Hawaii Fires 10 Teachers for Misconduct in 2 Years
UPDATED 7/8/11 12:01 a.m.
Editor’s Note: This article has been superseded by new data released by the Department of Education. For the updated information, go here.
Only 10 teachers in the entire Hawaii Department of Education have been fired for misconduct in the last two years. That’s 10 out of about 12,000 teachers, or less than one-tenth of 1 percent. The Department also suspended 37 teachers for misconduct over the same period.
Teacher performance and accountability are central to most education reform discussions, and both play a key role in negotiations with the teachers union this year.
A Civil Beat investigation found that over the past two years the district disciplined teachers for misconduct in 42 of its 257 schools, or 16 percent. No teachers were fired on Kauai or the Big Island. Teachers were disciplined on all the islands, with 35 of the cases on Oahu, three on Maui, three on Kauai and six on the Big Island.
Of the 47 misconduct cases, 20 were at elementary schools, nine at middle or intermediate schools, 11 at high schools and seven at schools with multiple levels.
Four schools had more than one case of discipline for misconduct. Hauula Elementary School fired one teacher and suspended another. At Farrington High School, three teachers were suspended. And Kaahumanu Elementary School and Kahuku Intermediate and High School both suspended two teachers.
Civil Beat obtained the list of teachers discharged or suspended via a public records request submitted to the department last October.
How We Got It
We originally asked for all personnel actions dealing with teachers and principals over the last five years. The department said it would not fulfill our request because it did not keep such records in the fashion in which we were requesting them.
Then we narrowed the request and asked only for the number of teachers who had been fired from the Department of Education in the past five years. Again the department said it didn’t have the information in the form in which we requested it.
Because teachers who receive “unsatisfactory” evaluations are eligible for termination, we then asked how many teachers received marginal or unsatisfactory evaluations in the 2009-2010 school year; how many of those led to a grievance process; and how many of those were ultimately terminated. The department said it couldn’t provide such a record because it didn’t maintain the data in the fashion in which we were requesting it.
Finally, in November, we asked for a summary of the written decisions related to employment misconduct that resulted in an employee’s suspension or discharge.
It was only then that the department complied, turning over in March for a fee of $170 a two-page spreadsheet that gave the school year, the date of each action, name of teacher, district, school, allegation (it was always one word: “misconduct”) and the resulting action (“termination” or “suspensions”). No details were provided about the length of suspension or the reason.
Civil Beat’s final request, with which the department complied, was based on the department’s guidance that we file a request for “a summary of the written decisions related to employment misconduct that results in an employee’s suspension or discharge.”
Misconduct vs. Poor Performance
The term ‘misconduct’ “covers a range of inappropriate behavior(s) and/or action(s),” according to an email from the department.
In that same email, the department said teachers and other employees may be fired for “a variety of reasons, including but not limited to performance deficiencies.”
The department has not told Civil Beat whether there were other terminations of teachers, even though the question has been asked a number of different ways. However it did say that in the 2008 school year, seven grievances were filed in connection with teacher terminations and that four were filed in the 2009 school year.
Of the 2008 cases, three were decided in favor of the department, two are still open and two were closed, with arbitration not proceeding. It’s unclear what happened in the cases that were closed without arbitration.
Of the 2009 cases, one was decided in favor of the union and three are still open.
Complicating our attempts to determine how effectively the department weeds out bad teachers is the fact that the number of grievances doesn’t reflect every termination. Roughly 50 percent of termination cases handled by the teachers union go to arbitration, former Hawaii State Teachers Association director Joan Husted told Civil Beat. Some teachers decide not to grieve their dismissal, she explained. Current union leadership has not responded to attempts to get comment on this topic.
Furthermore, some teachers quit before action is taken against them, Husted said.
“The DOE tends to fire on behavior issues and misconduct, not on incompetency,” Husted said. “It’s very hard to prove incompetency.”
Behavior issues, or “misconduct,” can mean not following rules and procedures 鈥 for example, not showing up to work on time or abusing sick leave.
“One problem is that the Hawaii DOE has not communicated very clearly what its expectations are of its teachers,” Husted said.
Teachers are only evaluated every five years under the current contract. And only 1 percent of teachers evaluated received an unsatisfactory rating, according to a . “Unsatisfactory” is that can result in a teacher’s dismissal, according to the department’s human resources manual.
That, combined with the one-tenth of 1 percent of teachers that are fired for misconduct, adds up to a maximum of 1.1 percent of teachers that might possibly be fired for low performance and/or misconduct. That compares with the of 1.5 percent for large school districts.1
