Teachers Still Stuck in New York City's Rubber Rooms

New York City's infamous Rubber Rooms have again been profiled, this time by the New Yorker in a feature investigating "the battle over New York City’s worst teachers." The sub-title is a little harsh, since the Rubber Room isn't a detention center, but a number of places where teachers get paid to wait whilst it is decided whether they've even done anything wrong, and whether they are competent. You may recall the Rubber Rooms from a New York Times piece published two years ago, and an excellent This American Life feature.

Steven Brill's New Yorker piece explains that New York City's costly efforts are more aggressive than any other city's attempts to root out bad teachers. The article offers hope that basic performance evaluation will become a better, one-day process, and that radical changes and new accountability measures will be made in order to win stimulus money. Hopefully these changes will speed up the process of dealing with bad teachers, and allow money to be spent on education and new teachers, not lengthy arbitration proceedings.

[Photo credit: Sudhamshu]