Dismissal

While dismissal decisions are made at a school and district level, generally it is state law that dictates the rules and procedures for dismissal of teachers, including the reasons that a teacher can be fired. Most states grant teachers the right to appeal a district?s dismissal decision before the local school board and, subsequently, before a court if the teacher so chooses. In some states, teachers may all appeal the decision before the state board of education. As of 2013, only four states do not allow multiple appeals of a dismissal decision.

Most state laws do not distinguish between the due process rights of teachers being dismissed for performance related issues and the due process rights of teachers being dismissed for other reasons like criminal or moral violations. As of 2013, 29 states articulate that ineffectiveness is grounds for dismissal. For more information on state policies regarding dismissal, see the dismissal section on the state policy issues page.

The dismissal process and due process rights described in state laws only apply to tenured teachers. In most states, non-tenured teachers have no due process rights and cannot appeal dismissal decisions.

Teacher Contract Database Using information from state statues, collective bargaining agreements and evaluation handbooks, our database contains information on the dismissal timeline and appeal process for both tenured and non-tenured teachers, as well as how the process works for teachers that are deemed ineffective.

What the research shows

Since May of 2009, NCTQ has done in-depth studies of districts around the country. Our district study work finds that teacher dismissals are a rare occurrence. For example, over a five year period Boston dismissed just 21 teachers. Baltimore dismissed an average of only 19 tenured teachers a year between 2006 and 2008, less than one percent of its workforce. Kansas City was unable to even provide figures on this subject, as it was seemingly too rare of an occurrence.

A Pacific Research Institute study found that in California, between 1990 and 1999, only 227 teacher dismissal cases reached the final phase of termination hearings, representing less than one-tenth of one percent of all teachers in the state. This report also considered the number of teachers resigning instead of going through the dismissal process and found the number of tenured teachers leaving or being counseled out of the profession by principals was very low (Dawson and Billingsley, 2000).

In The New Teacher Project?s Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teacher Union Contracts, Levin, Mulhern, and Schunck studied five urban districts and found that only four teachers out of the 70,000 tenured teachers in those districts were terminated for poor performance (2005). The report explains that principals are all too often reluctant to pursue a dismissal because of the lengthy and burdensome due process requirements for tenured teachers. Because of this long process coupled with the small possibility that a teacher will actually be exited from a district, principals will often opt to transfer a teacher to another school in the district instead.

Works Cited

Dawson, Thomas C., and K. Lloyd Billingsley. "Unsatisfactory Performance: How California's K-12 Education System Protects Mediocrity and How Teacher Quality Can Be Improved." Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (2000).

Levin, Jessica, Jennifer Mulhern, and Joan Schunck. "Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts." New Teacher Project (2005).