February 25, 2010 07:24 AM EST by John Stossel

Last night I blogged about the Rhode Island school district that got up the courage to fire their teachers' union. Unfortunately, reform isn't going as well in my town. The NY Times has a surprisingly fair article this week about the near-impossibility of firing an NYC public school teacher:

[I]n the two years since the Education Department began an intensive effort to root out such teachers from the more than 55,000 who have tenure, officials have managed to fire only three for incompetence. Ten others whom the department charged with incompetence settled their cases by resigning or retiring.

It's not as though the city hasn't tried.

The city's effort includes eight full-time lawyers, known as the Teacher Performance Unit, and eight retired principals and administrators who serve as part-time consultants to help principals build cases against teachers. Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, said that the team, whose annual budget is $1 million, had been "successful at a far too modest level."�

So it took 16 lawyers/administrators two years to get rid of 13 teachers. Practices that would immediately bankrupt a private company are considered normal for the public sector.  If were continue to grow the public sector, we are indeed on a Road to Serfdom. The teachers' union claims principal could fire bad teachers if they just followed the steps required.  But that's disingenuous.  On my last FBN show I displayed the pages of steps required. [Video here.]

One teacher that the city wants to fire is Michael Ebewo. During an inspection of his classroom, the principal found: "a chart with misspellings and unclear instructions,"... "students students staring into space and doodling rather than completing their worksheet, which contained questions that the students, who were in special education, had difficulty understanding. Rather than pressing the students for answers, Mr. Ebewo simply answered himself, making the students only more confused."

At Ebewo's latest hearing:

Mr. Ebewo's lawyer interrupted with objections more than two dozen times, but the arbitrator overruled him in nearly every instance. The hearing, which covered lessons dating to 2005, lasted four hours... the hearing will probably go on for months, because of a rule the city agreed to four years ago.

You'd think that since it's so hard to fire a tenured teacher, schools would be careful about who they give lifetime jobs. You'd be wrong.

Last year, 93 percent of eligible teachers obtained tenure after the end of their three-year probationary periods.

After all, it's your money the schools are spending.

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Just thinking this morning how a gov't take over of health care will make our health system much like our gov't controlled school system. A system that traps most people into a level of service that is mediocre at best, horrendous at the worst. The rich progressives can buy out of the new system and still go private, but most people will be stuck. Imagine you are assigned bad doctors, incompetant doctors, but you cannot remove them and you MUST go to them. Scary stuff.

And that is why I homeschool my children.Any questions?

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John Stossel joined FOX Business and FOX News in October 2009. His show, Stossel, airs on the Fox Business Network on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET

He is the New York Times best-selling author of Give Me A Break and Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. His "Give Me a Break" commentaries take a skeptical look at a wide array of issues, such as education, the economy, parenting, and more.

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