Devil in the Details
An Analysis of State Teacher Dismissal Laws
SOURCE: iStockphotoDistricts recognize that an inability to dismiss poor-performing teachers undermines efforts to ensure that every student is taught by a highly effective instructor. As districts begin implementing more effective evaluation systems that better identify both low- and high-performing teachers, changes will have to be made to dismissal processes to exit those teachers in a fair and efficient manner.
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The teacher dismissal process, once largely unexamined, is quickly becoming a hotly debated area of education policy. Newspapers across the country regularly publish reports on the expense and time associated with dismissing teachers. Steven Brill’s “The Rubber Room,” an exposé on the seemingly neverending process of terminating teachers in New York City, brought the topic onto the national stage.
Federal and state policymakers have also begun calling for reform. Both President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have discussed the need to make dismissal a more efficient process. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has also acknowledged the “glacial” speed of the dismissal process in many