In general, yes, I believe they are. I also believe that the same could be said for union workers in general.

Unions do a great many good things, to be certain, and making it hard to dislodge employees for nonsense reasons is a good one. But I'd hope that a given union would look at a specific member's results and say "No, really, you deserve to go, and don't warrant our protection." That doesn't ever happen, however.

I think it's fair to say the teacher's union protects the weak more than it supports the strong.

Rafe Esquith's book "There are no shortcuts" offers numerous examples of this.

Some school districts have had a lot of success with policies that allow principals to reject any staff members that they don't want (with the staff members being placed elsewhere in the system) and also allows teachers to reject any placement that they don't want.

I do believe that some unions do too much protect poor teachers. However, teachers do need to be protected from the whims of some administrators. There should be specific, documented, steps that administrators must take to help poor teachers improve. However, once reasonable efforts have been taken, and there is little, or no, improvement, the teachers should be fired.

We have all had examples of poor teachers who should have been fired and weren't for whatever reason. We also have examples of poor administrators who are shuffled from school to school because of who they know or who they have worked for in the past. Getting a poor teacher or administrator to resign is not easy in any setting but it can be done. The problem is that most people who could make the less effective teachers/administrators disappear don't want to do the paperwork or reporting necessary to accomplish the job. I feel sorry for students in one case and teachers in the other who have to put up with incompetence year after year.

Actually, a principal can administratively transfer a teacher to another vacancy somewhere else in the system at any time for no reason, up to 10 days before school begins, I believe.

If a principal documents problems within the teacher's evaluation, there is a provision called a Professional Improvement Plan (PIP) that is designed to help a teacher address the area of need. If that is done and the teacher doesn't improve, the teacher can be fired, I believe. I think it takes 2 years if a teacher is already tenured, which is expensive and yes, lengthy.

It takes 2 years to get tenture in the BCPSS. You can tell after a year if a teacher will improve. If they don't, it's the principal's own fault if they do not fire that teacher before tenure is awarded. Teachers are "at will" employees up until they get tenure, I believe -- isn't tenure enough time to get rid of bad teachers?

Unfortunately, most principals are too overwhelmed with actually filling vacancies, let alone filling them with great teachers, to be firing teachers... And should we even begin to talk about putting money and effort into retaining the good ones? That's not being done, either...

Unions protect the strong and the weak alike. It is the nature of the beast. A shield will protect the strong warrior the same way it protects the coward.

Having worked in various systems in the county and the city I have seen many examples of teacher that just need to go away. Unprofessional clods that are collecting a pay-check and nothing more.

But just recently I saw the union protect a teacher that was truly being put in a situation they did not deserve to be in. Without the union that district would have lost a VERY strong teacher due to a personal vendetta from a scorned student.

I am sure that the union would love to get rid of these weak teachers as well, but by doing that you may leave some of the strongest ones open to the politics of petty people.

A school works a lot like any other office you may have worked in. Politics and all.

If parents and students had a say in the selection of their children's teachers, the problem teachers would have empty classrooms. Problem solved

As a BCPS employee for the past few years, I've noticed an interesting thing. The two TABCO reps where I work were two of the laziest, least-accountable (and least-active) members of the staff. One couldn't be bothered to check his email or mailbox on anything resembling a regular basis, and assigned no homework (presumeably so he wouldn't have to grade it). The other, a counselor, did almost nothing. I thought it was strange that they both had plenty of time and energy to spend rustling up support for TABCO initiatives, however. Any organization that would allow not one, but two, such individuals to represent it is doing something very wrong. Unfortunately, TABCO has a lot of support. There are a lot of teachers in BCPS who know they need the protection because they're lousy teachers. There was generally a lot more interest at our regular employee meetings in salary issues than in school culture. Often, I found myself wondering if the staff at my school was being OVERpayed. I am sure TABCO occasionally protects good teachers who are unfairly targeted by malicious administrators or students/parents. In my experience, however, TABCO's presence serves primarily to discourage administrators from trying to rid the system of bad teachers, because they know what an uphill climb that would be. So they generally just transfer them, instead, and force another school to put up with them for awhile. I think the quote from a teacher's union rep in NJ sums it up best: "I’ve gone in and defended teachers who shouldn’t even be pumping gas." TABCO's mission is to protect teachers. Not good teachers, or teachers being unfairly targeted. Just teachers. Any teachers. And unfortunately, a lot of teachers shouldn't be teaching.