The Dance of the Lemons

You may have heard about the "Dance of the Lemons." It describes how the worst teachers (lemons) end up in public schools with the most low-income and minority students.

The term is an insult to the teaching profession, but anyone who has taught school or sent a child to school in a large metropolitan school district gets it:  Most teachers are fine and some are excellent, but there are bad teachers.

Here's how it works in large-city public school districts.

Some schools in large districts are in good (let's be honest, expensive) neighborhoods.  The parents are supportive and involved, the children are attentive and generally manageable and the classroom experience is efficient and gratifying.  Teachers naturally gravitate to these schools.

When a bad teacher (who doesn't advance student learning at an appropriate rate or who does not treat children with respect or doesn't motivate students) arrives at a good school, parents mobilize.  They let the principal know their displeasure, they complain to other teachers and, generally, they make the bad teacher so uncomfortable that he or she leaves the school.

Other schools in large districts (those in poorer or marginal neighborhoods with less sophisticated parents, often of minority backgrounds) are more challenging.  The children's home experiences are often chaotic. The parents are less likely to show up for parent-teacher conferences or to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of their kids' teachers.  The children are less focused and, frankly, harder to teach. Teaching at these schools is very demanding.  Experienced and highly competent teachers either burn out and leave the profession or transfer from these schools to "good" schools.

As the best teachers migrate to the "good" schools, more teaching openings arise at the "poorer" schools.  Newly hired teachers and the bad teachers driven out of the "good" schools end up in the "poorer" schools.  Since many new teachers leave the profession in their early years -- the job is intense and difficult in the best of situations, and many young teachers understand they cannot do it well -- there is generally much higher teacher turnover at "poorer" schools.  The bad teachers who have been pushed out of the "good" schools, protected by tenure, end up in the most challenging classrooms with less sophisticated,  undemanding parents.  These bad teachers often stay in these schools for the balance of their careers.

Word spreads when school performance declines.   Parents who can do so move to different neighborhoods or enroll their children in charter, magnet or private schools. People with younger children avoid the challenged school areas altogether.  Enrollments decline as the poor schools get worse, and some of the poor schools are closed or merged with others.  Parents in adjoining neighborhoods lose trust in their schools.

(In fact, student enrollment at large metropolitan school districts has been declining for many years.  This has spillover effects on property values, local businesses, job prospects for young people and petty and major crime.)

When school enrollments decline, so do the number of teaching jobs.  Usually the last hired are the first fired.  The new teachers at the "poorer" schools are let go, and the bad teachers stay put.

Rinse and repeat.  The process has hollowed out many metropolitan school districts, leaving them unattractive to parents in all but the most expensive neighborhoods and offering no good alternatives to families who cannot afford better alternatives for their children.

This recently has become the subject of a students' rights case in California.  More on this later.