Jim Moran:
A California judge has delivered a haymaker to the teachers unions by finding that laws governing tenure and other job security laws are unconstitutional.
Perhaps more than the finding, it was the language used by the judge in his deicsion that was shocking.
He ruled that such a system violates the state constitution’s guarantee that all children receive “basic equality of educational opportunity.” In a blunt, unsparing 16-page opinion, Treu compared his ruling to the seminal federal desegregation caseBrown v. Board of Education, decided 60 years ago last month. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” Treu wrote.
In adopting the language and legal framework of the civil rights movement, Treu gave a major boost to school reformers from both parties who have long argued that the current system dooms poor and minority students to inferior educations.
The key takeaway is that Judge Treu justified the ruling on the basis that minority childrend were harmed the most by bad teachers who were hard to fire. So-called, “disparate impact” justifications have been common for decades,
The plaintiffs went after five laws that require administrators to decide whether a rookie teacher deserves tenure after just 16 months in the classroom; require a lengthy and often costly process before a teacher can be fired; and protect veteran teachers from layoffs, even if they are less effective than their younger colleagues. They put on evidence that firing a teacher can take so long and cost so much, some districts decide instead to shuffle the worst or least experienced educators to low-income schools, in what’s known as “the dance of the lemons.”
“Have we not had enough in this country’s history of short-shafting poor people and minorities?” attorney Marcellus A. McRae asked in his closing statement. “This is an abomination. This is unconstitutional. This has to stop.”
The teachers’ unions were befuddled but determined to fight back:
Remember that this is a LOWER court decision.
It will be appealed…..and judge-shopped, too.
But already we are seeing an interesting side effect.
Bill Gates is calling for a two year moratorium on Common Core.
He wants to ease the backlash we are seeing against it in many states by a temporary lull.
@Nanny G: Bill Gates should have stayed with making crappy software that he stole in the first place. Just had to get that off my chest. Yes, it will be appealed and yes it will be reversed and yes Kommiefornia will continue it’s slide into the toilet. Even with the darling of the GOP KrashandKarron running.
California Teachers Union is out of control!! That’s why our California School System has failed our students!!
“The key takeaway is that Judge Treu justified the ruling on the basis that minority children were harmed the most by bad teachers who were hard to fire. So-called, “disparate impact” justifications have been common for decades…”
This, and a whole lot more in this country…
Judge Treu is RIGHT! ALL of the (liberal/Union) manipulation, rhetoric and the Lies needs to stop.
The amount of teachers across the US who either abuse drugs, sell/use drugs, abuse alcohol, abuse the system, abuse students (certain sexually), take their jobs for granted, and God knows what else is astounding….
…It seems that being an actual “Good-Excellent” teacher is now just an exception to the rule of being a bad teacher…
The unions shamefully ‘protect’ the worst ones…
The Judge’s ruling is absolutely logical and thus correct. A tenure system that does not require good teacher standards and work ethic, dooms a lazy or incompetent teacher’s students to an inferior education.
When we lived in CA there was a Bay Area high school principal that was arrested and convicted of selling drugs out of the truck of his car to his students. He committed this crime while on school property and while classes were in session (this was right after public schools put all the “Drug Free Zone” signs up around their campuses).
Yet, this principal spend less than a week in jail and was allowed to return to his job after he was given a “slap on the wrist” sentence.
We also had a Bay Area high school teacher who was arrested and convicted of selling crack cocaine to students (his family was deeply involved in drug dealing and other crimes).
Yet, this teacher spent no time in jail and was allowed to continue “teaching”.
Consider carefully. Tenure was first introduced to protect teachers whose opinions ran against popular views. Students should be able to hear alternate views, and thus unpopular teachers should not be fired.
What an opportunity! Unions grabbed on to tenure, and made it part of the deal which made union dues palatable. Pay the union, they said, and your job is yours forever. It was not about students. It was about political power.
I saw this first hand when working in the public schools. Students came to me having no preparation in working with numbers. But the union protected the teachers who could not instruct the young people in computation. The union won, and the students lost. Of course our own union boss went to jail for stealing $7.5 million, but that is another story. Teachers, like civil servants, do not need Unions. They are already represented in State and National legislatures. Thanks, FDR, for big labor!
It has brought us nothing but trouble.