Bad Apples

[April 16th, 2008]

If a doctor leaves scissors in her patient, she might get sued and lose her license. If a lawyer breaches ethical guidelines, he may get disbarred.

But when adolescents say a public-school teacher can’t teach, the result can be a messier contest pitting the need to safeguard the teacher from false or unfair accusations against the interests of the child in receiving a high-quality education.

Next month, Portland Public Schools will begin bargaining with its nearly 3,000 teachers, counselors and school psychologists. And the School Board is feeling good about the bargaining’s prospects, citing the completion of advance negotiations on one long-festering issue: hiring and transferring teachers.

For nearly two decades, advocates had argued Portland’s complicated process hurt students because it tied principals’ hands with cumbersome rules about whom they could hire and when.

Yet one unresolved issue that some say is just as pressing appears far less likely to be addressed in the upcoming bargaining: How should PPS identify and get rid of bad teachers?

It’s not exactly easy under current guidelines. “Principals have learned the hard way they’re not likely to be backed up as they go up the chain of command,” says retired Portland principal Mary Beth Van Cleave. “It was not uncommon to get overturned.”

Only about a dozen of PPS’s roughly 3,000 educators—or less than one-half of 1 percent—are on what are called “plans of assistance.” Those plans are the result of bad job evaluations and are a must before a principal can try to fire a teacher, except in extreme circumstances.

But the evaluation system is “dysfunctional,” says Rachel Langford, a Portland director of the advocacy group Stand for Children. “Consistent, adequate evaluations are not happening,” she says. “[Principals] are not trained or supported by the district to do that well.”

The School Board has so far offered little indication it wants to force a showdown over this issue with the union, which for the first time in several years enjoys a cordial relationship with PPS.

Dan Ryan, one of the School Board members leading contract talks for the district, says he values evaluations but is careful to avoid addressing specifics about negotiations.

Jeff Miller, president of the Portland Association of Teachers union, says he doesn’t hear any complaints form parents and dismisses concerns about the strength of the evaluation process.

“Portland has the finest group of teachers collectively of any school district in the state,” Miller says.

Here’s one example of the problem.

About a month before the fall 2007 semester ended, Wilson High School teacher Gary Gramson decided to leave after several vocal students and parents complained he was in over his head teaching advanced physics.

Though Gramson is certified in multiple scientific disciplines, students said they had a hard time following his lessons and that he often spent class time talking about issues unrelated to physics. Yet he wasn’t on a plan of assistance.

“He didn’t give us the idea that he knew what he was doing,” says junior Gabriel Erb.

But his contract gives Gramson the right to return next fall to teach. In other words, his return isn’t principal Sue Brent’s decision to make. It’s his. And even after PPS officials made the unusual move of allowing Gramson to leave before semester’s end, they haven’t tried to fire him.

The 39-year-old teacher came to PPS in 2003, one year after he unsuccessfully sued the Springfield School District for “fraudulent inducement” by not renewing his contract.

On April 20, 2007, he was detained by Portland Police at Wilson during the school day and later arrested by a Washington County sheriff’s deputy for violating a restraining order.

Gramson’s troubles go back to 1993, his first year teaching in Oregon. The state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission reprimanded him then because he had failed to note multiple charges against him before he started teaching in the tiny Lane County town of Oakridge. Among those run-ins with the law were charges of driving under the influence of intoxicants, resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a police officer. He was found guilty of the resisting-arrest charge and sentenced to three years’ probation.

In a separate incident, he pleaded guilty in 1989 to fourth-degree assault and was sentenced to six months’ probation. More than a year later, he was charged with DUII again when police pulled him over in Clatsop County with a blood-alcohol content of .10 percent. Gramson pleaded guilty, but the court withheld sentencing for a year.

Gramson, who has had some aspects of his record expunged, says through an intermediary he never had a bad evaluation from PPS. During his time at Wilson, he’s had three different principals.