The Education Wars: How Principals Easily Ruin Teachers' Careers

In Chicago, it's called an "E-3"; in New York, it is called a "U" rating. Other districts have other names, but the result is the same: "unsatisfactory." And once a teacher has the scarlet "U" on his or her forehead, his or her career is finished.

It's unbelievable how EASY it is for rotten or incompetent principals to ruin a teacher's career, but it happens all the time.

Here is the "E-3" in Chicago Public Schools:

The law was perhaps originally well-intentioned—designed to protect children from someone who might have experienced a mental or physical breakdown. The assumption has always been that such a situation is the result of aging and only a few older teachers might qualify for an E3. Much to the contrary, however, given the current high stress level at CPS, one doesn’t find many teachers hanging on past retirement age into their dotage. The E3 has morphed into a tool of reprisal and revenge, used by principals to rid themselves of unwanted teachers.

A great many factors have combined over the past several years to damage the reputation of American schools. Rather than address the problems honestly, politicians look around for a quick fix or, better yet, scapegoats. The E3 has yet to reach its full potential as a weapon of career destruction because it takes a particularly asocial and amoral principal to falsely label a superior or excellent teacher as unsatisfactory. That has the same earmark as lying under oath. Not all principals are ready to sink that low. The current mob of managers wouldn’t recognize good teaching if it bit them in their rigorous spreadsheets. What they do recognize, though, is the bottom line, so high-priced veteran teachers are targeted with E3s.

It's the new age discrimination. I know what it is.