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Data released by the Department of Education today.

The city gave a glimpse today into the results of its new sped-up process for terminating teachers, the one that the Bloomberg administration said would put an end to the teacher holding pens known as rubber rooms.

The rubber rooms are technically gone; now, most teachers charged of incompetence or misconduct await verdicts in real schools and do administrative work. But the city failed to meet its goal of erasing the “backlog” of teachers who had been removed from their classrooms by the beginning of this calendar year. Roughly 11 percent of the teachers who made up the backlog — 83 out of 744 — are still waiting for their cases to wrap up.

Of those who have completed the process, nearly two-thirds of the teachers charged with misconduct or incompetence have returned to their classes, according to data released today by the Department of Education. Some were cleared of charges; others were fined or assigned additional training or counseling.

Roughly a quarter of those who began the termination proceedings are no longer in schools. Some were fired, and others either were forced to retire or resign.

The new numbers come at a time of heightened tension between the city and its teachers union over how to identify bad teachers and remove them from classrooms. (more…)

More than 15 city teachers and staff sent to reassignment centers last year are still waiting for charges to be filed against them, a seeming violation of an agreement between the city and the union.

In April, the city and union agreed to close the reassignment centers — known as “rubber rooms” — and to clear out the backlog of cases by the end of the calendar year. In order to do that, the agreement stated that the city would have 60 days to either file charges against an accused teacher or return her to her school.

For teachers reassigned before September, the agreement gave the city a November 1 deadline to file charges. But according to numbers the city and the union released today, 16 employees that should have received charges are still waiting for them.

“I expect both sides to live up to the terms of the agreement,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. (more…)

The administrative work centers that evolved from the rubber rooms are getting less crowded, but they may still be too crowded to disappear by the city’s December deadline.

On Monday, nearly 450 teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence will report to work in Department of Education administrative offices throughout the city, instead of to rooms or trailers where they would clock in and spend the day doing nothing. That’s about a third fewer teachers than the 650 teachers who left the rubber rooms at the end of the school year.

But the number of teachers still waiting for their cases to be resolved suggests that the city and union may not be able to meet their goal of clearing the backlog by the end of the year.

The city’s ability to clear through the backlog may depend on the number of teachers still awaiting charges. A GothamSchools analysis published in April showed that the city would face an uphill battle clearing the cases of the roughly 250 teachers who had not been charged at that time even if it spent all of September through December working on just those cases.

That conclusion was grounded in the assumption that the city would resolve all of the roughly 300 cases of teachers who’d already been charged over the summer. But that hasn’t happened. Though the city has dealt with many of these cases, and at a faster rate than before, some remain. (more…)