In the summer of 2009, American journalist Steven Brill decided to pay a visit to one of New York's infamous "rubber rooms."
So dubbed after the padded cells of old-style mental hospitals, the "rubber rooms" were actually centres where teachers deemed to be unsuitable for the classroom (mostly for misconduct or incompetence) awaited their fate. This usually involved a protracted fight between management and the union, there to do everything in its power to keep those dues-paying teachers on the job.
The centres annually housed up to 800 teachers at a cost to the New York City education system of $30-million a year. While there, sometimes for more than three years, the teachers played Scrabble, read books, ran small businesses from their laptops or slept, all the while collecting full pay. More often than not, they were allowed to return to the classroom by arbitrators whose $1,400-a-day contracts had to be approved by the teachers' union.
The "rubber rooms" became such an embarrassment to the city that they were shut down last summer. Now, these same in-limbo teachers perform administrative duties or sit at home while waiting for their cases to be heard.
The situation in New York sounded vaguely familiar to me.
In British Columbia, it was recently revealed that dozens of teachers in the province, who were investigated and disciplined by their employers for misconduct, remained members in good standing with the union-dominated B.C. College of Teachers, the professional regulatory body for teachers in the province. We're talking about teachers who were disciplined at the school level for sexual interference, intimate relationships with minors, slapping, shoving, punching students and accessing child pornography on a school computer – among other offences. But when the cases were referred to the union-dominated investigative sub-committee of the college, where the bad teachers should have, in almost every instance, been fired or prevented from ever setting foot in a classroom again, the cases were often dismissed without action.
For Steven Brill, the visit to New York's now-defunct "rubber rooms" was all the evidence he needed to determine that the U.S. education system was completely dysfunctional. It inspired him to launch a deeper investigation into the state of education in America, the result of which is Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools.
Since its release this month, Mr. Brill's book has become the focus of a sharp, and often ugly debate south of the border. Needless to say, teachers' unions are doing everything in their power to denigrate Mr. Brill's work, while those who believe those same unions are blocking the path to meaningful reform are hailing it as neutral, third-party proof of what they've been saying all along.
In many ways, the education debate in America mirrors the country's broader problems. And it reflects the growing feeling that this great nation, perhaps once great nation, is completely unable to find common ground to solve its most critical issues, such as the declining state of education outcomes throughout the country.
It is true the book is not kind to teachers' unions. Mr. Brill points to hundred-page union contracts throughout the country that, in some cases, specify the teacher's workday down to the minute and prevent principals from commenting on a teacher's lesson plan. But he also makes it clear that unions aren't the only problem. He takes aim at misguided and hypocritical education reformers and state politicians who will side with whichever group gives them the most support come election time.
Mr. Brill is one of the top journalists in the U.S. who had no vested interest in this subject when he decided to take it on. I think the results of his investigation speak for themselves.
Any hopes this book would help commence an adult conversation on classroom reform were quickly dashed when shouting matches broke out in the media among those on various sides of the education debate.
It's been depressing to listen to. And made me ever more thankful for the education system we have in Canada, despite its own serious flaws.
Gary Mason