Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO -- If a teacher doesn’t measure up, should he or she jump over other applicants for a job at a different school? Not anymore, at least not in California’s neediest schools. A new state law bars school districts from forcing principals at low-scoring schools to hire teachers who transfer from elsewhere in the district.In a move watched by educators across the nation, California’s Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) concluded that the preference system had allowed transferring teachers, often with weak records, to bump newer teachers from schools that needed them most, even when the principal preferred the...

ov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Thursday to end the so-called dance of the lemons in which unsuccessful teachers move from one low-performing school to another and principals are powerless to stop it. ...Those bills were two of more than 100 pieces of legislation that Schwarzenegger acted on Thursday. The governor still has 503 bills that he needs to sign or veto before the Saturday midnight deadline. SB1655 authored by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena, will give school principals the flexibility to reject a voluntary transfer of a teacher and change hiring deadlines so that promising new teachers can be hired...

Imagine a company president being ordered by the board of directors to hire any misfit who knocks on the door. It's a crazy scenario -- but it's exactly the way many California school districts operate when an unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school. As long as the teacher agrees to leave voluntarily, union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher. The practice, common in large and mid-size urban districts, is so reviled by principals that they've given it a derogatory name. "It's called the Dance of...