The Rubber Room

The Rubber Room is a 2010 documentary film about the reassignment centers run by the New York City Department of Education, which the filmmakers claim exist in various forms in school districts across the United States. Allegedly intended to serve as temporary holding facilities for teachers accused of various kinds of misconduct who are awaiting an official hearing, these reassignment centers have become known amongst the exiled teachers subculture as rubber rooms, so named after the padded cells of psychiatric hospitals.

The rubber room is shown as a way that administrators are able to be rid of teachers by circumventing the notoriously difficult process of removing a tenured teacher. Reasons that teachers are sent to the rubber room range from accusations as extreme as physical and sexual abuse of students to as minor as excessive tardiness or even simple personality conflicts with administrators, and yet these groups of teachers are shown to be lumped together in the same situation with egregiously delayed hearings, often without evidence of any misconduct, sometimes even going without knowledge of what the alleged misconduct actually is, for up to three years.Furthermore, the film shows some students boasting about having learned to take advantage of this system after realizing that they have the power to remove teachers almost at will. This upset in the balance of power, they show, can have drastic effects on the teachers ability to do their jobs and effectively teach while maintaining order in the classrooms. ........

Source: Wikipedia