3. Report Overview

3. REPORT OVERVIEW

While § 3020-a is a vitally important part of the state’s education law, it is neither transparent nor well-understood. This report aims to shed light on the role and function of § 3020-a, to further public awareness of the law’s impact on New York’s schools, and to promote wider debate around how to fix it.

The report is based on analysis of the over 6,000 pages of 155 official decisions filed with the State Education Department at the conclusion of § 3020-a proceedings for New York City teachers from July 1, 1997 through June 30, 2007.4 The goal of the analysis was to identify and explicate the specific principles that hearing officers use to determine whether or not to return a teacher to the classroom, and to illustrate the on-the-ground effect the current system has on children and schools. All the teachers described in these cases were determined through lengthy due process proceedings to be ineffective, excessively absent, or verbally or physically abusive, and the cases provide a clear picture of the serious and chronic misconduct that is at issue. The central problem raised by these decisions is not how to conduct fair teacher evaluations, but rather the nature of the minimum performance standards that teachers are held to.

The report is divided into four parts:  Part 1 explains the significance of § 3020-a decisions, and explains why the new teacher evaluation system is likely to have little impact on the way § 3020-a proceedings function.

 Part 2 explains the logistics of § 3020-a proceedings.  Part 3 explains the principles that § 3020-a hearing officers use to decide whether or not to send a teacher back to the classroom.

 Part 4 provides case examples illustrating how these principles are applied in specific

cases.

The cases described in Part 4 of this report demonstrate that even excessive teacher absence, verbal abuse, and corporal punishment are not grounds for dismissal under § 3020-a, despite the fact that this behavior is prohibited “on paper” in publicly-available New York

4 See Appendix I for a description of how the decisions analyzed for the research were obtained.