Sending Teachers to the Rubber Room

posted by Zach Patton

All right, first off: It's not really a padded cell.

But last week's This American Life on NPR includes a story about New York City's "rubber room" -- a "reassignment center" at the city's Board of Education building, for public school teachers who are placed on probation.

It works like this:

Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. They call it the Rubber Room. Average length of stay? Months, sometimes years.

Years?? And at taxpayers' expense.

It's a fascinating story; really worth listening to.

Comments

[Sunshine]

Some of the teachers in the rubber rooms are guilty and do not care to go back to work and actually prefer being at the rubber rooms. They bring their lap top computers to the rooms, books to read, knitting stuff, do exercise, have book clubs, dance lessons, and all this good, fun stuff is what these teachers do and get paid for. It makes no sense to me and some of us at these rooms are really unhappy and wish that we could go back and be functional human beings again. Do what we set out to do when we decided to be teachers, but we are all stuck in here because the Department of Education and our Mayor do not really care about the children's education. The administration does not care either. The principals allow teachers to lie and make up lies to keep the innocent teachers away because they simply do not like a teacher. They use the children to tell lies as well. It is a really sad thing that is happening in the educational system.
As I said, some of the teachers are guilty as sin and yet they are sitting in these rubber rooms just hanging out and the DOE and the City of New York is paying them. I know that I will be vindicated and it is a damned shame that so much money is going to waste paying teachers that are child molesters and abusive.

[Chad]

There must be reform in the United Federation of Teachers union to allow for the truly guilty teachers to be fired. They are a waste and a drain on taxpayer dollars.