The Obama Administration Fights To Keep Incompetent Teachers In The Classroom In The Name Of Civil Rights

16 Sep, 2011 by John Hawkins

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Democrats incessantly tell everyone how much they care about education and then they turn right around and fight anything and everything that will actually improve education while inconveniencing their union allies. It almost defies belief, but in Arizona, the Obama administration is fighting to keep teachers with mediocre English skills in the classroom teaching students.

Public school teachers with unacceptable English pronunciation and grammar are being protected by the Obama Administration, which has forced one state to eliminate a fluency monitoring program created to comply with a 2002 federal education law.

Singling out teachers who can’t speak proper English in American schools–funded by taxpayers, no less–discriminates against Hispanics and others who are not native English speakers, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). As a result it violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the teachers must remain in their current position.

…Here are some examples of state monitoring reports listed in the article; a teacher who asked her English learners “How do we call it in English?” and teachers who pronounced “levels” as “lebels” and “much” as “mush.” Last year a monitor documented teachers who pronounced “the” as “da” and “lives here” as “leeves here.”

Protected by the power of their union, no teachers have been fired for fluency issues. They have simply been reassigned and districts are required to develop “corrective-action plans” to improve their English. However a group of teachers took their case to the feds last year, complaining that their accents were getting them removed from classrooms.

This is the sort of issue that makes the Justice Department’s bloated civil rights division salivate. Predictably, the agency took swift action, threatening to file a civil rights lawsuit if Arizona didn’t get rid of its teacher fluency monitoring program. As a result, thousands of children in the state’s taxpayer funded schools are stuck with teachers they probably can’t understand.

Wow, the Obama Administration is really looking out for the kids’ best interests, isn’t it?