No wonder education sucks

You can't fire anyone and not being a good teacher is not a good enough reason to be fired. Emphasis added. [Link]

Firing teachers is “so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don’t make the effort except in the most egregious cases,” reports the Los Angeles Times, which looked at 15 years’ worth of records in Los Angeles Unified School District.

The vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time.

. . . Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can’t teach is rare. In 80% of the dismissals that were upheld, classroom performance was not even a factor.

When teachers can’t teach well, principals must spend years trying to help them improve. An ineffective teacher may fail to instruct up to 1,300 students in the five years it often takes to removed a tenured employee, says a middle school principal.

Plus, even if the teacher is fired, a review panel may reinstate them a third of the time anyway. Yet another reason unions are bad, doing their best to turn education into the automotive industry. Too bad we can't just buy educated children from overseas, we have to take the shoddy domestic models.