The Education Wars II: Some Interesting Information

about termination of teachers, and my response to this post on Teachers.net:

On 12/24/09, 2 cents wrote:
> It is true that NYS teachers enjoy more protection than teachers in any
> other state, NYC teachers has a water-down version of 3020a than
> teachers in the rest of the state due to our 2005 contract. Teachers in
> most state have tenure or unlimited contract, in all but 7 states a
> termination decision/disciplinary actions on a tenured teacher is voted
> by the school board. Only in 7 states, the termination of a tenured
> teacher is decided through arbitration, 5 of which are paid exclusively
> by their school boards. Only in 2 of 7 states, NY and Washington State,
> the costs of the arbitration are shared or split between its school
> boards and its unions, NYS is the only state in which the school board
> and/or union can reject an arbitrator for his or her supposed bias
> toward labor or management.

That's why the situation in NYC is so serious for teachers nationwide.
If teachers there have their rights subverted, NO teacher anywhere is
safe.

At my old school district in Nevada, I believe the arbitrators or hearing
officers are picked by both the union and the district for "objectivity,"
and they are assigned to a teacher's case "at random." Of course the
reality is the union and the district are one and the same, so the
arbitrators will ALWAYS rule in favor of the district, no matter how
badly they screw up, as in my case. I still have to sue them.
Arbitration is a joke in Nevada and probably everywhere else.