A judge in New Jersey threw out a lawsuit intended to remove teachers’ seniority rights. This is the third loss for the corporate reformer groups that have tried to use the courts to strip away teachers’ job security. The “reformers” blame teachers and unions for low test scores while ignoring overwhelming evidence that poverty is the proximate cause of low scores.
The first was the Vergara lawsuit in California, where a group called “Students Matter,” founded by a Silicon Valley billionaire, claimed that teacher tenure (due process of law) denied poor children equal opportunity. The plaintiffs won in the lowest court. They lost on appeal. And they lost again when they appealed to the states’ highest court.
A group found by former TV personality Campbell Brown called the Partnership for Educational Justice filed copycat suits in other states. One was tossed by a lower court.
Earlier this month, a judge in New Jersey dismissed a legal challenge to teacher seniority rules.
Rachel Cohen of The American Prospect reports on the corporate reformers’ latest defeat in court:
“Another legal effort to weaken teacher job protections through the courts has been dismissed, this time in the Garden State. On Wednesday afternoon, a New Jersey Superior Court judge tossed the latest case, ruling that the plaintiffs—six parents from Newark Public Schools—failed to prove that seniority-based layoffs harmed their students.
“Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), a national education reform group that aims to challenge teacher job protections across the country, funded the New Jersey lawsuit. Originally filed in November, the case marked the third time PEJ has gone after tenure provisions. Their first case filed in New York in 2014, is currently before the state Supreme Court. In October, a Minnesota district judge dismissed PEJ’s second suit, filed there in 2016. That case has since been appealed.”
Campbell Brown’s news site, The 74, reported the outcome of the case.
“A New Jersey judge swiftly dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that challenged state rules requiring school districts to base teacher layoffs on seniority regardless of performance in the classroom.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary C. Jacobson told a Trenton courtroom that the plaintiffs had failed to establish how seniority-based layoff rules known as “last in, first out” were harming their children.
“I don’t see any link other than speculation and conjecture between the LIFO statute and the denial of a thorough and efficient education to these 12 children,” Jacobson said.
“The lawsuit, HG v. Harrington, was filed in November on behalf of a dozen Newark students, claiming that “last in, first out” mandates governing teacher layoffs violate their right to a “thorough and efficient” and “equal” education system under the state Constitution.
“The complaint was sponsored by The Partnership for Educational Justice, a national education reform nonprofit founded by 74 co-founder Campbell Brown. Named defendants include the New Jersey State Board of Education and Newark Public School District.
“The American Federation of Teachers and the New Jersey Education Association, considered “intervening” defendants in the case, filed the motion to dismiss.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane A severe case of cherry-picking if I ever saw one–the argument doesn’t even pass the LOGICAL smell test. Also, Orwell is shaking his head as we speak with all of these examples of double-speak. Who writes that, . . . uh, . . . stuff. It’s so bad, they’ve actually made “Orwellian” into a cliche. Shame on those, however, who have not become aware.
Poverty coupled with a lack of desire on the part of politicians to help, fund, ways teachers can try to overcome the problem, like free breakfast and lunch for all and smaller class size in all grades, as well as listening to the professional teacher’s advice. Regarding teacher performance, accountability, we need administrators who have real classroom teaching experience, better, well qualified leadership at all levels. I’ve seen too many principals, and assistants, with little or negligible real world, classroom, teaching. To me anyone wanting a leadership position in a school district should have a minimum of 10 years actually and successfully teaching at the grade or subject level. I’ve seen too many people getting these spots who were not good teachers to begin with, “escapees” so to speak.
Quite correct in your analysis of the current state of administration and the adminimals who populate it! Like the “escapees” epithet!
And, yes, a 10 year teaching background should be the minimum before becoming an administrator.
Oh, what a lovely fantasy — that all of those willing to jump in and take big salaries to supervise, manage, evaluate and “coach” teachers actually had to have ten years previous teaching experience.
There is a process to remove poor teachers. It is called evaluation. The problem is that there are few “good”adminstrators that can judge “good” teaching. Many are appointed as relatives or friends of other higher administrators or board or superintendent friends. They always do not have a grasp of what is good teaching. Others do not want to rock the boat, being former teachers themselves. So, it goes up the line to the top. And the argument about tenure doesn’t hold either. Christie wants to do away with tenure so they can go after the “poor” teacher who is at the top of the scale. If tenure was taken away, districts would eliminate most of the top rung of teachers, good or poor. If you don’t believe this, just look at what many districts do in NJ with new teachers. the law was changed a while back to get tenure, instead of 3yrs. and 1 day it was changed to 4 yrs. and 1 day, saying the extra year was needed to show good teaching. Well many districts in NJ have taken advantaged of this and kept teachers for 4 years and then let them go before getting tenure. They weren’t interested in the quality of the teacher, just the bottom line.
“Well many districts in NJ have taken advantaged of this and kept teachers for 4 years and then let them go before getting tenure. They weren’t interested in the quality of the teacher, just the bottom line.”
Excellent example of adminimal behavior. Thanks for pointing that out!
“. . . while ignoring overwhelming evidence that poverty is the proximate cause of low scores.”
I wouldn’t say that poverty is a “proximate cause” but I would say, and there is no doubt that the low test scores are strongly correlated to socio-economic status and the mother’s level of education.
But none of that matters in a certain sense since using those test scores for any purpose whatsoever is COMPLETELY INVALID. Why COMPLETELY INVALID? Because, as Noel Wilson has shown, the myriad foundational conceptual (onto-epistemological) errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudgings that serve to hide those errors and falsehoods that are inherent in the making and using educational standards and standardized testing and in the dissemination of the results can only render any usage of said results as “vain and illusory”, in other words, COMPLETELY INVALID.
To understand why the whole process is COMPLETELY INVALID read and comprehend Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
The Partnership for Educational Justice. Clever title for a union-busting outfit. Another case of Alt-representation.
Progressive People’s Action reports that powerful N.J. Rep. Frelinghuysen sent a letter to a bank board member warning him that a bank employee, was active in a group (off-hours) that requested Frelinghuysen hold a town hall meeting.
Does anyone think that Campbell Brown might want to give up her court cases as she keep losing and losing all over the country. One might think that lovely Campbell would say OK I give up and I must be wrong about this whole thing. But no, these education neophytes will never understand the real dynamics of education because they do not work in education.
Someone really needs to offer Campbell Brown the opportunity to teach a class in the south Bronx for one week. Ms. Brown would experience kids walking into the classroom, kids walking out of the classroom, kids listening to rap music on their phones, kids cursing, singing, screaming, fighting. And, if you tell them to put the phones away or to pay attention you will get screamed at because most of the students in NYC schools are needy, special education special needs children from poor families with usually one parent at home, if that.
Yes Ms. Brown come to a NYC school and experience real world teaching in the poorest district in the US and then talk to me about teaching, teachers and “tenure” and teaching youth in the NYC schools. Does anyone hear me laughing out loud right about now?? Oh yes and I am rolling over as well. LOLRO
The Irish, the Jews, the Italians and others were poor. Public schools gave them the skills they needed to get out of poverty. Those folks were not socially promoted grade after grade without mastery of prior grade-level standards to ever increasing humiliation in subsequent grades and assured failure that see poor minorities going to prison in disproportionate numbers, because they are pushed through school without basic socialization or the acquisition of a skill set with which they might become productive members of our society.
We are 63 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, which said, “Separate but equal…is inherently unequal.” And yet LAUSD is de facto segregated and over 90% Black and Latino and nobody says anything.
Generic poverty is precisely what a good and pragmatic public education system is designed to deal with. But racism remains alive and well in all communities where there is no expectation that Blacks and Latinos can learn- shame.