Breaking News: California Judge Strikes Down Tenure Laws

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1. Donna says:

   June 10, 2014 at 1:47 pm

   This is an attack on older teachers, and a means to weaken collective bargaining and drive down salaries and working conditions. This will not help students, it will hurt them in the long run.

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   • Chiara Duggan says:

     June 10, 2014 at 1:59 pm

     Experience and wages are over-rated.

     This way, you could be up for a bonus, just like people on Wall Street! They’re all super-excellent.

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2. Steve K says:

   June 10, 2014 at 1:56 pm

   Unfortunately, California has now entered the arena that many of us already inhabit. I teach in Michigan and that sounds pretty much like our system. Teachers here can be fired or laid off as long as it is not capricious. An easy standard to meet.

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3. jonathanlovell says:

   June 10, 2014 at 1:59 pm

   I’m afraid this tentative ruling, which will certainly be appealed if enacted, shows just how strongly entrenched the educational reform narrative has become over the past 30+ years. Judges are now more impervious to the siren song of this narrative than are any other members of the body politic. Our challenge is to create and promote an equally compelling counter-narrative.

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4. Ellen Lubic says:

   June 10, 2014 at 1:59 pm

   As I predicted months ago, this will be a case for SCOTUS. It is a major death knell for teachers’ unions.

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   • FLERP! says:

     June 10, 2014 at 3:51 pm

     I’m not sure it will go to SCOTUS. I think the issues are all state law.

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   • Jack says:

     June 10, 2014 at 4:12 pm

     This is about taking the entire occupation of teaching and simply downgrading it.

     Instead of being viewed AS A PROFESSION on a par with doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. … with stringent requirements of education, credentialing, period of apprenticeship, etc… that those professions require, along with the accompanying respect and compensation that goes along with a true profession…

     Teaching will be dragged down into the category of A LOW-PAID SERVICE JOB, alongside the occupations of fast food workers, retail sales / cashiers, office temping, etc. (nothing against those jobs or the people who work at them, by the way). Minimal, if any training, before your hired, followed by short term, low pay, low respect time at the job…. where the workforce will be dumped every couple of years (if not less) for a new cheap group of “teachers”…

     Vergara’s backers claim that it’s about increasing the quality of those teachers in the classroom… when they know that the real goal IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE. As Dr. Ravitch pointed out, can you name one state that has a similar absence of job protections for teachers that also has a high-quality workforce?

     You can’t get rich off the privatization of public schools if you have laws and unions in place that will fight to keep teaching as a profession with decent compensation, and due process when the boss wants to fire you.

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     • Sad Teacher says:

       June 10, 2014 at 8:22 pm

       Jack, You are absolutely RIGHT on the MARK!!! Teaching is in the process of being downgraded. We will see the day that an associate’s degree will be enough education to teach. Salary for a teacher will be capped at about 32,000 dollars maximum. It is in the works now. No one is going to want to teach, so it will be turned over to online and charter schools. I am so thankful and so blessed that I only have 3 more years to teach. Your comments were outstanding, Jack!

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5. Ellen Lubic says:

   June 10, 2014 at 2:01 pm

   addendum…LAUSD Supt. Deasy, the pawn of Eli Broad and Bill Gates, testified for the plaintiffs and against his own school district.

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6. Chiara Duggan says:

   June 10, 2014 at 2:02 pm

   Contractors don’t like labor agreements. Hopefully this clears the way for more privatization!

   God knows we don’t have enough of that in this country, right?

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7. Ellen says:

   June 10, 2014 at 2:21 pm

   I am sick to my stomach.

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   • Spoonbill says:

     June 10, 2014 at 2:43 pm

     Me too. This is so awful.

     Why are they doing this to us? There’s no good in it?

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8. Stuart Goldurs says:

   June 10, 2014 at 2:22 pm

   Stuart Goldurs The attack on public school teachers http://www.examiner.com/…/the-attack-on-public-school…

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9. Ponderosa says:

   June 10, 2014 at 2:25 pm

   Alas now all teachers will feel the constant, cold wind of insecurity that other Americans have to live with. I for one will be practicing radical frugality from now on (this ain’t going to help the economy).

   This comes at the same time that Jerry Brown is proposing to make teachers way more expensive with his pension funding plan. The conjunction of these two events is ominous: veterans become easy to fire precisely at the same time that they become significantly more expensive.

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10. Charlotte Vrooman says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:33 pm

    I feared this was going to happen and it did. I feel sick for and my former colleagues and the students, current and to come. The corporations scored a major victory today, but at least the unions will appeal. Union leadership knows that this decision will ultimately lead to their demise and the demise of unions in this country. If for no other reason, this potential will galvanize the CFT and the CTA.

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    • Detroiter says:

      June 10, 2014 at 8:44 pm

      Union means sticking together, not some corporate legalistic bureaucratic definition. In their greed, they will push us to form “new” unions, and when we do, watch out!

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11. M says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:35 pm

    I don’t really understand the judge’s thought process.

    Let’s see these recent developments in deciding whether to become a teacher:

    A) Evaluation systems that seem to make no sense
    B) Elimination of any job protection that makes likelihood of collecting a full pension unlikely
    C) Overcrowded classrooms with tons of underprepared students who we’re expected to grow according to virtual models of children
    D) The pension-theft that is going on in detroit and illinois such that even if you make it to the end of your career, your pension may still be up for grabs from the state – and seems likely to spread.
    E) An unceasing tide of change and mandates that we’re all supposed to carry out with minimal resources.

    What part of becoming a professional teacher is attractive now? Who would want to go and study education knowing they’re going into a low paid job, that they can be fired from at any time for any reason, that they will need to likely go into debt to study, and that if they can brave 30 years of the onslaught of reform, you still might not have a pension at the end of it.

    If this ruling is held and spreads, it’s going to be open season on seasoned teachers, and we will have successfully deunionized and deprofessionalized teaching. Who is going to replace all these teachers with the coming waves of retirees? Even TFA can’t produce enough bodies – much less well trained ones.

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    • Steve K says:

      June 10, 2014 at 2:57 pm

      M, I’ve been making this argument for years. Maybe they can create a problem-solving question for CCSS:

      Fran goes to college and runs up $80,000 in loans. Upon graduation, Fran has the following options for a career:

      A. Be a math teacher for $27K
      B. Be an accountant for $35K
      C. Be an engineer for $50K

      None of the above job positions have a pension or job security. Weight the advantages of each career and consider the opportunity for promotions and pay raises. Then explain Fran’s best choice.

      The future of teaching is this: last resort position as a temporary placeholder. The constant turnover will be great for legacy costs but bad for education. But those charter school CEOs will cash in big-time! Big chains will push out local independent schools and soon it will be a franchise market for profiteering. Just not for you lowly teacher. You’re not only cheap but also expendable.

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      • Bob Shepherd says:

        June 10, 2014 at 2:59 pm

        tunrover is already enormous. it’s been rising.

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12. Ponderosa says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    M –unless the economy strengthens a lot, there will be plenty of college grads who will take these degraded teaching jobs. We still have plenty of college grads working at Starbucks.

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    • Ellen says:

      June 10, 2014 at 2:43 pm

      As far as entry level wages, most Starbucks are better than entry level teaching positions, at least in my state.

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13. DeeDee says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:41 pm

    Teacher turnover is already as high as ever. Now, more teachers will be running out the doors. It’s hilarious that someone actually believes that this will make an ounce of difference in poor urban schools. I would think fewer teachers would want to work in difficult to teach areas. The tragedy is that it takes away more responsibility from students and parents.

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    • Michael Fiorillo says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:08 pm

      The people behind this affront know perfectly well that it will not help students, and couldn’t care less.

      This is about reducing teachers to the same powerless, insecure and at-will status as the overwhelming majority of other US workers.

      It’s class warfare: straight, no chaser…

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14. Not Gates says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:47 pm

    shocking that the collective readership is against this one, just shocking. i guess you all want to be the only ones determining which reforms are good for the brown and the poor; for you truly know and do what’s best for ‘them’.

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    • LG says:

      June 10, 2014 at 5:33 pm

      Removing dedicated staff members from a community because they are “too experienced” to be paid is not good for any color of person, whether purple, green, or blue.

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15. Chiara Duggan says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:52 pm

    Meanwhile:

    “The slow economic recovery is taking a toll on the nation’s public schools, reversing a multi-decade trend of increased funding and pushing student-teacher ratios to their highest levels since 2000.

    U.S. schools actually weathered the recession itself relatively well. State funding, which accounts for about 45 percent of school revenues on average, fell sharply during the downturn, while local spending, which accounts for roughly another 45 percent, mostly from property taxes, was essentially flat. But federal stimulus dollars helped plug the gap, offsetting the worst of the state-level cuts. Both per-student spending and student-teacher ratios improved modestly during the recession.

    Once the recession ended, however, so did the stimulus — long before state and local governments were ready to pick up the slack. Federal per-student spending fell more than 20 percent from 2010 to 2012, and it has continued to fall. State and local funding per student were essentially flat in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.”

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/public-schools-are-hurting-more-in-the-recovery-than-in-the-recession/

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16. Bob Shepherd says:

    June 10, 2014 at 2:58 pm

    What an outrage!!!

    It seems that the oligarchy will not be satisfied until its members have absolute power, in their sole discretion, to make whatever decisions they wish to make regarding the lives of others.

    Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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17. John Minnis says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:01 pm

    I’m guessing there will be plenty of people ready to take jobs that veteran teachers vacate, but they won’t be high quality, enthusiastic, intelligent, caring teachers. This is so sad.

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18. leonardisenberg says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:04 pm

    A “win” implies that there was ever a chance that this collusive lawsuit could have gone the other way. Both the earlier Reed case and Vergara make the unchallenged assumption that novice teachers are better than seasoned professionals- this key issue was never challenged, because of the collusive nature of the lawsuit and the shared interests of both the plaintiff and defendant to get rid of more expensive teachers at any costs, which will be quickly recuperated when nothing but Teach for America novice teacher types remain.

    If you analogize this finding to Citizens’ United in campaign financing, which found money equaled 1st Amendment free speech, one should clearly see that Vergara has made the war on older more expensive teachers much easier.

    One can only hope that teachers and their unions and the academics that support them will finally realize where this is going and intervene judicially.

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    • FLERP! says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:16 pm

      “Both the earlier Reed case and Vergara make the unchallenged assumption that novice teachers are better than seasoned professionals- this key issue was never challenged”

      I don’t think that’s true. I think it was challenged — there was expert testimony on this point.

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19. FLERP! says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:04 pm

    Click to access Tenative-Decision.pdf

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20. Sad Teacher says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    No one in their right mind will enter the profession of teaching. Who would want to pay 100,000 dollars for a bachelor’s degree, enter a new job with a salary of 33,000 dollars, and have no job security when your favorite principal moves on and is replaced by a vindictive person who does not know you at all? Who wants to never be paid for their overtime and have to constantly buy student supplies out of their own money? Who wants to give a great service, but it is not deemed a great service until someone else performs at a certain level on a test? And, who wants to be viewed as a “bug” who needs to be stepped on – because your profession has absolutely no respect at all? Yes, you would have to be CRAZY to be working on a bachelor’s degree in Education in 2014. This is EXACTLY WHAT THE BILLIONAIRE BOYS’ CLUB WANTS TO HAPPEN!!! When you have no one going into the profession, the system will be so much easier to take over!!!
    The new teacher-principal evaluation system promotes a master/slave relationship between the evaluator and the teacher. Good, fair principals will treat their teachers with respect. But, watch out when you get an unfair evaluator. Good teachers will turn into poor teachers overnight. Also, without continuing contracts, teachers will not be able to reach retirement. To save money, older teachers will be let go at @ their 22nd or 23th year of teaching when they have become too expensive. Also, with the 50% of a teacher’s evaluation being test scores, students will be presorted by administration – so that the older teachers will get the poorer students. It is all a big mess. I am so grateful to be almost to retirement. I dearly love my students, and I LOVE to teach (I spend a lot of my own money), but it just isn’t enough anymore. I have already started to work on my associate’s degree, and I will finally be paid overtime when I work overtime someday. I will also perform a good service which is not dependent on how someone does on a single test.
    All teachers need to wake up and begin to fight. Quit shopping at Walmart. Talk to your union to see if you can help in any way. Yes, I know there are bad teachers out there, but throwing the baby out with the bath water is not the answer. Sadly, this new teacher evaluation system will not get the bad teachers. It will eliminate the older, more experienced teachers who have become too expensive for the district. Public education and public school teachers are in their last days as we know it. Can anything be done? Only time will tell. It’s sad, but it’s very true.

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    • Adam says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:33 pm

      Well said, I’m in total agreement!

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21. Threatened out West says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    I am horrified. As teachers, being older or having a higher education will be in danger. And forget anyone who, like me, cannot or will not be silent about the attacks on our profession is in danger too.

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22. FLERP! says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:07 pm

    This is, in part, the revenge of the school financing cases.

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    • Stiles says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:22 pm

      I see the judge used the adequacy rationale in the decision, but I’m not aware of anything in the adequacy in school finance literature that touches on due process in any depth. I have never seen a situation with competent school leadership where an ineffective teacher stayed after not progressing under a professional improvement plan. The problem to me is not due process protections for ineffective teachers, but ineffective school leaders who cannot work within the improvement plan process and due process. This often goes beyond the principal to involve the quality of training and support principals receive from their central office.

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      • FLERP! says:

        June 10, 2014 at 3:39 pm

        What I mean is that the state school finance cases paved the way for this kind of case. Most important, they established the principle that education was a fundamental, constitutional right. That allows students or their guardians to challenge laws on equal protection grounds and trigger strict scrutiny, which not only flips the burden of proof onto the state but makes that burden extremely high. Also, in the school finance cases that I’m familiar with, one of the key points that plaintiffs’ cases relied on was the idea that teacher quality had a real impact on the quality of education that students received. (The point being that districts with less funding had lower teacher salaries, which resulted in lower quality teachers, which resulted in lower quality education, which was unconstitutional.) In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, the plaintiffs tried to prove (and succeeded in proving) this point with expert statistical analysis.

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      • FLERP! says:

        June 10, 2014 at 4:13 pm

        Separately, my personal reaction to some parts of this decision reminds me a lot of my reactions to the CFE decisions. Basically, it’s the feeling that the evidentiary questions raised by cases like this — such as, does the state’s decision to award permanent status to teachers after two years, rather than some shorter or longer period, have a “real and appreciable impact” on students’ “fundamental right to education”? — are not the kind of questions that we should be asking courts to resolve.

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      • Ellen says:

        June 10, 2014 at 5:56 pm

        The problem is that teachers are not awarded permanent status. They are awarded the right to due process. They can absolutely still be terminated if the admin can show just cause. Prior to “tenure” all teachers can be fired at will with no explanation or reason given.

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23. Marian Higgins says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    Posters are focused rightly on the impact this decision will have on public education. But as M pointed out, the ruling makes no sense. And there is nothing unconstitutional about a worker contract containing due process for dismissal. The billionaires are making a complete mess of not just education, but our judicial system. This, on top of Citizens United at the federal level, is very scary stuff.

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24. Linda says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:16 pm

    The judge, Rolf Treu, was appointed by Republican Governor, Pete Wilson.

    Unions, are the firewall, between the oligarchy and the 99%. Don’t vote Republican and don’t let your friends vote Republican.

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    • patrickwalsh says:

      June 10, 2014 at 4:29 pm

      The horrific truth, Linda, is at this point the Democrats are just as bad and possibly worse. Cast a cold eye on Obama, Cuomo or R. Emmanual. They are all insidious union busters.

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      • Linda says:

        June 10, 2014 at 5:08 pm

        No.
        All I have to do is look at the members, by party affiliation, of ALEC.
        All I have to do is look at judicial decisions, by partisan appointment.
        All I have to do is look at the most egregious politicians, when it comes to minority and women’s rights.
        Republicans are synonymous with oligarchy. A few Democrats are DINO’s.

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      • schoolgal says:

        June 10, 2014 at 5:17 pm

        Emmanuel and the governor of Illinois already cut pensions. And NYC’s own teachers’ union made sure to weaken due process rights for those who are in excess, ATRs.

        You know the Democrats will be on this bandwagon. And I bet deBlasio will go along for this ride as well. I will never vote Democrat again and I don’t care if my vote is “wasted”. I have had enough!!

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25. Joe Nashville says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:16 pm

    I find it troublesome that the root of this issue seems to concern a misrepresentation of what tenure actually is at the K-12 level (protection against capricious and arbitrary dismissal, right to due process). The idea that a tenured teacher cannot be dismissed or that it is “practically impossible” to dismiss one with tenure is based on disinformation.

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    • Stiles says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:23 pm

      I completely agree.

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26. Mark Collins says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    A real sad day. Money and time expended and wasted on appeals. People used as pawns. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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27. Adam says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    I’ve taught for 18 years in a Southern California high school-we have our share of poor teachers, in fact, it seems at times that the decent teachers are the minority. Getting rid of these losers would benefit everyone, but the problem always is, how do you cut out the cancer without damaging the healthy tissue? Most of the administrators are easily as incompetent as the worst teachers-the insidious ways they use their power to make teachers’ lives miserable is bad enough now-making it easier for them to fire otherwise excellent teachers (with whom they usually have any number of issues) will end in a nightmare for public education as we know it. I don’t know the answer, but a knee-jerk law inspired by a yet another billionaire-with-an-agenda from Silicon Valley ain’t it.

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28. Da Coach says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    This is going to be the new normal, so we need to adjust. There is no question that there are teachers like those the Vergara sisters describe; I’ve seen them first-hand and they needed to go, but were protected by tenure.

    However, I disagree with the Judge’s assumption that schools in poor communities have a disproportionate number of such teachers. If anything, they attract the best teachers, those who want to have an impact.That, at least, is what I have seen where I taught, an inner-city high school where English was the second language for most students.

    The most troubleome issue I see ahead is the evaluation of teacher effectiveness. Test scores tell us nothing, so how can student progress be measured in a timely and useful fashion? The solution needs to come from the bottom up, not top down. Teachers, not corporations, need to come up with an effective plan.

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    • dianeravitch says:

      June 10, 2014 at 4:55 pm

      My understanding is that the teachers who were named at the trial had no negative evaluations, no disciplinary record. At least one of the three did not have tenure or seniority.

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29. Lindy says:

    June 10, 2014 at 3:32 pm

    Anyone have a link to the decision?

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    • FLERP! says:

      June 10, 2014 at 3:40 pm

      see above

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30. Mark David Hamilton says:

    June 10, 2014 at 4:12 pm

    Hahaha !! I will turn 61 this summer… I guess now I can start “shopping” for a sturdy (hopefully, double-walled) refrigerator box (I already have a scenic freeway overpass picked out to set up under) for when they tell me to hit the bricks !!!

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31. patrickwalsh says:

    June 10, 2014 at 4:23 pm

    This is an act of barbaric civic violence against the working people of this deranged country. Sooner or later, when people come to fully understand that the overlords running their lives could not care less if they or their children lived or if they died, it will result in barbaric physical violence.

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    • itsame says:

      June 11, 2014 at 2:26 pm

      Sincerely,

      patrickwalsh, tenured teacher

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32. schoolgal says:

    June 10, 2014 at 5:13 pm

    This is going to open a floodgate against academic freedom. Many on the NYTimes are already hailing this decision because they think it means job protection for life, and that’s exactly how this judge sees it. Deep pockets and political influence at work here, and I doubt this judge is immune.

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33. Tim says:

    June 10, 2014 at 5:13 pm

    The complete absence of employee tenure is an essential facet of the lovely Dewey schools we want all children to attend–Dalton, Sidwell Friends, Harvard-Westlake, etc. Something to consider, if not a silver lining to this decision.

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    • Ponderosa says:

      June 10, 2014 at 5:34 pm

      Yes, I once had a roommate who worked at Friends Seminary in NYC, another elite private school. I marveled at how many extracurricular jobs he “volunteered” (read: had) to do. I was so grateful to have a contract that limited the amount of work the school could heap on me. I still “broke” the contract by planning lessons and grading papers at home every night, but at least I could focus on my primary job: teaching. He had to coach, chaperone trips, serve on committees, etc. on top of his substantial teaching duties. For less pay.

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      • Ponderosa says:

        June 10, 2014 at 5:39 pm

        I should have mentioned that I was working at a PUBLIC school in NJ at the time.

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      • LG says:

        June 10, 2014 at 5:43 pm

        I’m sure the clientele at his elite school were SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO TEACH than the plethora of cooperative geniuses that line the halls of NJ public schools. Why, public school students present ZERO challenges while the elite schools have SOOOO many issues with the students they are forced to take. Oh, wait…

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34. Ken Watanabe says:

    June 10, 2014 at 5:35 pm

    Very disappointing. Corporate lobbyists and media using innocent students as pawn to antagonize teachers and their supporters are utterly disgusting.

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35. Puget Sound Parent says:

    June 10, 2014 at 6:03 pm

    This judge, Rolf Treu, has a well established reputation as a mean-spirited, highly conservative, right-wing, elitist, biased, jurist. Which is why they probably wanted to be in front of him for this ersatz “trial”.

    You can leave your opinion on Judge Rolf Treu and his abysmal decision here:
    http://www.therobingroom.com/california/JudgeDetail.aspx?id=2886&ratingid=27391

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    • Ponderosa says:

      June 10, 2014 at 6:06 pm

      Thanks for this info. This gives me some home that the appeals court will overturn the ruling (though I have little hope that the final arbiter, the Supreme Court, will favor the unions).

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      • Ponderosa says:

        June 10, 2014 at 6:07 pm

        “hope” not “home”

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36. Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

    June 10, 2014 at 8:36 pm

    Wonder who paid him off?

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37. Marian Cruz says:

    June 11, 2014 at 1:17 am

    If this doesn’t get teachers out in them in the streets, nothing will.

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38. dcmontreal says:

    June 11, 2014 at 11:21 am

    Without job security teachers will constantly be looking over their shoulders for better conditions at other schools. This is hardly conducive to a healthy teaching environment.

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39. Ostap says:

    June 11, 2014 at 3:45 pm

    Maybe you should actually read the decision before you criticize it. The judge in no way implies that he favors “no due process rights for teachers.” He merely opposes providing teachers due process rights wildly in excess of the rights afforded to employees other than teachers.

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    • dianeravitch says:

      June 11, 2014 at 5:24 pm

      Ostap: I read the decision. I have read many decisions, and this is one of the most evidence-free, illogical decisions that I have ever read.

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      • Led says:

        June 12, 2014 at 5:46 pm

        Maybe that’s right, in which case it would be nice to see your analysis – at least in outline. Because he didn’t at all say that all due process runs afoul of the state constitution. He didn’t even come close to saying that.

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40. Amy Herren says:

    June 12, 2014 at 10:46 pm

    This is frightening:
    http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/judge_strikes_down_california_s_teacher_tenure_laws_a_made_up_statistic.html

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    • LG says:

      June 13, 2014 at 9:25 am

      You would think that Berliner would have been a bit smarter when giving his testimony. I have read many of his studies, and he knows enough that making a conclusion with so little explanation skews the validity of such conclusion.

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