As the key element in a child’s education, teachers must bear much of the responsibility for the poor student performance in Los Angeles. But concerned parents should learn what administrators and politicians already know but aren’t telling. Removing incompetent teachers is a practical impossibility under the current system, as statistics confirm.

Los Angeles has nearly 35,000 teachers, but only 13 dismissal cases reached the hearing stage from 1990-1999, according to the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), the state bureau that oversees dismissal proceedings. Of those 13 cases, only one was not settled outside the process.

In other words, the state’s largest district dismissed only a single incompetent teacher over an entire decade. But Los Angeles is not unique in this regard.

There are approximately 300,000 teachers in California. According to the state records, between 1990 and 1999, only 227 dismissal cases even reached the decision phase. If all these cases occurred in a single year, they would amount to only slightly more than one tenth of one percent of the tenured teachers in the state. Over a full decade, the number is a proxy for zero. “It takes longer to fire a teacher than to convict a murderer,” says Diana Halpenny, general counsel for the San Juan Unified School District near Sacramento. The rules confirm that this is no exaggeration. To fire a teacher, a school district’s governing board must issue written charges and determine by majority vote that dismissal is appropriate. The board must then provide written notice that the teacher will be dismissed in 30 days unless the he or she requests a hearing. When the cause for dismissal is unprofessional conduct, district must give an additional special notice 45 days prior to the 30-day notice of intent to dismiss. This special notice must provide specific instances of behavior that the board has cited as unprofessional, providing the teacher an opportunity to correct the problem. The most recent evaluation must also be attached to the notice. If the grounds for dismissal are unsatisfactory performance, the district must give special notice as well, 90 days in advance.

If a hearing is requested, the district board must reconvene to decide if the dismissal process will continue. If it proceeds, the board must inform the teacher and provide the accused with a written accusation. If the teacher again requests a hearing, it must be conducted by a three-member Commission of Professional Competence, comprised of an administrative law judge (ALJ), a member selected by the teacher, and a member selected by the district. The panel must conduct a complete evidentiary hearing, with full-blown discovery. The panel then issues a ruling by majority vote to either reinstate or dismiss, unless the infraction is unprofessional conduct whereby a teacher can be suspended without pay. The panel’s decision may be appealed to California Superior Court. Further appeal may be made to State Court of Appeals, after which the teacher is either dismissed or reinstated. No other profession, including other state workers, enjoys such protections against poor performance. The Grossmont district near San Diego spent eight years and more than $300,000 to fire Juliet Ellery, an instructor described by her superintendent as the worst teacher he had ever seen, and who refused to answer students’ questions in class. With firing incompetents a practical impossibility, most districts buy out contracts or transfer the teacher to another school, a process known as the “dance of the lemons.” In many cases no action is taken, with many of the state’s six million students bearing the consequences. Recent research by William L. Sanders at the University of Tennessee confirms that the difference between a good and bad teacher is enormous, a full grade level by some estimates. Successive years of bad teachers is devastating for a child, a situation surely common in Los Angeles, which spends more than $9000 per student per year, far above the state average. The current system of tenure serves only to protect incompetence. It should be scrapped and replaced with renewable contracts based on performance, a system already being implemented in other states. The dismissal process should be streamlined, with principals given more discretion. Parents should also be given more say in which schools their children attend. This can be accomplished through expanding the number of charter schools and offering full educational choice to parents whose children are trapped in the worst schools, a plan endorsed by the state’s Legislative Analyst.

These reforms, along with higher standards and testing, would help boost student performance, but they come with a precondition. Educators and policymakers need to decide whether protecting children from incompetence is more important than preserving a status quo that protects incompetent teachers.

Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and the co-author of Unsatisfactory Performance: How California’s K-12 Education System Protects Mediocrity and How Teacher Quality Can Be Improved. He can be reached via email at klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.