Robert E. Lee High School Principal Roy I. Mitchell, says incompetent teachers may be able to avoid detection by rising ''to a different level'' when principals come to observe. - Carrie Rosema/staff

Getting rid of poor teachers can be a matter of years

By Thomas B. Pfankuch
Times-Union staff writer

It can take years to remove incompetent teachers from Duval County classrooms.

It took three years to fire a teacher at Ed White High who changed her last name to God and participated in book-throwing brawls with students.

It took four years to push the resignation of a teacher at Terry Parker High who refused to follow a lesson plan, swore at her students and referred to an ethnic group as ''stiff-necked, arrogant liars.''

And it took five years to force out a teacher at R.V. Daniels Elementary who, among other things, showed her first-graders an R-rated movie called Raw Deal in which Arnold Schwarzenegger is an ex-convict who murders mobsters.

Even after principals began to document the poor performance of these teachers, they taught for years because they were protected by an evaluation system that educators say shields incompetent teachers.

Ridding the schools of teachers who are involved in sexual assaults, drugs or other illegal activity usually is not a problem for school districts.

Ousting incompetent teachers is another matter.

''If they don't do it [evaluation] appropriately, then the teachers that shouldn't be there probably are still teaching,'' said Andy Ford, president of the Duval County teachers union.

The teacher evaluation system used in Duval County is guided by state laws that apply to all 67 Florida school districts. Each district and union negotiate the fine points of their evaluation systems; in Duval County, teachers are under a tenure program that gives them stronger contractual protection.

Florida Education Commissioner Frank Brogan said the weakness of the state evaluation law is illustrated by the fact that only 23 of 130,000 Florida teachers lost their teaching licenses for incompetence last year.

''I believe the system we're using now is drastically in need of revision,'' Brogan said. ''It overprotects incompetent and weak teachers that are teaching in Florida.''

Not only is the system slow to remove poor teachers from the classroom, but very few teachers are ever deemed unsatisfactory.

On average, only 30 of 7,000 teachers a year are declared unsatisfactory in Duval County, a 99.9 percent success rate that principals, administrators and state officials say is probably impossible to achieve.

Incompetence is a difficult standard to prove through documentation because it requires intensive observation and is somewhat subjective, educators said.

The evaluation program also penalizes good teachers, union leaders say, because it does little to help them improve and damages their reputations by protecting the few incompetent teachers in the district.

Consultants from SchoolMatch, an Ohio-based firm that audited the Duval County schools this spring, said a district can improve its evaluation program to remove the worst 2 percent to 5 percent of teachers each year.

Local and state school officials say Florida's teacher evaluation system has these problems:

Unsatisfactory teachers have as many as two years or more to improve, and those who don't often are offered buy-outs and allowed to resign or retire.

Teachers are evaluated mainly on the basis of a 30-minute, prearranged formal classroom observation by a principal. Problem teachers are observed at least twice.

Teacher evaluations aren't given adequate attention, union leaders say, by some principals who are responsible for observing more than 140 teachers in addition to running their schools.

Parents cannot check the performance of their children's current teachers because evaluations by law are unavailable to the public for a year after the review is completed.

Although teachers can be observed by assistant principals or other administrators, the district strongly encourages its principals to be the official evaluators.

''Evaluating teachers is not an easy process, and it's a long process,'' said Ron Poppell, a 36-year Jacksonville educator who spent 19 years as a principal until his retirement this spring. ''In a lot of cases of an unsatisfactory teacher, by the time you start documentation, it takes two years until they're out of the classroom, and that's unfortunate.''

Putting on a show

Mandarin resident Holly Minnear, a former teacher, said the evaluation system is partly to blame for preserving the careers of teachers who aren't willing to work hard.

Minnear once pulled her son out of school because of what she thought was bad teaching.

''All she [the teacher] was doing was having them sit there and watch videos and have them work on their workbooks, and that's not education,'' Minnear said.

''Any teacher can pull off a 30-minute observation. They have time to put on a dog and pony show, and even ill-equipped teachers can put on that show,'' she said.

Roy I. Mitchell, principal at Robert E. Lee High School, acknowledged that giving teachers an unsatisfactory review is a ''big deal'' because it can put their career in jeopardy.

''I would have a bit of indigestion to do it, but I would have to do it to a teacher that, even with the success plan, is not able to perform,'' said Mitchell, who estimated he's given only six or seven unsatisfactory reviews in 14 years.

Duval County principals say it can be difficult to spot poor teachers because their unionnegotiated contract requires that they be informed before principals officially observe them.

Mitchell said a couple of teachers at his school don't deserve the satisfactory evaluations he gave them last year.

''Maybe one or two, at the time I observed them, they were able to pull it off,'' said Mitchell, a 29-year educator with 14 years in Duval County. ''They rose to a different level, knowing that I was coming to observe them.''

Mitchell said time restraints hamper principals, who must oversee operations and deal with parents, in addition to reviewing the performance of their staffs. Mitchell, for example, is responsible for evaluating 79 teachers between late August and Dec. 1, the date by which struggling teachers must be warned that they may be deemed unsatisfactory. Tenured teachers who are unsatisfactory have the right to transfer to another school for the next year.

''Most of us will not have time to do it,'' Mitchell said. ''It is a cumbersome task, but it's ours to do.''

Powerful principals

Many principals said they consider teacher evaluation their most important task, and make it a priority despite the hassles.

Jim Clark, principal at Ed White High School, said he makes several informal, unannounced visits with his 100 teachers throughout the school year before the official halfhour observation.

But, Clark said, that thoroughness takes a lot of time.

''It's awful hard to get to 100 teachers, and I'd like a system where I could spend more time with a teacher that needs improvement and not to have to observe a teacher that I know is a good teacher,'' Clark said.

Union President Ford said principals routinely disregard the evaluation guidelines by not observing teachers and by ignoring the program deadlines.

''I was evaluated without being observed,'' said Denise Harbin, a Duval teachers union representative. Harbin has taught at various schools and is an 11-year teacher at Lee.

She said most teachers would support improving the evaluation system by allowing for peer review and more classroom observation. Under peer review, teachers are evaluated by other teachers or a combination of teachers and principals.

Harbin said principals have too much power under the existing evaluation system. Politics, she said, can enter into evaluations and result in poor teachers receiving satisfactory reviews and qualified teachers being deemed unsatisfactory.

''We don't want a system,'' she said, ''where principals can target a teacher based on a vendetta.''

'Don't take it seriously'

Although evaluating good teachers is fairly simple, principals say, evaluating poor teachers is difficult and time-consuming, especially when poor performance must be meticulously documented so that it will stand up to a legal challenge.

Those legal challenges can come at the district level, or in Tallahassee where the state Education Practices Commission decides if teaching licenses should be suspended or revoked. A teacher who faces sanctions against his or her license can request a state hearing after the district recommends license revocation or suspension.

David Mosrie, director of public schools for the Department of Education, said action is taken against the licenses of only the very worst teachers, allowing mediocre teachers to remain in the classroom.

''It is nearly impossible to dismiss a teacher for being below mediocre,'' Mosrie said. ''They have to be grossly incompetent for you to go through a dismissal and to win.''

In rare cases, said Duval Teachers United President Ford, the union has allowed administrators to quickly remove an extremely problematic teacher from the classroom.

But Martin Miller, a lobbyist for the Duval County schools, said districts are reluctant to pursue that option because it can be expensive and difficult to defend in court or a state hearing.

Throughout his career as a principal, Poppell said he was bothered that teacher salaries are not tied to their performance or their evaluations. Teacher pay is set by union contract and is based on experience.

''I have a real problem dealing with the fact that you have two people who draw the same paycheck when one does a good job and another does a poor job,'' he said.

Poppell said trying to document poor teacher performance eats up valuable time that principals need to run a school. In ridding the district of one teacher, he made more than a dozen observations.

But principals are the best people to review teachers, and most do an outstanding job weeding out incompetent teachers, said Alvin White, assistant superintendent for human resources in Duval County.

White said he is not bothered by the low number of teachers deemed unsatisfactory in an average year.

''I pass no judgment on it because we have very competent principals who are on the scene,'' White said. ''It may be odd, but on the other hand maybe we're hiring the best teachers in the world.''

In general, Ford said, the evaluation system is not being used as a way to improve teachers. Rather, he said, it is used only as a way to get rid of teachers.

''I don't think we take it seriously,'' Ford said. ''It's something we do just because we have to do it once a year, not necessarily because we want to improve our instruction.''

Ford did, however, defend the time allotted to teachers for improvement.

''It's designed to protect the innocent,'' he said. ''Democracy is not quick, and all this is democracy.''

But Ford acknowledged that the system, which allows some bad teachers to keep on teaching, can be overprotective.

''Sometimes it's hard to defend the process,'' he said.

3 years to dismiss

In the case of Clementine Johnson, it took three years to dismiss her from the classroom even though administrators thought her classes had become downright dangerous.

Johnson was a business education teacher who was hired by Duval County in 1972 and had two decades of satisfactory reviews before her troubles began, according to district personnel records.

In a typing class at Ed White High in 1992, administrators said Johnson's students took apart typewriters, threw books and paper wads around the room and scribbled graffiti on desks.

Poppell, then the principal at White, said he worked with Johnson extensively but she simply could not control her classes.

''I caught her several times throwing books at kids, and kids throwing books at her,'' Poppell said this month. ''It was just total chaos.''

Johnson received an unsatisfactory review and requested a transfer to Arlington Middle School for the 1993-94 school year. During a classroom observation, Johnson's students had turned out the lights and were throwing dictionaries and others were hiding under their desks for protection, according to records.

Johnson denied that her classes were unruly. In letters to administrators, she blamed her problems on the spirits that had invaded the eyes of her students.

One of her students was hit in the eye with a book, and another suffered a chipped tooth during one of Johnson's classes.

In another letter to Assistant Superintendent Alvin White in 1994, Johnson demanded that she be allowed to continue teaching.

''I put every piece of my living flesh on my true hereditary genes bones, and bones to go quickly back to the dust of the earth, for perfect all-truth shall prevail in this situation,'' Johnson wrote. ''I shall not lie within all my heart and all my soul and within all my mind and within all my strength.''

Johnson received a second unsatisfactory review in 1994 and was eventually terminated. After a hearing, Johnson's teaching license was revoked by the state in December 1995.

Johnson has since changed her name to Clementine God. She could not be located for comment.

Poppell said it was a shame that the system allowed Johnson to teach a class after her first unsatisfactory evaluation.

''It had to be an unbelievable year,'' Poppell said. ''You really look back and say, 'How in the world can you recover that lost year,' but you can't get it back.''