Buyouts one way for schools to jettison problem teachers, but raise issues
Some teachers, under a professional cloud, are paid to leave their jobs. It’s a fact little examined in schools or policy circles, and mostly unknown to the public. But when it does surface, it inevitably raises fears that teachers who should be out of the classroom entirely are helped to new teaching jobs at public expense. “In general, I am against buyouts,” said Robert J. Shoop, the director of the Cargill Center for Ethical Leadership at Kansas State University. “There needs to be a specific rationale, and in many cases I think it’s the easy way out,” at the potential expense of students in some other district. Defenders of the practice—administrators, union officials, and their lawyers—do so with a nod to an imperfect world. Most say that legal and social changes related to teacher misconduct have made it harder in recent years for teachers to hide illegal or immoral behavior and get new jobs. Without the agreements, proponents say, districts would use far too many resources—in money, time, and morale—shedding tenured teachers they don’t want. And such teachers who are ready to leave the profession for good or who need a new setting to prove their mettle can make those moves with less wear and tear, the defenders explain. “It’s not bad they work out these strategic agreements,” said John Bukey, the general counsel for the California School Boards Association. “It’s good for the teacher and good for the district.” Settlements before judgment are a feature of the overburdened American legal system in general, Mr. Bukey argued.
Many agreements involving teachers include provisions that keep information about the settlement—including the complaints or accusations involved—confidential. But because such confidentiality can help teachers get new jobs and thus potentially put more students at risk, courts and legislatures have put a limit on what can be kept secret. They’ve also offered protection from defamation suits in cases where officials tell prospective employers what led to a teacher’s departure. The limits and protections vary from state to state, however, and generally apply only where teachers have been accused of sexual or other kinds of abuse toward students, or other substantial breaches of moral character, including possession of illegal drugs. Lawyers for districts and teachers, as well as school and union officials, say that while dismissals of tenured teachers through a state’s hearing process are extremely rare, settlements in which teachers receive incentives to leave are also uncommon. Statistics on resignation buyouts are almost nonexistent because no government agency keeps track of them. Nor is it easy to know how much teachers receive in such settlements or to estimate how much districts save by not pressing for a dismissal hearing. Lawyers consulted for this story said the buyouts ranged from a few months of health insurance to payouts that, with the equivalent of salary and benefits such as health insurance and retirement contributions, topped $100,000. A survey conducted by the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA) in 2004 found the average settlement cost in cases where charges were filed to be about $50,000.
Lawyers on both sides say the agreements are the result of calculations about the cost of pursuing dismissal through a hearing, which in dollar terms is often put at $100,000 to $200,000. The NYSSBA survey found that the most recent average cost of a disciplinary case in the state, excluding New York City, was $129,000, and that the length of time needed for a decision was 520 days. Those amounts are up from 1997, according to the survey, which might account for the rise in settlements, said Jay Worona, the general counsel for the school boards group. “Both the union and the district engage in cost-benefit analysis,” said Michael E. Smith, whose law firm represents more than 250 California districts. Among the factors weighed, according to Mr. Smith, is the strength of the district’s case against the teacher. Some of the hardest cases to win through a hearing and some of the most appropriate to settle, according to several experts, are those in which there is disagreement over the quality of a teacher’s classroom work. Mr. Smith and other lawyers for districts see the problem not so much as the settlements, which can be reasonable solutions for all concerned if districts act responsibly, but with the elaborate job protections that make firing so costly in the first place. Lawyers for districts and union officials tend to agree that districts should strive to stay out of the buyout business.
Source: Education Week, 1/22/08, By Bess Keller