- Self-service arrangement: Pennsylvania judge charged with fixing her own parking tickets [Lancaster Online]
- Economist cover story: “Over-regulated America“. Obama hesitant about heavy-handed regulation? Really? [Veronique de Rugy, NRO]
- Argument for letting money market funds “break the buck” without federal backstop [David Henderson, EconLog]
- Suing apps makers? “Entertainment Lawyers Go Wild for ‘Secondary’ Copyright Lawsuits” [WSJ Law Blog] SWAT raid on Kiwi copyright scofflaw? [Balko] Despite its editor’s views, NYT finds it hard to avoid breaching copyright laws itself [Carly Carioli, Boston Phoenix] “Contempt Sanctions Imposed on Copyright Troll Evan Stone” [Paul Alan Levy] More: “obscene materials can’t be copyrighted” offered as defense in illegal download case [Kerr]
- Tenure terror: “Teacher in Los Angeles molest case reportedly paid $40G to drop appeal of firing” [AP]
- FDA rejects lead-in-lipstick scare campaign [ACSH vs. Environmental Working Group]
- A horror story of eyewitness I.D. [claim of DNA exoneration in Va. rape case; AP via Scott Greenfield]
Posts Tagged ‘teacher tenure’
“Democrats vs. Teacher Unions: The Battle Heats Up”
Walter Russell Mead notes a reformist initiative on teacher certification with perhaps an unexpected sponsor, the Democratic governor of Connecticut. [The American Interest; CTNewsJunkie.com]
P.S. On the ultimate frontier of teacher reform — the firing of bad teachers — see new reports from Troy Senik [Public Sector Inc.] and Marcus Winters [NY Post].
Tales from NYC’s “rubber room”
The New York Post checks on on some unfireable teachers.
September 19 roundup
- Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
- As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
- “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
- DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
- New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
- Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson “Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.”)
- “Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation” [PoL]
“Why bad teachers survive”
A chart from the Chicago Tribune editorial opinion section on the stages needed to remove an inadequate Chicago educator.
Meanwhile, some Andrew Sullivan readers point out that contrasts between the public and private sectors can be overdone, since it can be legally troublesome for private managers, too, to fire poorly performing workers. I wrote a whole book tackling related themes some years back.
“Why reinstate teachers fired for bad performance?”
An arbitrator has reinstated 75 teachers dismissed by the Washington, D.C. school system during their 2-year probationary period — not after achieving tenure — for such infractions as perennial absence or tardiness, “rude and aggressive” behavior and “sketchy or nonexistent lesson plans.” “[Arbitrator Charles] Feigenbaum said that the teachers had been denied due process because they were not given reasons for their terminations. It’s a mind-boggling decision that essentially affords probationary teachers some of the rights that protect tenured teachers.” [Washington Post editorial] For another indication of the legal constraints on employee selection faced by the D.C. schools, see this 2001 post.
Great moments in teacher tenure
Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette (via Mark Hemingway, Examiner):
In 1993, Chelsea High School teacher Stephen Leith shot to death his superintendent and wounded his principal and another teacher during a confrontation at the school. Leith was convicted of homicide and given a life sentence; from prison, he continued to pursue an appeal of his firing from Chelsea Public Schools, blaming his actions on medication.
“He murdered his superintendent. It’s crazy,” said Tom White, associate director of labor relations for [the] Michigan School Board Association.
Update: Teacher who allegedly branded cross onto student’s arm drops suit
“An Ohio public school teacher accused of burning the mark of a cross on students’ arms said Friday he dropped a lawsuit over his firing because it would have interfered with a public airing of his complaint in a different venue.” [AP via Ed Brayton, earlier]
“NYC to stop paying teachers to do nothing”
A snail’s pace in the rubber room
After announcing a big campaign to oust bad teachers, New York City has succeeded in firing only three in two years; ten others “settled their cases by resigning or retiring”. There are 55,000 tenured teachers in the city system. [Jennifer Medina, New York Times; Matt Welch, Reason “Hit and Run”] More: New York Times “Room for Debate”.