Still, teachers are well aware that being bad at their jobs will rarely earn them their walking papers. As part of his study, Menuey asked teachers to rank a list of 19 strategies that administrators use to deal with incompetence. They identified “voluntary transfer to another school” as the most prevalent. Dismissal, meanwhile, was ranked 14th. “We all knowingly play this game,” says Menuey. “I believe passionately that we need to get rid of these folks, but I’ll be honest, because of the time and the difficulty in getting what you need, I’m inclined, when [another] principal calls me, to just say, ‘She’s a fabulous teacher.’ ” This practice, dubbed “passing the trash,” is hardly news to Bennett. He says “writing an okay reference letter” to get rid of an incompetent educator is endemic “at all levels. It’s not just teachers in classrooms—it’s principals in schools, it’s central office people too.”
Other strategies are similarly problematic. According to a teacher in Ottawa’s French Catholic board, when one of his colleagues couldn’t cut it this year, the school “purposely gave her the most difficult classroom.” Within months, he says, she “burnt out,” and is currently on medical leave. (Virginia teachers also ranked “increased workload to encourage teacher resignation” above termination.) Oftentimes, Menuey says shuffling inadequate teachers to another class is an attempt to give them students “whose parents won’t pitch a fit”—though these are typically the kids who stand to gain the most from quality instruction. More disconcerting still is something the teachers came up with themselves. The highest ranked write-in tactic on Menuey’s survey: “ignore the problem.”
Not all struggling teachers are beyond help. For some, observing more experienced colleagues or learning to better manage students is all it takes to spark improvement. To that end, many administrators are more than willing to offer every support available, which, in many school boards, is a lot. As Menuey explains, “We believe that all kids can be successful, and we believe that all teachers can be successful.” But in some cases, this culture of acceptance may be blurring the line between effective remediation and a fruitless pursuit. Even the Ontario principal, who says she “had no choice” but to go through with dismissal, expresses a palpable discomfort: “We’re educators. We’re not trained to fire people.” However, when incompetent educators are left to teach, whether in a roomful of difficult Grade 5 students, or hidden in the school’s art department, it’s kids who pay the ultimate price.
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