In marked contrast to LA, check out this spot-on op ed by Joel Klein:

Get incompetent teachers off the payroll

Comments: 10

By JOEL KLEIN

Last Updated: 8:51 AM, February 15, 2010

www.nypost.com/p/news/local/get_em_off_the_payroll_bpuwRk46YoHkNcAXzpC9lI

The most important factor in a child's education is the quality of his or her teachers. That's why we are working so hard to ensure only our best educators are in front of the classroom.

But it is just as important that in the relatively few cases where teachers are found to be incompetent -- or worse -- we get them out of classrooms, and off the city's payroll, as soon as possible.

Last year, the city spent approximately $30 million on the salaries of teachers who sat in reassignment centers doing nothing. We could save those millions by taking the following steps:

Remove employees from payroll while their cases proceed. When teachers are formally charged with misconduct or incompetence and there is probable cause to believe they are guilty, they should be taken off payroll pending the outcome of the charges. Exonerated teachers would receive back pay plus interest.

Adhere to prompt timelines for disciplinary action. State law and the teachers contract require hearings to take no more than 60 days to complete, but that deadline is never enforced and rarely met. We should mandate that hearings take place within 30 days after charges are filed, that they last no more than five days, and that arbitrators issue decisions within 24 hours.

Let full-time judges decide cases. We could greatly speed up the hearing process if teachers went before administrative-law judges. The arbitrators who currently oversee teacher cases hold hearings just five times a month, while administrative-law judges hear cases every business day.

No one starting from scratch would set up such a dysfunctional disciplinary system. The only people this system serves well are teachers no parent would willingly allow to educate their kids.

Joel Klein is chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.