Association, said school districts’ evaluation policies include strict criteria to ensure that teachers face consequences for falling short of performance standards. “This union does not support a person’s incompetence. This union supports a person’s right to due process,” Weaver said.

The campaign targets about two dozen districts, from Boston to Anchorage, Alaska. The group says that unions support policies that protect all but the worst teachers and force school districts to pay legal fees of $100,000 or more to replace a teacher.

In Columbus, the group says, teachers who have at least five years’ experience are nearly impossible to fire because of policies set by the Columbus Education Association, which represents the city school district’s teachers.

The Center for Union Facts said five teachers were fired in four school years: 2003-04 to 2006-07. That’s fewer than 0.03 percent of the district’s teachers each year.

“It’s a near-impossibility that fully 99.95 percent of its teachers deserve to be in front of kids,” the group said. “Any group of people that size is bound to have at least a few more bad apples than the ones noted.”

Rhonda Johnson, president of the Columbus Education Association, said the statistics didn’t account for teachers who resign before their contracts are terminated. The district’s peer-assistance and -review program helps weed out unfit teachers, she said.

“Some teachers see the handwriting on the wall, and they chose to leave instead of being fired,” Johnson said. “That’s what you don’t see.”

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