Here are two accounts of the decision in the Vergara trial. This one appears in politico.com. This one appears in the New York Times.
The plaintiffs argued that poor and minority children suffered because they had ineffective teachers who could not be fired. Lawyers for the teachers unions maintained that the causes of low performance were poverty and inadequate school funding. The plaintiffs prevailed and promised to take their cause to other states with strong teacher job protections, like New Jersey and New York.
There will be appeals, and the battle will spread to other states. As due process is removed, it seems to be replaced by evaluations of “effectiveness” based on test scores.
The long-range question is whether the “reformers'” efforts to remove all job protections from teachers will affect the number of people who choose teaching as a career and how they will affect the nature of the profession over time.
Here is the NEA statement on the case:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 10, 2014
CONTACT: Staci Maiers, NEA Communications
(202) 270-5333 cell, smaiers@nea.org
NEA PRESIDENT: CALIFORNIA RULING ALLOWS CORPORATE INTERESTS TO TRUMP STUDENTS’ NEEDS
***Deeply flawed verdict goes against research proven to enhance teacher effectiveness***
WASHINGTON— A California Superior Court judge today sided with Silicon Valley multimillionaire David Welch and his ultra-rich cronies in the meritless lawsuit of Vergara v. State of California. The lawsuit was brought by deep-pocketed corporate special interests intent on driving a corporate agenda geared toward privatizing public education and attacking educators.
NEA’s affiliate, the California Teachers Association, and the California Federation of Teachers intervened in the case to ensure schools can continue to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms and to give voice to systems that research and experience show are key factors in effective teaching.
The following statement can be attributed to NEA President Dennis Van Roekel:
“Just like the meritless lawsuit of Vergara v. State of California, the ruling by Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu is deeply flawed. Today’s ruling would make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms and ignores all research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching. The National Education Association supports the California Teachers Association in its appeal of today’s decision.
“Let’s be clear: This lawsuit was never about helping students, but is yet another attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their own ideological agenda on public schools and students while working to privatize public education. Research shows experience enhances teacher effectiveness and increases student productivity at all grade levels, and that ultimately contributes to better outcomes for students. Yet, today’s ruling hurts students and serves only to undermine the ability of school districts to recruit and retain high quality teachers.
“NEA will continue to stand up for students and focus on the ingredients that are proven to help students the most—like supporting new teachers, providing ongoing training, paying teachers a decent salary, and developing reliable evaluation systems to measure teacher effectiveness.”
Here is the statement by AFT on the Case:
“WASHINGTON – Statement from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on today’s Vergara v. California decision.
“Today, as the Vergara decision was rendered, thousands of California classrooms were brimming with teachers teaching and students learning. They see themselves as a team, but sadly, this case now stoops to pitting students against their teachers. The other side wanted a headline that reads: “Students win, teachers lose.” This is a sad day for public education.
“While this decision is not unexpected, the rhetoric and lack of a thorough, reasoned opinion is disturbing. For example, the judge believes that due process is essential, but his objection boils down to his feeling that two years is not long enough for probation. He argues, as we do, that no one should tolerate bad teachers in the classroom. He is right on that. But in focusing on these teachers who make up a fraction of the workforce, he strips the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job of any right to a voice. In focusing on who should be laid off in times of budget crises, he omits the larger problem at play: full and fair funding of our schools so all kids have access to the classes—like music, art and physical education—and opportunities they need.
“It’s surprising that the court, which used its bully pulpit when it came to criticizing teacher protections, did not spend one second discussing funding inequities, school segregation, high poverty or any other out-of-school or in-school factors that are proven to affect student achievement and our children. We must lift up solutions that speak to these factors—solutions like wraparound services, early childhood education and project-based learning.
“Sadly, there is nothing in this opinion that suggests a thoughtful analysis of how these statutes should work. There is very little that lays groundwork for a path forward. Other states have determined better ways—ways that don’t pit teachers against students, but lift up entire communities. Every child is entitled to a high-quality education regardless of his or her ZIP code. And no parent should have to rely on a lottery system to get his or her child into a good school.
“This will not be the last word. As this case makes it through an appeal, we will continue to do what we’ve done in state after state. We will continue to work with parents and communities to fight for safe and welcoming neighborhood public schools that value both kids and the women and men who work with them. No wealthy benefactor with an extreme agenda will detour us from our path to reclaim the promise of public education.”
Thanks Diane for getting this out to us so fast.
This is a tragic decision and will impact not only teachers and students, but the whole union movement in the US. The goal of the billionaires and ALEC is to finish off American unions once and for all. This is the beginning of the end as they see it.
Ted Olson does not sign on for simple cases…and this one will reach SCOTUS.
“No wealthy benefactor with an extreme agenda will detour us from our path to reclaim the promise of public education.”
Maybe they won this battle but not the war. If this is allowed to stand it will put a chill on every teacher or would be teacher who wants to enter education. Corporate raiders and people who want to make money on education should never dictate educational policy. This was never about the students, who were again used as pawns in deformers program to destroy public education. Allowing students and other uninformed participants to direct educational policy will destroy public education, just like the deformers would like. Think about this, after all the money and profits have been sucked out of the education dollar, do you still think these people will be interested in your child’s educational needs. This poor decision will be appealed and hopefully, more rational minds will prevail.
Important point you raise Paula. Who will want to be educators with no due process, low salaries, and all the general debilitating behaviors of some parents, students, and administrators?
These Vergara plaintiffs may encourage an endless stream of pseudo plaintiffs to press frivolous lawsuits when they see that there may be cash rewards for doing so. This opens up a can of worms for every state in the Union. Let the litigation begin!
Meanwhile we get bashed with the additional angst from those who say we should follow Finnish education processes. The Finns of course have teachers with lifetime tenure, good salaries, respect, and every teacher is a union member. Their citizenry does not have the excess of billionaires in their midst who worship at the false idol of the free market. Their votes count and they have a real say in elections, unlike We the People and our overlords Broad/Murdoch/Gates/Walton/Bloomberg/etc. who manipulate our country and our politics, education, health care, etc.
Aren’t we lucky as Americans to have our system of oligarchic government? Coming attractions…Dems and Repubs goose stepping, arm in arm, down the DC Mall.
An additional irony is that though the oligarchs call it the free market, it is anything but and bears no resemblance to the free market they fantasize and drool over. Free Market = Cronyism to the oligarchy, freedom from any and all rules,other than personal / political power and the influence of money.
Jon Lubar: or as I have put it at other times on this blog—
“Unfettered greed with answer every need.”
And the sad and frightening part? Free-market fundamentalists believe it. Wholeheartedly. Without Reservation. Blindly.
Rheeally!
And really!
Thank you for your comments.
😎
K-12 teachers in this country don’t have “tenure.” That is why this decision is so stupid and so wrongheaded. “Tenure” means a lifetime job for all intents and purposes. The whole case is based on a faulty premise. Teachers don’t have tenure and never had that, as tens of thousands of them who have been fired or forced out can tell you.
One of the most significant factors which is never addressed is keeping teachers at low performing schools. New teachers constantly come and go because the job is too hard and there is rarely any support. This verdict will only make things worse. By the way, these billionaires do indeed care about the education of poor minority students. They are future generations of slave labor and prison inmates!
Correction of my comment above: should read “unfettered greed will answer every need.”
susannunes: you don’t need a correction. You point once again to the use and misuse of language by the leaders and enablers of the self-styled “new civil rights movement of our time.” Tenure ≠ due process.
It always bears repeating.
Thank you.
😎
“…Important point you raise Paula. Who will want to be educators with no due process, low salaries, and all the general debilitating behaviors of some parents, students, and administrators?”
Teach For America.
That’s what (not “who”) the reformers want. Young. Intelligent. Read the script. Make sure they fill in the bubbles. Leave after 2 years. Replaced by more of the same.
They’re not concerned with attracting the best and brightest who are interested in teaching as a career. They want cheap labor who will do as they are told.
No sarcasm, either. The way it is.
Weingarten’s statement is excellent – the coming months, and reformer positions on a whole host of issues with demonstrable impact on low-income students, will elucidate the agendas in this case more clearly. I’m hoping to get a piece out on this topic soon and will pass it along when I do.
This is extremely depressing. The idea posed that every child should have a great teacher, and yes, that’s wonderful but not every teacher is perceived by every child in the same manner. For some children one teacher is great, for another average, and maybe for another poor…but poor can be caused by other issues than by test scores as it was for me when I was in 4th grade. I was still sucking two fingers when I was tired in 4th grade, and my teacher told the rest of my classmates that the only reason they could get up out of their seat was to tell me to stop sucking my fingers. it was humiliating and in part I had few friends because of it. It was a very unfriendly thing to do to a child and something I never have forgotten, so that when I became a teacher I knew I would never treat a child in this manner.
Then let’s address the subject of poverty…there are some children who have had very little stimulation via conversations, vacations, books read to them, etc before they come to school. These children have major difficulties compared to the children who have had these things, or even the wealthier children who by Kindergarten have already traveled to Europe. Great teachers for all kids maybe…but you will learn something from everyone, great or average, even poor. The nails are being laid on the coffin which was once a great education system.
LAUSD’S TREACHEROUS ROAD FROM REED TO VERGARA- IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT STUDENTS, JUST MONEY
Contrary to what was asserted in 2010 with the Reed vs. State of California case, 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 senior-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 50% 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. Suppose 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 charter. What is 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: http://www.perdaily.com
Thank you for having the courage to say all of this, especially in this forum. I hope the issues you raise become the focus of this debate.
Thanks Lenny for this excellent exposition. Let’s get together soon and see how we can foster a united plan of action.
Although the focus here is teacher tenure, and the loss of the well trained senior teachers (to cut the budget, and to temper teacher blowback), the issue of unions and the long range planning of the oligarchs must be kept on the front burner.
And yes, the news media is worthless for any kind of in depth and accurate reporting. Your assessments are the opposite. PerDaily is a blog site I rely on.
Thank you, Leonard. You are one of the few around here who has actually faced this garbage. I was faced with it in another state six years ago, and I have NEVER been able to resume a career again. I did nothing wrong but stand in the way of narcissistic nitwit who calls herself a principal.
Well said, Lenny.
The Vergara decision is the exact same ” You’re welcome.” to teachers that Vietnam vets got from most all of America when they returned home from that war. It’s that hideously wrong.
It won’t be too long before we’re spit upon, literally. It’s already happening metaphorically.
The “great” teachers are those who want to teach old school basics. Math that is basic not conceptual. English that enables truth to be communicated in understandable language. Literature that is rich and unabridged. History that is factual and enables future generation to not repeat past errors. Curriculum that does not try to change VALUES and BELIEFS. Stand with those teachers . They are in the trenches.
Thank you so much for saying this.
Well said, polly.
Well said, Polly.
So what say you Ravtichites to these lines from the court’s decision? Should we look forward to attacks on Rolf Treu and where he sends his kids to school?
“Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of grossly ineffective teachers on students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience…There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms…The number of grossly ineffective teachers has a direct, real, appreciable, and negative impact on a significant number of California students, now and well into the future for as long as said teachers hold their positions.”
“This Court…finds that based on…the evidence presented at trial, Plaintiffs have proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the challenged statutes impose a real and appreciable impact on students’ fundamental right to equality of education and that they impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.”
I would ask how is it that some California districts are able to remove ineffective teachers after due process operating under the same statute.
These statutes are not the root cause and if anything the result today will exacerbate the problem if it is not overturned on appeal.
I think you make a very important point. I hope the decision will focus our attention on what exactly happens in districts throughout the state.
I’m particularly bothered by his insinuation that there are “a significant number” of “failed” teachers.
It’s difficult to tell what the universe of evidence was because the L.A. Superior Court electronic docket is a piece of garbage and the court didn’t bother to include citations to the record in its decision. But it appears the language you quoted refers to admissions by the state’s expert witnesses that there are several thousand “grossly ineffective” teachers in California.
The judge is not just making this stuff up or expressing his opinion. He’s weighing the evidence that was presented in the trial by both sides. He may be doing a bad job of it, but it’s important to understand that this decision isn’t a John Stossel column.
I see people posting about stuff they have no firsthand knowledge of. I do. It is easy to remove teachers–it is done every single day.
The problem with a decision like this is it makes a bad situation with administrators worse. They have NO accountability as it is now when they ruin teachers for sport.
Teachers are forced out all the time-FEW BOTHER WITH THE ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS. This is fact. They generally are forced into taking resignations in lieu of dismissals.
Don’t ever post about this issue, people, if you haven’t been faced with this. You are literally talking out of your backside, just like the plaintiffs, just like the judge.
Where is your data on the “significant amount of ineffective teachers currently active inCalifornia” statement?
Not my statement, this was from the court decision.
From business, there’s acknowledgement that the percentage of employees that contribute little, is 10%. It’s a generally accepted approximation, across all industries.
We can focus on Congress, manufacturing, services, the financial sector (In the case of financial services, it may be far higher than 10%, based on measures of outcome) and, the percentage will be borne out.
Additionally, humans, unlike machines that meet specifications, are inconsistent. In education, there are humans on both sides of the transaction, increasing the odds of diminished output. “Greatness” of both teachers and students, may be obscured by periods of mediocrity. It’s the nature of human transactions, environmental conditions and mental and physical fatigue.
I can see that Cynthia Weiss is a “hit and run” poster!
Not running. Still here.
Get lost, troll.
Perhaps Cynthia is sucking at the Broad tit? After all, she refers to people here as “Ravtichites.” Maybe she is a he?
Interesting. How much money do you think the Vergara family got paid by the people behind the curtain?
One day, I hope little dumb as a rock Beatriz will realize she got pimped out. But for now, maybe mommy can find a better apartment.
Evidence? The grossly ineffective teachers and quite a few administrators, I might add, are not the ones being targeted. They toe the line and that’s all they have to do to keep their jobs. Incompetence, corruption, outright fraud and even child abuse. Teachers who report these crimes are labeled “grossly ineffective.”
We say in response to this that the judge is AN IDIOT.
We say that his critical thinking skills are embarrassingly absent.
We say that a great many factors, most specifically parental income and education levels, lack of resources (see California’s proposition 13), and segregation, ALSO contribute to poor outcomes for these students. We further say that the proposed remedy will have no effect on the quality of teachers provided to these students, because ending tenure is NOT going to cause “more effective” teachers to choose these difficult placements. To the extent that entrenched ineffective teachers are causing this underachievement (an extent that is NOT proven, CONTRARY to the idiot judge’s contention, by this OR ANY evidence, to be great), that problem will arguably be EXACERBATED by the end of tenure because these teachers will be replaced by inexperienced new recruits who will ALSO burn out versus the difficulty of being held accountable for raising test scores in an environment where the factors that WOULD ACTUALLY HELP with that (more resources, less segregation) ARE NOT being improved!
I am wondering what possible evidence or research could have persuaded the judge. My understanding is that there is research that indicates that states that have strong unions and tenure have better outcomes.
My gut tells me research and facts were not used as evidence, just dogma spewed out by think tanks and the media. Unfortunately, most of us do not want to do what the billionaires do to influence the public, such as funding think tanks and lobbying organizations, buying tv/radio stations, etc. Protesting with signs a few times a year, and signing petitions just isn’t going to do much. So we will just have to eat whatever crap they send us.
Teachers have been so stinking passive it’s sickening. That because THEY CAN BE FIRED AND HAVE THEIR CAREERS RUINED IF THEY SAY ANYTHING. So they sit back and take the abuse feeling this is nothing but a pendulum swing. It isn’t. These dirtbags play for keeps.
I share you frustration, yes, teachers are passive and a lot of teachers have just resigned or retired even though they have done nothing. If you look at the data,the overwhelming majority of teachers under duress have resigned or retired. This strategy of false accusations and isolation from their classrooms has been very effective for LAUSD. I wish more teachers would go to court and fight but everyone has to decide that for themselves. I wish we had a union that would fight for us instead of walk in lock step with the district. Hang in there Susan, persistence will pay off in the long haul.
If the research came from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a critic’s description may apply, “It is an old boy network,
that serves to suppress views that would upset the plutocracy but, hurry up and print the views the plutocracy wants to hear.”
On occasion, unexpected research papers, defy the generalization.
The discredited austerity paper from Harvard was released by NBER. It had very damaging effects on policy, before it’s flawed premise was
exposed. The Chetty paper on education, subsequently criticized by a statistical society, was released by the NBER. Notably absent from NBER releases, was the type of work done by Piketty.
Interestingly, the Financial Times, owned by Pearson, made a futile attempt to refute Piketty’s data.
I don’t know if the Fordham Institute has yet to list their funders.
I don’t know if rumors that the Schaife, Olin or Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundations fund the NBER. Their site doesn’t list donors.
Actually the Chetty et al papers are going to be published in the American Economic Review, a journal which also published “The evolution of top incomes : a historical and international perspective” by Piketty and Saez (vol.96, no 2, 2006, p. 200-205).
You might be interested in Thomas Piketty’s NBER working papers. He has 8 NBER working papers and chapters in NBER books and one entire book. Is his work really absent?
Here is a link to Piketty’s NBER papers. If you have access through an academic library you should be able to read these papers directly. If not, try searching for a working paper version of the papers.
http://www.nber.org/authors/thomas_piketty
A research organization that identifies funders, lessens suspicion and the need for a defense. In the face of criticism, the NBER, may be advised, to establish their case for the fairness and balance of releases, in education, pensions and benefits of capital vs. labor.
A quantitative summary of publications that serve the greater good as opposed to those that serve the interests of the 1%, could put the issue of bias to rest.
The publicity and immediate policy influence that some releases have (e.g. Chetty et al and Rogoff-Reinhart), may be, in no way, related, to the NBER organization. Papers by Piketty, that languish without policy implementation, may be explained away, as vagaries of the process.
When NBER leaders serve as faculty advisors to students, who later build the case for a widespread pension “crisis” and when, they serve on the governing boards of institutions that release pension papers, co-authored with the Arnold Foundation, it may warrant nothing more than a shrug.
Here are a list of NBER publications.
http://www.nber.org/publications/
Please, the Judge was bought, or at least bent in the Broad direction.
Maybe this is the wake up call that needed to alert the country to what’s happening. With summer break starting, millions of teachers will have time to pay attention and catch up on what’s been happening.
The two major teacher unions may wake up too and realize they have been fooled and bought off by Bill Gates. It’s time for AFT and NEA to do their job and fight for America’s teachers and children.
I think it is kind of you to afford the unions that benefit of doubt. But the leadership sold members out. Randi Weingarten is Bill Gates advocate. While these events unfolded she did not focus on tenure or seniority. She said teachers in rubber rooms were riff raff and accepted charter schools and money from our enemies at Wasrt and Eli Broad. Now she is so busy with saving the common core for Gates she managed to do zero to stop this lunacy. Last sumner Randi was telling teachers get out. We won’t protect you If the suits day your bad it must be so. I am so sick of being considered second class because I make less money than crony principals, unethical officials, corrupt politicians and union leaders who use my dues to serve an ambitious personal agenda . Anthony Cody says teachers get treated like PWT. (poor white trash) and he is right. Is that what teachers are? We decide to stay in classrooms. We make sacrifices few would. We are committed to students and society. We give and give. And look what we get in return America is going to be third world country before long and that’s because of these liars and cheaters. I put Weingarten at the top of that list.
Yes our leaders have sold us out. It’s easier to put the blame of failed public education on teachers. Teachers whose experience is in the classroom working with students not political snoozing. Our representatives in the legislature voted against us also. According to society now, we are the bad guys, everyone wants to knock us down. This is a truly sad state of affairs.
Here is the crux of the problem, the meaning of “entitled.” “Every child is entitled to a high-quality education regardless of his or her ZIP code. ” It’s a pious wish but not really protected in law the way life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are protected.
Why is this so? Because life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are entitlements to be left alone, to be free from restriction, whereas the right to an education, if it actually exists, requires that someone else must do something.
Education for all depends, therefore, on coercion of all. It MAY be good public policy to do so, but if we look at the words we find that the one word “entitlement” in this case means two totally different things.
Don’t post here if you don’t know what you are talking about. Teachers can easily fired or run out of their jobs. Just shut up. I have been fired and had MY LIFE DESTROYED BY LOUSY ADMINISTRATORS who DID feel entitled to their taxpayer-financed jobs.
Go to hell, Harlan.
Susan: I’m sorry you had such a hard time. I must say that your hair trigger reaction to my post is TOTALLY inappropriate.
I usually disagree with this poster on many issues or parts of issues. But on his reply about appropriate, I have to say, I agree.
Susan,
I’m sorry that you had the loss of your job. It sounds unfair. They say we remember the injustices in life so, I wish you didn’t have this happen and wouldn’t have the memory. With interest, I have read your views at this site. I’ll look forward to seeing your sweet dog’s photo and reading more of your comments.
In a type of Freudian slip, a person may speak of entitlement. Behind the word, may be a hope that he can return to a time when he was given preference because of his gender and race. We can, with indulgence, understand he champions the cause, of those, who would dismiss him, as nothing more than cannon fodder.
I think Harlan is making an important point here, that some entitlements are freedoms from things, including the freedom from being judged by ones gender, race, the freedom to be judged by the content of our character. Other entitlements, to food, to healthcare, to an education do require others to take specific actions.
The discussion of rights in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example, has a nice discussion of the difference between Privileges (or Liberties), Claims on others, Powers, and Immunities.
The article can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/
In view of the California court’s decision, I guess I need to reevaluate my earlier position that no child has a right to an education. In ruling that a child has a right to an EQUAL education, the court seems to assume that the California constitution establishes a separate right to an education.
But note the paradox which the court’s ruling raises. IF a child has a right to an education, she has a right to an equal education. This means that each school district has a DUTY to provide competent teachers, and if tenure rules keep incompetent teachers in the classroom, then the tenure rules have to go.
I personally do not think tenure rules in general necessarily prevent a school district from finding and hiring competent professional teachers, but in arguing that every child has a RIGHT to an education, one becomes in a bind if that education is not EQUAL in quality.
If on the other hand, a child does not have an inherent right to an education protected and provided by the state, then market forces related to real estate prices will dictate the level of education provided, and tenure rules do not come into play.
SO, do students have an inherent RIGHT to a good education? If so, tenure cannot be allowed to interfere. If not, tenure is safe. That’s the moral bind public school teachers are caught in. In arguing FOR tenure, they are also arguing AGAINST equality.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Rights” to which teaching economist provided a link, DOES however say: “As Holmes and Sunstein (1999, 43) put it, in the context of citizens’ rights to state enforcement, all rights are positive. Moreover, the point is often made that the moral urgency of securing positive rights may be just as great as the moral urgency of securing negative rights (Shue 1996). Whatever is the justificatory basis for ascribing rights—autonomy, need, or something else—there might be just as strong a moral case for fulfilling a person’s right to adequate nutrition as there is for protecting that person’s right not to be assaulted.”
That contradicts my earlier position. Obviously I have considerable ‘thought work’ to do. In condemning the courts decision, posters here would seem to be supporting unequal education (the status quo).
Liberty took quite a bit of “doing something” June 6, 1944. We do not live in isolation, we live in societies. The Founders greatly valued education as an intricate part of their lives and as society. The pursuit of knowledge is not coercion, it is freedom.
I don’t think Harlan’s post is about preventing anyone from pursuing knowledge, but about requiring others to help in that pursuit. That seems to be an important distinction.
The non -profit “Students Matter” funded by Welch recruited 9 students to sue California .
Definitely a corporate reform strategy to destroy public education.
——-
The Lawsuit’s called Vergara, but the name you should know is Welch:
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/04/25/16461/the-lawsuit-s-called-vergara-but-the-name-you-shou/
We knew it would turn out this way because the plutocrats have become our masters thanks to political puppetry, dirty courts and apathy from the people who are weary and broken. It’s hard for most people to comprehend how important tenure is to the integrity of a school system We cannot allow them to reduce teachers to at will interns and glorified subs without.compromising the quality of instruction and endangering students. Lowering the standards of our teachers’ profession, lowers the standards of our schools. These people are all about profits. They clearly know nothing about education except how to exploit it for economic gain. While teachers now have great hardships ahead, no one will be more devastated than students.
Of course, the court decision seems to imply exactly the opposite, that removing tenure protections will IMPROVE the student’s classroom experience. Tenure would not seem to have guaranteed the professional competence of everyone hired.
Reducing teachers to at will interns and glorified subs likewise does not guarantee a minimal uniform competence.
That employees of private schools work under such conditions may not be a cause of their higher quality (where their quality is higher), but in permitting easy dismissal it MIGHT have an influence on the average competence of teachers across the building. Size might also be a factor. In my area, a parent told me she did not want to dump her daughter into the 5000 student district high school. Instead she opted for the much smaller consortium run IB school, which does not charge tuition for in-county families.
I’ll have to inquire what kind of contract those teachers work under.
What is the background of this judge? This decision will be overturned because it is ILLEGAL.
There it is! LOL!
Cynthia, because the “significant number of ineffective teachers ” was spoken in the court it must be true. That is quite a broad statement to make without any basis in fact. Most of us here live in a fact based world and look at data and studies.
Cheri,
Poster Adam had an interesting and thoughtful post about this in another thread: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/10/breaking-news-california-judge-strikes-down-tenure-laws/comment-page-1/#comment-1901381
Appointed by a Republican governor.
Now, now. SOME Republicans might actually be ethical.
Teachers never had real job protections anyway. What this idiot judge has done is in effect repealed administrative law for teachers while keeping it for other public employees.
Moronic doesn’t even begin to describe this judge.
Except that’s not what he’s done.
Get lost, troll.
The procedural protections in the “dismissal statutes” were greater than the Constitutional minimum required under Skelly.
That is what he’s done. There aren’t “thousands of ineffective teachers” in California or anywhere else. “Ineffective” in his mind means older, expensive teachers.
Get the hell lost, FLERP. You disgust me to no end.
Whatever you say, Susan.
More should listen to whatever she has to say.
The premise that “teachers cannot be fired” is such a load of b.s. it is sickening. Yours truly was fired for DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG but get sick while the district protected its utterly worthless administrators who screwed up.
ALMOST ALL TEACHERS FACED WITH TERMINATION TAKE RESIGNATIONS. What kind of an idiot judge would make such a stupid ruling, unless this judge was on the take?
I appreciated you are angry and have had a terrible experience but the tone of your postings is so aggressive that I can’t seriously hear what you are trying to get across. Please rethinking the go to … type posts. It help get your very important point across- atleast with this reader.
No. I back susannunes posts 100%. Having also been fired by incompetent fools after working honestly, diligently, and successfully for many years, I know that anger. Susannunnes is being nice.
If you were both good teachers and were fired just because administrators wanted your high salaries, that was indeed unjust. One can understand where you are coming from.
Susan, The Vergara case like the Reed case before it are collusive set ups on the road to privatization of $1.2 trillion a year public education. What I am having trouble with are academic like Ravitch that after the fact lay out in clear and concise terms why the Vergara case makes no sense and why the “expert” academics were patently wrong. So why doesn’t Ravitch, Lois Weiner, Pedro Noguera, Charles Kerchner, and others who know just how ridiculous Vergara is contact CTA and testify?
If I could write about this in February and publish it in April, why don’t academic who know far better than I do what’s happening and why speak up? Instead, they preach to the choir, plug their books, and do nothing while literally thousands of teachers around the country lose their jobs and have their lives turned upside down. Be in touch, if you are interested in doing something more than talking. I’m in Superior Court later this month against the collusive teachers’s union UTLA and their morally challenged attorneys.
http://www.perdaily.com
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
Since Ms. Ravitch did not post a link to the superior court decision so you could think for yourself here it is…
Click to access Vergara-Tenative-Decision.pdf
You clearly don’t. Which think tank employs you because you certainly aren’t a teacher.
Seniority-based layoffs have ALWAYS HAPPENED IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR–non-union as well as union.
This decision is such a load of b.s. I really believe the judge is on the take.
The judge maintains that two years probation isn’t sufficient for tenure. We can’t fault the judge for that. The administration and union have to come up with a better evaluation process – fair instrument to evaluate teachers. Collaboration is necessary between the union and administration. Teachers and students both need to be protected.
The fact is that there are some teachers in the system that don’t belong. As the judge said, “…no one should tolerate bad teachers …” “Every child is entitled to a high-quality education …” Just because a teacher has tenure doesn’t mean the teacher can’t be terminated. Insubordination can be a cause of termination. But who is to judge if a teacher is adhering to a misguided philosophy and methodology? But blatant misjudgment such as taping the mouth’s of incessant talkers is certainly a cause of termination.
The teachers, however, need protection against students who are bullies, disrespectful, arrogant- students who are indifferent to authority. Rebellious disposition in students can stem from unfair demands for the Common Core and its aligned testing; a lack of breaks; no place or way to let out frustration; from violence in the home; attitude in the home toward teachers and school personnel in general; mental illness and the list goes on.
Due process is essential for dedicated, informed, and enthusiastic teachers.
This was a Superior Court judge. Superior court judges serve in counties. California, being the most populous states has lots of counties. This will be appealed and overturned by a higher court in CA.
Here’s to hoping.
Teachers – I mean this in the nicest way – quit teaching, and go to work for an insurance company. They are always looking for adjusters, auditors, salespeople. You’ll make more than teaching, you won’t have to deal with buillshit, and you’ll have benefits. At some point, it is going to be time to say “enough.”
You are being replaced by Wendy Kopp’s and Michelle Rhee’s and Obama’s and Duncan’s scab “clerk” force. Those who can retire, should. Those who can’t retire, should look for something else.
Isn’t it amazing in this terrible economy, how the elite managed to steal jobs from the middle class? Jobs they didn’t even, and don’t, want. AND, managed to shift public tax dollars into profit. Hot damn; they ARE smarter than the rest of us lackies.
I feel sorry for all of you teachers, from the bottom of my heart.
I don’t think we need to get angry with each other, or with trolls or even with the judge who made this ruling. What we need to do is recognize this is all a part of corporate education reform, as Leonard said above, and then join together in concerted action to fight for our rights. Here are 7 reasons why our job protections matter for the future of public education.
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2014/06/teacher-tenure-under-attack-time-to.html
I really feel Susan, until you have this type of injustice done to you, you will never understand. After years and years of dedicated service you all of a sudden encounter a bad administrator who dislikes you and proceeds to destroy, with the compliance of the district, your profession and livelihood. Yeah, it makes you angry and if Susan wants to say exactly how she feels and call names, I understand, I feel the same but I think Susan said it best.
I I am so sick of the teacher bashing. Why is our profession so degraded? Why is the public so delighted to pick up a club a take a swing at the teaching profession?
I don’t think “chi bono” is the only legitimate question. SOMETIMES a certified teacher just doesn’t have the knowledge and temperament to teach well. It happens. Some people even argue that public service bureaucratic jobs in general attract the bottom of the barrel more than other private pursuits. The clerks at the VA hospitals suggest such a possibly. The bureaucrats at the EPA seem to me suspiciously thoughtless. And the love that IRA employees made to clearly illegal persecution of conservative groups is notorious.
UNLESS, you are of a mind that where ideology is concerned the end justifies the means. That, of course, is true marxist thinking, and to the extent knee jerk hatred of Republicans pervades the public teaching culture, it might well be TRUE that there are teachers one wouldn’t want near children because of their non-American values.
Raise your hands, if you qualify. This is not to condemn all teachers, or even most, but you know the old adage about one bad apple spoiling the barrel, and in this metaphor the public perception of the barrel (public school teachers) is controlled by the few bad apples. Their WORST representatives are taken as characteristic of the profession as a whole.
I mean, of course, “Cui bono?”
There is only one question which need be answered: Cui bono?
There was an earlier post today by Jonathan Lovell about teachers and public education supporters using creative disruption against the GERM. Perhaps one way to do that would be to enshrine things like due process, automatic increase in pay tied to cost of living index, and class size (one of the few things that really got to Jeb Bush) into state constitutions via the amendment process. If they’re worded correctly, they would be pretty effective at tying the hands of the deformers.
The best and sweetest revenge is to create our own website and our own school from all resigned teachers, for public education.
Next, all best Teachers should form the banking system so that we can regain our independent in monetary in order to control our own public education and our own economy. As a result, all parents will refuse to pay tax towards public education, and they prefer to pay our website and our own school for their children’s education.
In the long term, we can help out all needy children from our own banking system through the true scholarship (not from controlling corporate). Hopefully, within 25 years, we can produce the new breed of true leaders who will beat the sh-t out of their dimwit younger generation.
I am maybe the dreamer, but I am a believer in “good deeds return good deeds, and evils follow evils”. Gate’s bad intention will yield him, all his loved ones, and all his associates with sufferance which inevitably happens. Being ignorant, abusive and manipulative about the importance of public education is not being forgotten or forgiven by karma. Back2basic
You may be on to something. Teachers could use AFT and NEA to launch their own charters to compete with the Waltons and those Hedge Fund billionaires.
That would be an honest and desirable solution, in my view.
If it wasn’t for TENURE I would have been out on the streets instead of educating and creating sparks in the minds of children these last 5 weeks.
Educatorfightsback.org
Francesco Portelos
Now there really needs to be a serious push by teachers all over the country against high-stakes testing.
But first, all of those teachers have to learn about what’s going on. We can not assume they will look for this information on their own. They have to hear about it first and be motivated to look closer.
The danger will be that teachers in better schools that don’t teach significant rates of children who live in poverty will falsely think they are safe until the day comes their school is closed and it’s too late.
This is what happened to most of the Jews who were shipped off to the ovens and gas chambers in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
It’s the “I’m glad its them and not me” syndrome until it is “you”.
Lloyd, you’re exactly right. I’m always shocked by the lack of basic information teachers have on everything reformy. On here and other ed blogs there was an explosion of info on the vergara verdict. On Facebook (most of my friends are teachers) there was crickets. Teachers are busy and they’re usually the type of people who assume the best. If they suspect there’s anything going on at all, they assume it will blow over like it always has in the past.
To me, this has been one of the major failings of the unions. Where there should be organizing and mobilizing, there is “don’t worry, we’ve written a sternly worded letter” instead. We will probably have to organize outside of the union. BATS might be the way to go, though I wish they had taken another name (if you have to say your a bad ass…)
Basically, covering our eyes ad saying “see no evil” isn’t a strategy. Those of us who can should be creating youtube videos, penning articles, and creating memes. Those of us who can’t should be spreading those far and wide. And I think you’re onto something when you say they have to be motivated to look closer. We can’t just throw them in the middle of the jungle. The things we share have to be accessible. They have to entice them into looking closer at the problems. You have to want to look at the details, otherwise it’s just overload.
Exactly so. You have to get into the market place of ideas in a big way to see if your birds can fly. That’s honest.
In my perception, however, if you take public the kind of thought I see posted here, the general public will say “these teachers can’t think. Let them go hang.”
Of course, it’s never too late to reformulate one’s philosophy of life, but I don’t think it’s going to happen from within your unions.
Let’s keep the reforms going. All term limits for all politicians. All elected officials will get money paid into a 401K while they are in office and end when they leave. There will be no life time pensions or medical benefits for elected officials. If you jump from a 40,000. job to a 105,000 job due to political appointment (favoritism) your pension will be partially based on former salary. We don’t want any politicians just litting out their time. It is against the Constitution and harmful to the people they represent. HEAR ME GOV. CHRISTIE IN NJ.
I think those reforms would be a food idea. We should pay all the costs of employment for a given year in that year. Kicking it down the road makes it to easy to hide the costs and transfer them to other people.
You forgot to take away the power of Congress to vote for their own pay raises, which they carefully sneak in during lulls in the political media circus. The electorate should decide pay raises for Congress every time there’s an election. Do we give them cost or living increases or not—based on performance?
That’s a great idea. Above, I was saying we should be starting initiatives to amend state constitutions that will tie the hands of politicians (e.g. class size amendment in FL). This will take some organizing which, sadly, I don’t think our unions are up to.
Same could be said for teachers, however.
Finally some sanity, and from California of all places. Hopefully New York is next. I would bet we have more bad teachers here than in California. A win for children in their battle with teacher unions. Refreshing to see.
This is a comment from Harold Block’s facebook page.
“We’ve been throwing money at the “education system” (AKA teacher salaries, benefits and pensions) for decades. The more we spend the worse our children do compared to other students around the globe. It’s time to hold teachers accountable for our lack of success. Most of the teachers I know are in it for the 100K+ salary, guaranteed annual raises, taxpayer paid health coverage, four months of vacation each year, and guaranteed, generous retirement in their 50’s. Wake up America – it’s finally time for teachers to earn their very generous compensation and be held accountable for failing to educate our children. A teacher union representative was once asked how he KNEW the children WERE learning despite failing test scores…..his answer? “I can see it in their eyes”. Don’t let anyone fool you – 90% of people complaining about Common Core are teachers that don’t want to be held accountable. The other 10%? Artsy parents that want their children to learn origami and poetry in school. I prefer my two children learn the three R’s. They can make origami and write poetry when they get home.”
Clearly, he does NOT know a teacher. Not one. I am speechless. You clearly have no sensibility in regards to education and what it takes to educate a child. Totally speechless.
Who is Harold Block?
There will be many fools who will swallow the lies of the fake education reformers and believe everything they hear. This is what the oligarchs like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons and the Koch brothers are counting on—to fool enough people to achieve their Machiavellian goals.
Abraham Lincoln said it best: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
The job of the resistance is to share the facts that support the truth of what’s really going on in such a way that it reaches most of the people. That’s all we need. We don’t need everyone. There will always be Harold Blocks out there who will never change their minds about public education in the United States. There are always going to be ignorant opinionated fools who don’t know what they are talking about but they talk about it anyway.
1) The disproportionate impact on low income students in low performing schools is a political choice made by school administration without mandate from nor reference to the challenged statutes. They chose to send the bad teachers where the voices cause no threat. There is nothing in the statutes that prevent administration from allocating teacher talent equitably among schools, as they should do for Federal Title I funding compliance (in spirit if not by letter). There is no relation between the challenged statues and equal protection.
In fact, since we are going to have so called objective evaluation of teacher talent by test scores, why is there no proposal to condition Title I funding on comparable distribution of teacher talent? I don’t think its a good idea, but if the USDOE doesn’t jump on it, you have to question their whole belief structure.
2) Two years is not enough time to evaluate a new teacher, especially in a challenging urban school where extra supports will be required and need more time to bear fruit. The legislature needs to align tenure deadlines with newer credentialing requirements. The also need to align teacher prep program requirements with the need to teach emotional intelligence in high stress communities.
3) As should never be done, the court confuses termination for cause with termination for economy. The court concludes because termination of a tenured teacher is too difficult that the last in first out seniority layoff compounds the retention of bad teachers while punishing good ones. However, when the legislature corrects the tenure law the argument against seniority falls apart. The court should not have enjoined enforcement of LIFO. Senior teachers are always paid more, tempting administrators to skew evaluations of more senior teachers during economic hardship. There is also the temptation to inflate the layoff numbers to encompass malcontent teachers who do not quite merit termination under even the revised tenure law. Easier just to lay them off. Injecting merit into economic layoff is designed to break union solidarity.
4) School administration places these teachers where complaint will have the least impact on administration (save for the already overburdened principal etc at the dump school, who may have been dumped themself). School administration fails to follow proper personnel management techniques to coach, mentor, progressively discipline, document and preserve evidence for dismissal. School administration fails to work with the unions for alternative discipline. School administration fails to hold school administration accountable for their own failures. I can not help but speculate that school administration in California, and elsewhere, had a hand in bringing this suit, that the defendants’ sought the same outcome as the plaintiffs, that there was no actual case in controversy before the court.
5) Why do we hear endlessly about teacher “accountability”, but never, from Gates, Broad, Waltons, the President, USDOE, MSM, nor, from this court, about accountability for school administrators, some of whom, are themselves, TENURED?
Excellent!
Professor Ravitch and others make excellent arguments as to the incorrectness of the Vergara decision. Why didn’t they make them at the trial- intervenors? amicus briefs? Why leave cherry picked academics as the only ones testifying and then after the fact attack the case conclusion? Either retire and tend your garden in Brooklyn or do something to support teachers and unions that are supposedly going to challenge Vergara on appeal- anything else is an ego trip that is in complete derogation of what your career has stood for.
I wrote the following in February 2014 and have talked about the put up nature of these collusive lawsuits to get rid of expensive tenured teachers. What have you actually done but rant and comment after the fact about the holocaust being perpetrated on teachers? What makes it all the more outrageous is that your comments are substantive and insightful and would have destroyed the bogus testimony of the academic shills who testified at Vergara and Reed before it. Shame on you!
LAUSD’S TREACHEROUS ROAD FROM REED TO VERGARA- IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT STUDENTS, JUST MONEY
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html