Ewin Chemerinsky, Dean of the School of Law at the University of California in Irvine, wrote this compelling article about the Vergara decision and teachers’ due process rights.
He writes, in part:
American public education desperately needs to be improved, especially for the most disadvantaged children. But eliminating teachers’ job security and due-process rights is not going to attract better educators — or do much to improve school quality.
In recent months, several respected progressive scholars and politicians have endorsed litigation, like a successful case in California, to weaken the protections afforded public school teachers. Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown is spearheading a suit in New York. Their goals are laudable, but their means are misguided.
The problem of inner-city schools is not that the dedicated teachers who work in them have too many rights, but that the students who go to them are disadvantaged in many ways, the schools have inadequate resources and the schools are surrounded by communities that are dangerous, lack essential services and are largely segregated both by race and class.
Taking the modest job security accorded by tenure away from teachers will address none of these problems.
The causal relationship alleged by the plaintiffs in these lawsuits — that teachers’ rights cause minority students to receive substandard educations — is belied by readily available empirical evidence.
If the plaintiffs were correct, similarly situated students in states with weak protection of teachers — such as Texas, Alabama and Mississippi — would have higher levels of achievement and the racial achievement gap would be smaller in those states. But there is no evidence that minority students in Houston, Birmingham or Jackson outperform those in Los Angeles or New York.
He adds:
One of the biggest challenges in education today is teacher retention. In the District of Columbia, 80% of teachers leave within five years. Getting rid of tenure and due process will not encourage more teachers to stay in the profession. It will drive them out and discourage other qualified people from entering the profession in the first place.
The plaintiffs who are bringing these lawsuits have misappropriated the soaring rhetoric and fundamental principles of the civil rights movement. Civil rights lawyers have worked for decades to end racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods and equalize school funding.
Cloaking the attack on teachers’ rights in the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is misleading. Lessening the legal protections for teachers will not advance civil rights or improve education.
The ultimate goal of all reform is to get rid of the unions, get rid of the teachers, hence these lawsuits and witch hunts all across the USA. See what Newark, NJ’s Cami Anderson is doing here: http://bobbraunsledger.com/a-victory-in-christies-war-on-teachers-but-how-big/
See in Diane’s recent post what is happening in Massachusetts, making it harder to get a teaching license, and taking licenses away, hand in hand with TNTP and a think tank.
While I’m for every writing that rationally discusses the rights and wrongs of reform, each and every writing should expose the bottom line truth. We can argue back and forth, we can spout theories and ideas and alternatives. The bottom line, though, is the reformer tactics are smoke and mirrors and don’t really get to the heart of their agenda: to wipe out teachers, unions, the middle class. The jobs of teachers WILL be filled by the reform-quaified. Isn’t it amazing the hoops one must go through to become a traditionally trained teacher, but the TFAs are just handed the jobs while the traditionally trained teachers are turned away? The reformers now have an agenda to better train the traditionally trained teachers—-and is that way through TNTP AND TFA—which is hypocrisy at its best? How dare they.
This is a war. They created parent trigger laws, they bend the laws to bring in TFA, they buy elections, they anoint superintendents from the bullshit Broad “academy” – and even when they get in trouble, and get fired, even shamed, they end up on their feet, with an even better paying job in one of the reformer-backer-friendly corporations or foundations or for-profit non-profits. It has to be exposed, all of it, in every single article. Merely stating an opinion on one issue isn’t enough, because the bottom line needs to always be exposed.
Ewin Chemerinsky… heartfelt thanks for sharing your words of wisdom!
Normandy, in Missouri…the school from which, Michael Brown, shot to death by a policeman in August graduated….had a report by excellent writer Dale Singer on the public radio site……..(Missouri is voting on a tenure restriction bill, abandoned by the billionaire who put it on the ballot….maybe because it has a better chance of passing that way.)…..in Singer’s report, the state created board, is stumbling around trying to decide whether to ask their creators….the state board….to remove licenses to teach from some of the Normandy teachers….they can do that? the entire article, about a teacher named Pat for the purposes of not divulging his/her gender….is worth reading…..hard to believe, but not impossible….our citizens seem to care, but the weak press and politicians in Missouri leave them, in the words of Pat, “at a loss about what to do.”
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/normandy-teacher-dese-we-need-more-help#disqus_thread
my favoroite part was where the Normandy state boss guy claimed…..I was not really shocked at what the people were saying at the meeting……I just wanted to look like I was.
Diane…..please feature this story about Pat….you could do so much better at describing it than I have…..
Chermerinsky is a graduate of the Chicago Lab Schools from a blue collar background (East Chicago). He may have been one of Arne’s friends in high school, but I’am not sure.
The forces pushing the attack on public education and its teachers of course already know this. Their attitude is “Profession? What Profession? We don’t need no stinkin’ profession!”
But I suppose it helps to keep informing people who haven’t already figured this out for themselves.
I love how wacky the Democratic position is on labor unions. This is from the US DOL yesterday, on how to reduce income inequality:
“Promote worker voice. Membership in a labor union is one way to do that. Throughout history, there has been a direct connection between the health of the middle class and the vitality of the labor movement. But there are other innovative models for empowering workers, like Germany’s works councils and the leadership of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.”
The support theoretical “worker voice” in the Obama Administration, like the labor councils that they have in Germany! What they DON’T support are actual, existing labor unions in the US, ya know, with members who sometimes actually USE their “worker voice”.
They support labor unions IN THEORY and also “worker voice” as long as the workers don’t say anything 🙂
Just to note that Progressive magazine is preparing a complete upcoming issue dedicated to exposing sham reforms like ending teacher tenure, and on their Public School Shakedown website they have a fine reply by Mark Naison today to Time Magazine’s cover story bashing teachers.
http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org/a-reality-check-for-time-magazine
Here’s what happened in my state when some teacher-whistle blowers challenged ed reformers in state government:
“At the State Board of Education meeting this week, four former teachers from the Horizon Science Academy Dayton High School testified about years of questionable practices and behavior, some of which had been previously reported and ignored by the Ohio Department of Education.
In an action that can only be described as retribution for the embarrassment that these educators have caused for the Ohio Department of Education for the agency being exposed for ignoring the serious claims of cheating, the four teachers now find themselves being referred by the department for investigation of a violation of state laws. The Ohio Department of Education is now threatening these “whistleblowers” with the suspension and/or revocation of their teaching licenses.”
Now I don’t know if the teachers are telling the truth, but I suspect we won’t see any complaints about charter schools for a while! I bet they’re feeling very “empowered” right about now, those teachers. That went well for them.
http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/07/18/ohio-department-of-education-threatens-action-against-charter-school-whistleblowers/
This is the genesis of “Threatened Out West”‘s nom de plume.
Outrageous is too puny a word. Maybe they should get in touch with Edward Snowden.
Not completely, Christine. My nom de plume is because my state is threatening the licenses of teachers who even talk to parents about opting out of the state’s standardized, CC tests. I’m not a whistle-blower per se. I don’t know as I’d qualify for the protections, even if there are any. I just tell everyone what I see in my state–you folks, my legislators, anyone who will listen.
But thanks for thinking of me. It actually means a lot!
One of the unique facts in California was that tenure (to use the term given in the letter quoted from in the post) was granted after 18 months of teaching. The focus on this very short time period was that teachers who turned out not to be skilled might be tenured, but it seems to me an equal problem is that teachers who would have turned out to be highly skilled might be fired because they had not matured into the position in such a short time.
A problem that most people overlook in this case is that a longer permanent status track offers no better results than a shorter one. In fact, having a longer one usually means having teachers who are ineffective on the job that much longer. In effect, principals work with those ineffective teachers attempting to get them into shape–even when getting into shape takes three, four, or five years. Perhaps a longer track would be better for the probationary teachers, but the evidence from states that have longer tracks proves it is not so good for the students.
Do you have some research showing the ideal time before tenure should be granted?
Not an ideal time, but 18 months would seem to be too short a time. In higher Ed it is 6 years, and that is after 6 years or so in graduate school. Early to mid 30s, later in the natural sciences.
No, I do not think there is an ideal time (and perhaps that is the problem; perhaps we should look at probationary status differently). I wish there was a Goldilocks effect there for “just right,” but the truth is there are significant weaknesses with 18 months, 3 years, 4 years, or even 6 years; it really all depends on the administrator and the school culture. Like most administrators in all states that have some form of permanent status, I certainly did my best to make the most of my time for every probationary teacher I had (although I do recall two mistakes I made and a longer and/or shorter probationary period might have made them not happen).
On the surface, 18 months sounds too short to laymen and anyone who hasn’t actually had to grant permanent status to a teacher. But CA administrators seem to make it work. Perhaps extending it to 3 years or 30 months would provide others with a feeling of positive change just because it sounds “better” and most of the other states are doing that. However, when we look at the reasons for extending probationary status, “sounding better” and “arguments of popularity” are extremely weak reasons.
Whatever the case, Erwin Chemerinsky is correct: CA dismisses and has just as many ineffective teachers percentagewise (estimated between 5% and 10%) as states that have longer probationary periods and as states that do not have tenure at all. And this comes from Kane’s and Hanushek’s own research.
I would suggest, like Chemerinsky, that we seek our solutions to the problems schools face elsewhere.
TheMorrigan,
While it is easy to see errors in granting tenure (I am again using the term as it is used in the letter), but surely it is much more difficult to see errors dismissing teachers who would have grown into the job. California may have about the same dismissal rate as other states, but do you think the same folks would be dismissed if California had a longer probationary period?
A longer or shorter probationary period will not change much of anything. This is why it is the wrong area to focus on. It is the wrong question to ask. The wrong way to go no matter how the problem is rephrased.
The granting of “tenure” mostly depends on the administrator–not on the length of the probationary period. Having a longer probationary period and a weak administrator or a merry-go-round of administrators every year still allows for incompetent teachers to be granted tenure. A strong administrator will spot good teaching and the potential for good teaching within 6 to 9 months tops (I knew some were high-quality or just okay within a month sometimes). These teachers certainly do not need 5 years to prove themselves and permanent status means nothing to them nor to the administrator who granted it. Extending the probationary status only gives mediocre or les than effective teachers that much more time to improve–it does very little for the kids in the classroom.
We can certainly look at what tenure means or what probationary means and perhaps change some things there, but the granting of tenure and the best window to do it is still the wrong way to go.
In my experience, there were far far fewer teachers granted tenure that shouldn’t have gotten it than there were teacher burn-outs that should be removed form the classroom.
Dismissal after a teacher has received permanent status is certainly an area that needs to be addressed. Developing better observations systems–perhaps like PAR that takes the administrator out of being the only actor in observations might be the key (I do not know because I have never seen it in action; I’ve just read about it).
I do believe all employees wherever deserve due process and state employees who work with the public, like teachers do, should have more due process rights than say a maintenance state employee, for instance, but IMO, it seems due process for teachers in CA can be lengthy and excessive, especially if the administrator is weak on documentation or we have groundhog or revolving door admins. This has nothing to do with the granting of permanent status, though.
Someone wrote on a separate blog that we should look closely at the dismissal process to see where it bogs down. I agree fully and I have my suspicions, but people in general would rather settle for a sounds-good non-fix instead, like when to grant tenure.
Whatever the case, the “granting of tenure” and the best length before granting it has very little to do with a 15 -year veteran or 7-year employee who seems to have lost her drive to teach and should be removed from the classroom. The time frame to grant tenure does not fix these problems and we should all realize that.
TheMorrigan,
Your statement that
“In my experience, there were far far fewer teachers granted tenure that shouldn’t have gotten it than there were teacher burn-outs that should be removed form the classroom.”
is consistent with the experience my children had in K-12 education.
I have read all your comments. It is obvious that
you have no idea what happened in LAUSD,or the corruption that has destroyed the public school system.
Why not go to Perdaily.com, or Hemlockontherocks.com and learn the reality.
it occurs to me that you do know what’s up, but like to hear your own voice.
Susan,
Did my post contain anything that was inaccurate?
Sorry fella, ain’t gonna argue with you… too busy to waste my time.
Susan,
Not asking for an argument, just a clarification. Was there something in my post that you found objectionable?
I just want to point out that the time frame was shortened y the legislature one year to “make up” for not having any money for raises. I’m not sure that the unions even really wanted it. However, it’s been hard for them to give back since we’ve gone so many years without raises.
and this was written in 2006 by a teacher who saw it coming.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
in fact: here is the percent Perdaily: 2006 piece that explains why the Vegara case was all about money
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
“Contrary to what was asserted in 2010 with the Reed vs. State of Californiacase, and now with the Vergara vs. State of California case, cutting the budget by attacking tenured teachers at the top of the salary scale is the real motive of both the plaintiffs and the defendants in these put up cases that are anything but adversarial as actually required by law. The well-being of students and their constitutional right to an education has nothing to do with why teacher tenure and seniority are under attack. Corporate interests have gotten behind these two cases with collusive lawsuits against the State of California and the Los Angeles Unified School District as defendants, when these defendants actually share the plaintiffs desire to destroy a professional and fairly compensated teaching force solely for the motive of profit to more and more hedge fund run charters and the further dumbing down of our future electorate, so the average citizen will not have enough of an education to meaningfully comprehend just how badly they are being screwed.
If “teacher quality and effectiveness” as well as having the best education for students in “high-poverty and high-minority” areas that have not done well in the past was really the issue, insuring an environment of reasonable discipline, while finally eliminating destabilizing social promotion would have been implemented long ago. Most poor and minority students enter LAUSD behind and are never brought up to grade-level in a timely manner, which becomes more impossible as years go by. Inner-city predominantly poor and minority filled schools- LAUSD is 90% Latino and Black- are not just bad for the students, they are toxic for any serious teacher not willing to go along with the complete lack of rigor mindlessly enforced by entrenched LAUSD administration. No secondary single-subject credentialed teacher- whatever their level of seniority- can be expected to teach humiliated students that LAUSD administration continues to put in classes years beyond their objective ability. Clearly this is the recipe for the disaster that LAUSD continues to be, which has nothing to do with teacher seniority.
The reason that schools like Liechty, Gompers, and Markham Middle Schools, mentioned in the Reed case, were so adversely impacted when it came to loss of predominantly novice teaching staff, was because any teacher with enough seniority wouldn’t be caught dead in a school where there was no support for excellence in education that the plaintiffs in the aforementioned cases supposedly so desperately claim they want in their lawsuit. Any teacher who insists on excellence and has the teaching skill to do it has been systematically targeted over the last 5 years, brought up on fabricated charges, and removed or forced into early retirement.
Both Reed and Vergara purposefully ignore the context in which seniority-based reductions take place. No mention is made of excellent teachers being completely undermined in a system that values Average Daily Attendance (ADA) payments from the State more than whether the students are actually learning something of value in a timely manner. The fact that 55% of Roosevelt High School students have quit school before ever reaching the 12th grade and that only 30% of the graduating class has the A-G requirements necessary to get them into the University of California schools says it all, but is conveniently ignored in Vergara.
What is the financial and pedagogic cost of 50% of new teachers quitting LAUSD within their first 5 years of teaching? Why are they quitting? What’s the cost of having to constantly replace that level of attrition to a cash strapped public education system? If the students were really the concern in Reed and Vergara, wouldn’t some of those behind the financing of Reed and Vergara have found more fertile ground in trying to find out why so many initially dedicated teachers leave the profession like they are abandoning a sinking ship. But, alas, one would have to look at those running LAUSD into the ground, instead of scapegoating teachers, while their inept union United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) sits by and does nothing.
And finally, none of this scam would be possible without the complete complicity of the mainstream and public media, who are owned by some of the same players trying to privatize public education with charters. Supposed charitable trusts like Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and the Waltons control subsidized NPR to the point where NPR will report nothing to contradict what Professor Diane Ravitch calls “the dominant narrative of bad teachers and great charters. What is ultimately at stake is allowing 40% of the state supplied public school budget to go for “charter administration costs,” while allowing the further dumbing down of our future citizens. Check out the following very typical stenographic “news” report of Elex Michaelson of KABC that merely parrots Broad Academy party line:
Submitted on Saturday, Oct 25, 2014 at 12:11:45 PM
Every word of your post, Susan, is what I’ve been thinking. Thanks for adding the legal and historical facts. Also, everything you mentioned about social promotion, ADA, and the rest, make the district officials culpable: they’ve set both students and teachers up for this failure. My partisan political loyalties are now being challenged for the first time. I have no choice. But, I’m not alone. Almost every mathematics teacher in my district has commented about the insanity of trying to produce a product (students who are functionally literate in mathematics) when the system is stacked against us.
Being proactive about my situation (age 58, top of the pay scale, and a high school mathematics teacher with low achieving students who get lower each year), I sent Mr. Chemerinsky an email yesterday asking him how I could prepare legally for the coming injustice I might face. He said that Math and English teachers could be held to a different standard compared to teachers who make the same amount of pay, but in low stakes subjects, and compared to teachers who teach cherry picked, i.e., honors and AP students. He also added that while this hypothetical scenario is unfair it doesn’t break the law or violate the Constitution. He said that he did not know how he would protect my rights. Thus, I can be targeted for termination even though no teacher before me has been successful teaching the students I teach. The wolves don’t care that I might be a Republican, or that I might be highly qualified to teach in an area where most college kids say, “no thanks; you do it. I’m going to earn a serious living.”
As a result of this short exchange with him, I am thinking about abandoning math to teach in my major field. Perhaps I should no longer do the state a service by filling in for bona fide college graduates in Mathematics. I’ve done a great job, knowing more about math and math teaching than most of the population, but that won’t save me when and if the grim reaper shows up.
While I was brooding about this last night, I Google searched an old colleague from 30 years ago. He left teaching and learned how to work in management at a well known for-profit post secondary college. He and a few others started up Bridgepoint Education, which eventually got into trouble with Senator Harkin because it received huge amounts of federal dollars in student tuition, but the students mostly flunked out or couldn’t get jobs if they graduated. My former colleague pocketed millions in earnings and stocks. He didn’t labor in the trenches serving people, and, yet, he’s set for life. I, on the other hand, will be eating cat food in retirement if I lose my job as a result of what you and Dr. Ravitch have been describing.
It might not catch me, but I’m not the kind of person who will sit and wait for it. I was disturbed that a highly esteemed legal scholar seemed stumped by this potentially glaring inequity. Frankly, I don’t think the union officials at either the local or regional levels, are too concerned with our welfare, and most likely are trying to figure out what they will do if the Vergara decision sticks. An old joke in the prosecutors’ offices across the country: You haven’t proven yourself unless you convicted and sentenced an innocent man. Yep, I’m thinking those kinds of thoughts.
Thanks to you and Dr. Ravitch for providing extremely helpful information.
The evil ones already know that eliminating teacher continuing contracts and due process rights will not improve education in any way. The evil ones are evil, but they know exactly what they are doing. It is all a part of their big plan to fire older teachers, not allow younger teachers to get ahold of any job security or due process rights in their careers at all, and to create such a toxic environment in the teaching profession that colleges will shut down their teacher education programs completely. This is already happening in my local university 20 minutes away.
It will be at this time that the evil ones can completely take over and decide who really deserves to be educated. Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves. Parents all over the U.S. need to wake up. It is a crisis on the horizon, and it is going to happen.
Parents are the only ones who can stop this and raise havoc.
Teacher tenure in CA is two years. It was three years. He is repeating the
1-3% number of ineffective teachers in CA number which is a guess from Professor Berliner rather than a fact. Unfortunately now it is a “fact.”
TheMorrigan,
Your statement that
“In my experience, there were far far fewer teachers granted tenure that shouldn’t have gotten it than there were teacher burn-outs that should be removed form the classroom.”
is consistent with the experience my children had in K-12 education.
Dang,
Ended up in the wrong place. I will put another copy where it belongs.
teachingeconomist,
so what led to these teachers burning out? I do not disagree that there are burned out teachers…but how do we avoid/prevent this loss of experience, system history and investment of taxpayer resources?
TCliff,
That question is perhaps best addressed to poster TheMorrigan whose post I quote in mine. But if you are interested in my student’s experiences, one teacher was universally referred to as “luny ______”. I suspect she suffered from from a mental illness. Several other teachers were in their last year of teaching, another was “counseled out” of teaching a year too late for my middle child. As a wise former poster said, the problem with poor teachers, especially in high school, is that many students cycle through their classes.
Preventing it is an interesting issue, and not confined to K-12 education. The end of mandatory retirement in post secondary education has resulted in faculty members frequently teaching into their 80s. While some can certainly do that, students would frequently be better served by having other teachers. It is important to remember that schools exist to educate students, not to employ teachers.
Is there something wrong, TE, with a teacher with mental illness teaching, provided that the teacher is being treated? Think very carefully before you answer. Your implication in your first paragraph is that it is wrong to employ teachers who struggle with mental illness. Perhaps you didn’t mean this, but if you did mean it, shame on you.
Threatened,
I have no idea if the teacher was receiving treatment. What I do know is that she would answer the phone in the class and have a conversation when the phone had not rung. What I do know is that if you asked her for an autograph, you could get a hall pass. I have a great deal of sympathy for her as a person, but she should not have been in the classroom.