No matter how you look at it, yesterday’s decision by a California Superior Court Judge was a serious blow to teachers, their unions, and their anti-reform allies. In Vergara v. State of California, Justice Rolf Treu ruled in favor of nine parents, saying that the current set of laws that protect teachers discriminates against low-income and minority students.
The ruling called some of the main tenants of teacher contracts unconstitutional. Nearly automatic tenure, seniority, and multiple appeals before a teacher can be fired have allowed ineffective teachers to remain in the system to the detriment of the students, the judge said.
While the decision wasn’t good for California’s teachers, what does it mean for teachers and their unions in the rest of the country? What will the decision mean for students?
The California ruling was immediately applauded by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The latter is widely viewed as a likely Republican candidate for president in 2016, and he’s a huge supporter of charter schools.
As expected, teachers unions have vowed to appeal the judge’s decision. But some introspective on the part of union leaders would be well-served. For more than a decade, the public has heard of case after case where ineffective teachers languish in mostly urban school districts. In California, supporters of the ruling argued that litigation had to be used to correct that refused to correct itself.
But teachers groups argue that they are overwhelmed by the social ills impacting poor and minority students and their families. Teachers, they say, are being unfairly blamed for decades of bad public policies that have left many of the country’s urban school districts highly segregated and underfunded.
The California ruling, should it stand, will give school administrators the ability to hire and retain whom they believe are the best teachers. It could also be a boost for charter school and pro-school choice advocates, by validating the staffing approach they’ve already been using.
But it will likely be another decade before we know what’s best for students. And it will be interesting to see what has happened to the profession and the country’s once revered traditional public schools.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2014.
There are multiple truths to this story from both sides. There are many problems that face urban schools. There is no doubt that there are good teachers who are overrun by the overwhelming problems in urban poor neighborhoods. However, this is a discussion for another day. This law is about overturning an unnatural guarantee of employment regardless of performance. There is endless debate about how to measure teachers and the fairness (or unfairness) of every suggestion depending on which bias you already hold. I would suggest a very simple solution for this problem. Teachers should be evaluated like every other non-union employee in this country….your boss gets to decide if you do a good job or not. Thats it, end of story. Its not always fair but that’s how the rest of the real world works. In the end, teachers get graded subjectively just like the rest of us.
I disagree that the decision was not good for California teachers. It was a great decision for the competent, hard working teachers that are frustrated by the continued prescience of incompetent, lazy ones in their midst. The interesting thing to me is that the right is celebrating the decision, totally ignoring that the logic behind the decision, the right of poor students to an equal opportunity education, could be used in the future to totally change school financing.
So hiring non certified, little to no experience 22 year olds fresh out of college as teachers to work in charter schools make more sense?!! See how easy it is to get one over on the judicial system and the American public??!