Mercedes Schneider posts here the dissents of the three judges who wanted to rehear the case. The majority of four denied the rehearing, agreeing with the lower court.

Categories California, Teacher Tenure, Unions

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Laura H. Chapman says:

August 22, 2016 at 5:35 pm

Good, but just the beginning of “kill the unions” with teachers easier targets than nurses, police, firefighters, and first responders.

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- Jack says:
  
  August 23, 2016 at 2:44 am
  
  On this glorious day, Kool & the Gang says it all:
  
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Ellen Lubic says:

August 22, 2016 at 5:41 pm

Please also read Mercedes other posts which broaden this even further…

Some Vergara “Friends” Petition the California Supreme Court
In “Gates”

Campbell Brown’s 74 Noticeably Silent About Vergara Reversal
In “litigation”

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Ellen Lubic says:

August 22, 2016 at 5:44 pm

These motivated ‘deep pockets’ oligarchs do not give up, they just maneuver differently, as with the rapid implementation of Great Public Schools Now. It is only if the media educates the public, a BIG if, and there is massive public outcry, that we get leverage. As I have been writing all along, their goal re teacher tenure and due process is secondary, their prime goal is to kill off the entire union movement in the US.

Eli Broad still has John Deasy and Ben Austin working to implement this sort of Vergara inspired lawsuit throughout California, and pushing for this across the US. It is not a moment for activists to relax.

So let’s relish the sanity and intelligence of the Ca. Supreme Court in recognizing the fallacious ‘civil rights’ claim of Vergara, but let’s watch for the next hydra headed pop up of this group of oligarchs.

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  August 22, 2016 at 6:38 pm
  
  “It is only if the media educates the public. . . ”
  
  The question then becomes: Who educates the media?
  
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- Joel Herman says:
  
  August 23, 2016 at 7:09 am
  
  Very true Ellen, The primary reasons that teachers are the focus of their attack is because they the AFT/NEA together are Americas largest Union. Their visibility as supporters of the the Democratic party made them a further target. Which makes the betrayal even worse.
  
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Susan Lee Schwartz says:

August 22, 2016 at 6:56 pm

LAUSD’S TREACHEROUS ROAD FROM REED TO VERGARA- IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT STUDENTS, JUST MONEY – Perdaily.com written in 2014 and copied below.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
“If “teacher quality and effectiveness” as well as having the best education for students in “high-poverty and high-minority” areas that have not done well in the past was really the issue, insuring an environment of reasonable discipline, while finally eliminating destabilizing social promotion would have been implemented long ago. Most poor and minority students enter LAUSD behind and are never brought up to grade-level in a timely manner, which becomes more impossible as years go by. Inner-city predominantly poor and minority filled schools- LAUSD is 90% Latino and Black- are not just bad for the students, they are toxic for any serious teacher not willing to go along with the complete lack of rigor mindlessly enforced by entrenched LAUSD administration. No secondary single-subject credentialed teacher- whatever their level of seniority- can be expected to teach humiliated students that LAUSD administration continues to put in classes years beyond their objective ability. Clearly this is the recipe for the disaster that LAUSD continues to be, which has nothing to do with teacher seniority.The reason that schools like Liechty, Gompers, and Markham Middle Schools, mentioned in the Reed case, were so adversely impacted when it came to loss of predominantly novice teaching staff, was because any teacher with enough seniority wouldn’t be caught dead in a school where there was no support for excellence in education that the plaintiffs in the aforementioned cases supposedly so desperately claim they want in their lawsuit. Any teacher who insists on excellence and has the teaching skill to do it has been systematically targeted over the last 5 years, brought up on fabricated charges, and removed or forced into early retirement.

Both Reed and Vergara purposefully ignore the context in which seniority-based reductions take place. No mention is made of excellent teachers being completely undermined in a system that values Average Daily Attendance (ADA) payments from the State more than whether the students are actually learning something of value in a timely manner. The fact that 55% of Roosevelt High School students have quit school before ever reaching the 12th grade and that only 30% of the graduating class has the A-G requirements necessary to get them into the University of California schools says it all, but is conveniently ignored in Vergara.

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Linda says:

August 22, 2016 at 7:39 pm

An amicus brief, on the side of those who wanted a rehearing, was written on Shook, Hardy and Bacon letterhead. It bore the signature of Lawrence Lessig, who wrote Republic Lost, and, the signature of another lawyer, Lawrence Tribe, who is hailed as a great liberal. While the court’s decision is to be cheered, the disappointment at the signers of the amicus brief remains.

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- Ellen Lubic says:
  
  August 22, 2016 at 8:57 pm
  
  Wow…what a kick in the head. I have always admired and respected Lessig and Tribe. Do you have access to the amicus brief? Is it online?
  
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- Ellen Lubic says:
  
  August 22, 2016 at 9:01 pm
  
  Just read it online…brief from June, 2016 signed also by others who shocked me e.g. Cruz Reynoso…suggest everyone look at this, I could not copy it to post here…but thanks for this heads up, Linda.
  
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- Linda says:
  
  August 23, 2016 at 10:40 am
  
  The information was provided by John Thompson. He wrote to the signers and rec’d replies. I wrote to Lessig’s political advocacy group and received no reply. Before I knew about the Shook, Hardy and Bacon letter, I had donated to Lessig’s efforts, in part because Aaron Schwartz’ name was invoked. There has been no shortage of disappointment, from people I once believed in, like Sen. Sherrod Brown, who wrote to the US Dept. of Ed. for money for school privatization, making him a spendthrift of taxpayer money and, by effect, an opponent of public schools.
  
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- Jon Lubar says:
  
  August 23, 2016 at 1:09 pm
  
  The SPLC once supported the idea that school choice and other reformy ideas were “the civil rights issues of our times”. They are now sueing to block charters. The NAACP once held similar beliefs, but now they and the BLM folks are advocating for an overall moratorium on charters. It is possible to learn from your mistakes, and more important, those once fooled as Lessig has undoubtably been are that much harder to fool again. It’s a long war we’re in here. Don’t throw your own under the bus, rescue them such that they fight by your side once again.
  
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- Linda says:
  
  August 23, 2016 at 3:08 pm
  
  Respectfully, Jon,
  Lessig and Tribe are lawyers who are familiar with the reputation of Shook, Hardy and Bacon.
  For years, Ohio newspapers have written about Ohio’s corrupt charter schools and Brown did not speak to the issue until this summer, when he wanted the Dept. of Ed.’s money to privatize, directed away from charter schools that fund Republicans to ones, like those run by a Walton-funded philanthropy. Last year, the Ohio State University College of Public Affairs (Brown is on the Board) had a leadership conference, in which charter schools were referred to as public schools, despite the Ohio Supreme Court ruling that, taxpayer-bought assets, belong to charter operators. The leadership conference, panel, invitees, were 3 charter proponents and no opponents. About a month ago, the Dayton Daily News described the chummy relationship between Brown and Republican, Portman, who is running for re-election, with the help of the Koch’s. To this
  point Brown has failed to endorse Portman’s Democratic opponent.
  
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TC says:

August 22, 2016 at 11:42 pm

The Vergara case of pretzel logic.

Cindy gets a $10 education, Marsha gets a $20 education, a violation of civil rights.

If they each gained another dollar from union rule inefficiencies, Cindy would get an $11 education and Marsha would get a $21 education.

Or, address the root problem. Give each $15 to start with, the equivalent of, ensure equitable distribution of teacher talent by years experience and education level.

More pay for low SES schools. More pay for geographically undesirable areas.

The civil right to equitable education for all students is being violated, Vergara just didn’t address the root causes or propose meaningful solutions.

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Máté Wierdl says:

August 23, 2016 at 6:41 am

From Mercedes’ post: “The court’s job is merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if they are “a good idea.”

Ultimately, the lack of evidence kicked them in the butt:

Plaintiffs failed to establish that the challenged statutes violate equal protection, primarily because they did not show that the statutes inevitably cause a certain group of students to receive an education inferior to the education received by other students. Although the statutes may lead to the hiring and retention of more ineffective teachers than a hypothetical alternative system would, the statutes do not address the assignment of teachers; instead, administrators—not the statutes—ultimately determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach. Critically, plaintiffs failed to show that the statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students.

So, similarly to many of the reformist programs, such as VAM or Common Core, a hypothesis without evidence is not a cause for change.

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FLERP! says:

August 24, 2016 at 12:27 pm

This other legal news coming out of California may have gotten buried by the Vergara stories.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/dan-walters/article97232982.html

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- Máté Wierdl says:
  
  August 24, 2016 at 2:01 pm
  
  Flerp, since you show an article with UC chancellor Napolitano in it, I reward you with an article about admin corruption in the UC system.
  
  Napolitano ordered an investigation in April in response to allegations that Katehi had violated conflict-of-interest rules in the hiring and promotion of her son and daughter-in-law at UC Davis.
  
  Naturally, when administrators investigate themselves, they find nothing, and for the most part, that’s what they found here (read the 100 page report with your own eyes if you like). Bottom line, people are really getting tired of the open fraud that seems to define all our institutions now, and just didn’t give a damn about yet another biased self-investigation revealing nothing.
  
  http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2016/08/admin-pepper-spraying-students.html?m=1
  
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