It is a jarring and unacceptable truth: A disproportionately high number of tenured Denver Public Schools teachers who haven’t found assignments end up forcibly placed in the poorest schools.
The official name for this practice is direct placement. The ugly name for it is the “lemon dance.”
That’s because many — not all, but many — have been cut loose from their prior assignments for not doing a very good job.
Giving any child a mediocre or uninterested teacher is a disservice, but it is a particularly cruel burden for students who are the furthest behind and most desperately need a capable instructor to help them catch up.
DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg acknowledges the problem and believes the system must change.
“It is wrong that in those schools that have the highest need, we have this,” Boasberg said, according to a Denver Post story by reporter Jeremy P. Meyer.
Meyer’s story said during the last four years, 72 percent of direct placement teachers went to poor schools, while such poor schools make up 60 percent of all schools.
Granted, these are tough schools to staff, and typically have the most openings.
A new state law, championed by then-Senate President Peter Groff, allows schools to petition the State Board of Education to be free of some state laws, including those on teacher tenure.
We hope more of them seek “innovation” status so they can bow out of the annual direct-placement shuffle and take control of hiring and firing.
Furthermore, we hope that as Colorado begins to use a growth model to assess the effectiveness of teaching and learning, it will be applied to root out teachers who aren’t getting the job done.
This year, the Colorado Department of Education unveiled a new way of looking at test scores. It measures how much a student has progressed and how that compares to other students.
The data also can be attached to teachers to answer questions about who are the most — and least — effective instructors.
Such an assessment could be used to determine whether direct placement teachers are digging in and making a positive difference at the schools where they’ve landed.
If they have, the system worked.
If not, then they need to move on — preferably to a different profession.
The needs of students must take precedence over a system that protects mediocre teachers.
