Where Failure is the New Normal

Are Teachers Unions Quashing Needed Reforms?

Steven Brill’s journey into the American public school system began at an epicenter of failure and dysfunction: New York City’s “rubber rooms,” the “temporary reassignment centers” where teachers sat in a sort of purgatory. Judged by the new school administration to be incompetent or abusive, and sometimes even charged with crimes, they couldn’t be in classrooms–but because of state tenure laws and their own contracts, they couldn’t be fired, either.

For as long as three to five years, teachers sent to the rubber room clocked in regular school hours, took home …