OT: Teacher Tenure Ruled Unconstitutional in CA

[livinincali]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/california-teacher-tenure-laws-ruled-unconstitutional.html

[quote]
LOS ANGELES — A California judge ruled Tuesday that teacher tenure laws deprived students of their right to an education under the State Constitution and violated their civil rights. The decision hands teachers’ unions a major defeat in a landmark case, one that could radically alter how California teachers are hired and fired and prompt challenges to tenure laws in other states.

“Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students,” Judge Rolf M. Treu of Los Angeles Superior Court wrote in the ruling. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

The decision, which was enthusiastically endorsed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, brings a close to the first chapter of the case, Vergara v. California, in which a group of student plaintiffs backed by a Silicon Valley millionaire argued that state tenure laws had deprived them of a decent education by leaving bad teachers in place.
[/quote]

[quote]
He agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that California’s current laws make it impossible to remove the system’s numerous low-performing and incompetent teachers, because the tenure system assures them a job essentially for life; that seniority rules requiring the newest teachers to be laid off first were harmful; and that granting tenure to teachers after only two years on the job was farcical, offering far too little time for a fair assessment of the teacher’s skills.

Further, Judge Treu said, the least effective teachers are disproportionately assigned to schools filled with low-income and minority students. The situation violates those students’ constitutional right to an equal education, he determined. It is believed to be the first legal opinion to assert that the quality of an education is as important as mere access to schools or sufficient funding.

“All sides to this litigation agree that competent teachers are a critical, if not the most important, component of success of a child’s in-school educational experience,” Judge Treu wrote in his ruling. “There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms.”
[/quote]

Do you think this holds up and actually makes a difference?

[all]

[quote]
“There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms.”
[/quote]

This sounds like political pamphlet. Significant? Grossly? No dispute?

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=all][quote]
“There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms.”
[/quote]

This sounds like political pamphlet. Significant? Grossly? No dispute?[/quote]

There is no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective administrators. Should be a lot of wrongful termination work resulting.

[EconProf]

This is a very significant ruling that will have huge positive ramifications for public schools in California. At last, teachers can be evaluated and bounced if they are demonstrably awful. Being stuck with a bad teacher for a whole school year can do real damage to the students, who are usually the ones in poor and minority neighborhoods. The unions, and the tenure they support, is meant to protect the adults, not the children.

[CA renter]

[quote=EconProf]This is a very significant ruling that will have huge positive ramifications for public schools in California. At last, teachers can be evaluated and bounced if they are demonstrably awful. Being stuck with a bad teacher for a whole school year can do real damage to the students, who are usually the ones in poor and minority neighborhoods. The unions, and the tenure they support, is meant to protect the adults, not the children.[/quote]

I’m willing to make a bet with you, EconProf, that this will do very little, if anything, to improve the situation for students. The Privatization Movement is 100% behind this, and their ONLY goal is to improve profits for educational corporations…profits that will come from the reduced compensation for teachers.

There is NO EVIDENCE, whatsoever, that teachers’ unions negatively affect student outcomes.

Your taxes will not go down.

Student outcomes might improve slightly at first, but then will likely go back down, possibly below current levels, a few years after this has taken effect.

This change, if enacted, will result in fewer and fewer quality people who will be willing to spend 6+ years in college and take on this VERY challenging job…all to have their career hanging by a thread, dependent entirely upon the whims of administrators, politicians, and parents. This is not the kind of job where objective measures are used to determine whether or not one has done a good job (nor should it be, as the many problems with testing are brought to light); the evaluation of teachers is highly subjective and based on the emotions of parents, administrators, and politicians; which is why unions were necessary in the first place.

[CA renter]

The goal of this change is to create a divide in the unions: older teachers vs. newer teachers. The unions are under heavy attack, and too few people know about the people who are behind these attacks and what their ultimate goals are. One thing I can say for sure, is that workers of all stripes are being targeted; it’s not just the union members.

[joec]

[quote=CA renter]The goal of this change is to create a divide in the unions: older teachers vs. newer teachers. The unions are under heavy attack, and too few people know about the people who are behind these attacks and what their ultimate goals are. One thing I can say for sure, is that workers of all stripes are being targeted; it’s not just the union members.[/quote]

The problem and my initial gut feel from reading both your posts is that you make it sound like doing nothing is better than trying to do anything. You sound like a teacher that will get bounced and even though I believe you aren’t in that profession now, it just has a tone that any attempt to fix anything will not work no matter what we do.

Everything is big business motivated and we’re all sheep for trying to boot bad teachers. Bad teachers do no one any good and if it’s good teachers vs. bad teachers, we should all rejoice. Maybe like with corporations, teachers can share a salary/bonus pool so bad teachers who no one likes and is ineffective will get voted out.

I suppose like with healthcare, I think we have a broken system and maybe changes to tenure laws, evaluation by honest parents, who knows, something else is worth a shot to “try”.

I didn’t see a solution yet, but maybe teachers can be evaluated a year out or half a year in the next grade?

If the kid learned stuff, obviously, no matter how much the parents/kids hated the teacher, they did a good job maybe.

Again, let’s go in a dialog to fix things rather than throw our hands up saying nothing we do will help…that’s what I got at least reading the 2 posts.

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=all][quote]
“There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms.”
[/quote]

This sounds like political pamphlet. Significant? Grossly? No dispute?[/quote]

Significant could be 1%… There is no bar for this and thus the word is too vague…

CE

[bearishgurl]

…. Further, Judge Treu said, the least effective teachers are disproportionately assigned to schools filled with low-income and minority students. The situation violates those students’ constitutional right to an equal education, he determined….

(emphasis added)

This is SO not the way the union rules are written folks. The teachers with the most seniority get their bids for their next school assignments considered first by order of length of tenure. School assignments year to year have nothing to do with “perceived competency.”

How this plays out in the real world is that the teachers with the most seniority are often found teaching in the schools where they perceive to be the easiest to teach in. These are the schools where nearly every child has eaten breakfast at home and completed their homework the night before. In other words, schools where most of the students have stable homes with parent/guardians in residence who can regularly afford to buy a variety of groceries and have the time to see to it that their kids complete the work required of them.

If anything, the schools with the highest percentage of students eligible for free breakfast, lunch and/or whose students have the most parents who didn’t complete college and thus may need to work two jobs have the newest (and therefore typically the youngest) teachers whose attitudes haven’t yet been “jaded” by the travails resulting from longevity on the job whilst punching a school timeclock for 25+ years.

Why is this so? Because a public school teacher with less than 15 years tenure is unlikely to receive the school assignment of their choice due to union rules allowing too many of their more tenured brethren to grab the coveted classroom assignments in the perceived “easy schools to teach in.”

That’s the way the “system” works.

And using the word “minorities” in describing who is getting an “inferior” public education in CA (due to incompetent teachers?) doesn’t make any sense in real life as there really are no “minorities” or “minority groups” in CA, especially in the K-12 age groups.

I don’t see this decision holding up under appeal as the “facts” cited here (if they are truly part of the ruling) don’t comport with CA education law as it applies to the intricacies of how seniority is dealt with in collective bargaining agreements.

[bearishgurl]

I just saw this comment in the first page of the 1142 comments on the article (above):

workerbee
is a trusted commenter Florida Yesterday

The California Charter Schools Association, a trade group that lobbies state legislators and produces public relations campaigns for its members, is one of Vergara’s main partners in the school privatization movement. David Welch, the wealthy founder of Vergara, has no background in education or teaching, so we can only guess about why he’s putting so much money and effort into eliminating teacher tenure.

LOL, who wouldda thunk it?

[an]

I hope this will stick.

[CA renter]

[quote=joec]

The problem and my initial gut feel from reading both your posts is that you make it sound like doing nothing is better than trying to do anything. You sound like a teacher that will get bounced and even though I believe you aren’t in that profession now, it just has a tone that any attempt to fix anything will not work no matter what we do.

Everything is big business motivated and we’re all sheep for trying to boot bad teachers. Bad teachers do no one any good and if it’s good teachers vs. bad teachers, we should all rejoice. Maybe like with corporations, teachers can share a salary/bonus pool so bad teachers who no one likes and is ineffective will get voted out.

I suppose like with healthcare, I think we have a broken system and maybe changes to tenure laws, evaluation by honest parents, who knows, something else is worth a shot to “try”.

I didn’t see a solution yet, but maybe teachers can be evaluated a year out or half a year in the next grade?

If the kid learned stuff, obviously, no matter how much the parents/kids hated the teacher, they did a good job maybe.

Again, let’s go in a dialog to fix things rather than throw our hands up saying nothing we do will help…that’s what I got at least reading the 2 posts.[/quote]

You’re right about my not teaching now, and wrong about my being someone who would be “bounced” from the position, even if I were still teaching.

The problem is that I’ve seen other teachers who were terrorized by administrators and wrongfully terminated (and won lawsuits as a result). I’ve seen parents in the vocal minority who were hell-bent on trying to oust a particular teacher just because she was older, or didn’t do things exactly the way this particular group liked. I can’t think of any other profession (other than politics) that is so scrutinized and so beholden to such a large number of people who have no education, experience, or knowledge about the profession.

Your desire to “do something” is much like the desire of the anti-gun groups who haven’t a clue about what to do about crime, so they just run around like chickens with their heads cut off because “doing something” is better than carefully evaluating the complex issues involved and intelligently coming up with solutions that will actually work.

I’ve posted before about ideas that will most certainly have better results than blindly scrambling around for perceived solutions that are being fed to us by people who have no teaching experience and whose sole purpose is to dismantle the benefits and rights of working people. The societal and economic damage that will result from that is far, far greater than what we’re getting with the current system, even if a few below-average teachers slip through the cracks.

[CA renter]

You must read this goofy thread started by paramount in order to see how and why this is being sold…and who’s behind the curtain.

http://piggington.com/ot_california_teachers_taking_on_the_california_teachers_union

[CA renter]

Again, BG is absolutely correct about tenure and how teachers are assigned to the different schools. It’s the poor and poorly-performing schools that tend to have the greatest number of non-tenured, new teachers.

[scaredyclassic]

If no tenure decreases supply of new teachers in the pipeline significantly then maybe there will be full employment due to lack of supply anyway.

At one of my kid’s p/t charter schools the dumb boss fired one of the good teachers for no reason related to competency. Just politics.

If I were a teacher I’d be sure to spend most of my time politicking networking and sucking up to admin. to move up than actually dealing with kids to maximize employability in a non tenure system…If I weren’t fireable, I’d do what I thought best for my young charges, screw admin.

[Author]

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