After listening to the debate at last week's Los Angeles school board meeting, business leader Carol Schatz said she was appalled.
She had attended to support a resolution to speed the firing of teachers accused of serious crimes. But even this proposal -- tiptoeing on the margins of improving teacher quality -- generated heated objections from the teachers union and its supporters.
With some last-minute amendments and sniping among board members, the resolution passed by a single vote.
"I came away depressed," said Schatz, who heads the 500-member Central City Assn. of Los Angeles. "If they can barely pass something like that, how are they going to tackle teacher quality?"
By even grazing the hot-button topic, the nation's second largest district has entered one of the most contentious debates in American education, one that increasingly is pitting powerful teachers unions against school boards and would-be reformers.
Teacher effectiveness is considered one of the most significant factors in student success. But giving it a hard look can involve reexamining teacher tenure, teacher evaluations, dismissal of "bad" teachers and merit pay for "good" ones -- all highly charged political issues, especially in California.
Such scrutiny historically has been urged by those on the right, but Democrats -- including President Obama and Arne Duncan, his education secretary -- have recently embraced it.
"If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching," Obama said in a March speech.
The issue came up again this month in a study by the New York-based education reform group the New Teacher Project, which described a "national failure" to measure teacher success.
In California, a Times investigation recently found, it is remarkably time-consuming and cumbersome for school districts to fire teachers who don't meet standards. A review of cases in which teachers statewide contested their firings showed that far more teachers were fired for egregious acts than for poor teaching.
In L.A., the debate is only beginning. The Los Angeles Unified School District has set up a task force, headed by education reformer and former Occidental College President Ted Mitchell, to make recommendations on improving teacher quality.
