The outcome of this case will surely have ripple effects for teacher tenure. Quotes from within:
“It’s yet another example of not rolling up your sleeves and dealing with a problem, but instead finding a scapegoat,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They are not suing about segregation or funding or property tax systems — all the things you really need to get kids a level playing field. They want to strip teachers of any rights to a voice.”State education laws across the country are changing. School districts in 29 states use poor effectiveness as grounds for dismissal, according to a report released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based think tank that tracks teacher policies. Just five years ago, no states allowed student performance to be considered in teachers’ evaluations, said Kate Walsh, the executive director of the center. Now, 20 states require such data.
-Angela
Fight Over Effective Teachers Shifts to Courtroom
LOS
ANGELES — They have tried and failed to loosen tenure rules for
teachers in contract talks and state legislatures. So now, a group of
rising stars in the movement to overhaul education employment has gone
to court.
In
a small, wood-paneled courtroom here this week, nine public school
students are challenging California’s ironclad tenure system, arguing
that their right to a good education is violated by job protections that
make it too difficult to fire bad instructors. But behind the students
stand a Silicon Valley technology magnate who is financing the case and
an all-star cast of lawyers that includes Theodore B. Olson, the former
solicitor general of the United States, who recently won the Supreme
Court case that effectively overturned the state’s ban on same-sex
marriage.
“Children
have the right to access good education and an effective teacher
regardless of their circumstances,” said David F. Welch, the
telecommunications entrepreneur who spent millions of his own dollars to
create Students Matter, the organization behind the lawsuit. The group
describes itself as a national nonprofit dedicated to sponsoring
litigation of this type, and the outcome in California will provide the
first indication of whether it can succeed.
At
issue is a set of rules that grant permanent employment status to
California teachers after 18 months on the job, require a lengthy
procedure to dismiss a teacher, and set up a seniority system in which
the teachers most recently hired must be the first to lose their jobs
when layoffs occur, as they have regularly in recent years.
Teachers’
unions, which hold powerful sway among lawmakers here, contend that the
protections are necessary to ensure that teachers are not fired
unfairly. Without these safeguards, the unions say, the profession will
not attract new teachers.
“Tenure
is an amenity, just like salary and vacation, that allows districts to
recruit and retain teachers despite harder working conditions, pay that
hasn’t kept pace and larger class sizes,” James M. Finberg, a lawyer for
the California teachers’ unions, said this week in his opening
statement in court.
The
monthlong trial promises to be a closely watched national test case on
employment laws for teachers, one of the most contentious debates in
education. Many school superintendents and advocates across the country
call such laws detrimental and anachronistic, and have pressed for the
past decade for changes, with mixed success. Tenure for teachers has
been eliminated in three states and in Washington, D.C., and a handful
of states prohibit seniority as a factor in teacher layoffs. But in many
large states with urban school districts, including California and New
York, efforts to push through such changes in the legislature have
repeatedly failed.
While
several lawsuits demanding more money for schools have succeeded across
the country, the California case is the most sweeping legal challenge
claiming that students are hurt by employment laws for teachers. The
case also relies on a civil rights argument that so far is untested:
that poor and minority students are denied equal access to education
because they are more likely to have “grossly ineffective” teachers.
Judge
Rolf Michael Treu, of Los Angeles County Superior Court, will decide
the nonjury trial. His ruling will almost certainly be appealed to the
State Supreme Court.
Witnesses are expected to explain many of their basic assumptions about how to create quality schools.
The
first witness for the plaintiffs was John E. Deasy, the superintendent
of Los Angeles Unified School District and a staunch opponent of tenure
rules and “last in, first out” seniority for teachers. Mr. Deasy
testified that attempts to dismiss ineffective teachers can cost
$250,000 to $450,000 and include years of appeals and legal proceedings.
Often, he said, the district is forced to decide that the time and
money would be too much to spend on a case with an unclear outcome, in
part because a separate governing board can reinstate the teachers. Such
rules make it impossible not to place ineffective teachers at schools
with high poverty rates, he told the court.
“I
absolutely do not believe it’s in the best interest of students
whatsoever,” Mr. Deasy said of the layoff policy. “The decision about
who should be in front of students should be the most effective teacher.
These statutes prohibit that from being a consideration at all. By
virtue of that, it cannot be good for students.”
Teachers’
unions contend that such job protections help schools keep the best
teachers and recruit new ones to a job that is often exhausting,
challenging and low paid. Mr. Finberg, the lawyer for the unions, said
in court that the fact that Mr. Deasy has increased the number of
ineffective teachers dismissed from the classroom — to about 100 of the
district’s 30,000 teachers — suggests that the laws are working.
The
plaintiffs’ legal team, from the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher,
includes not only Mr. Olson, who served as solicitor general under
President George W. Bush, but also Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer
for Apple in its antitrust case on e-book pricing. The lawyers and
public relations firm behind Students Matter previously teamed to
overturn the California ballot measure against same-sex marriage and say
this case could have a similar ripple effect across the country. Among
the boldface names siding publicly with the plaintiffs is Antonio R.
Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, who joined them in a news
conference outside the courthouse this week.
“The
case has the potential to have really broad and important implications
not just for California,” said Michelle A. Rhee, the former Washington
schools chancellor who now runs Students First, an advocacy group that
works to elect leaders who support changing the employment laws for
teachers. “In an ideal world you would want policies to be passed in the
legislature, but in California there was no movement on that. I think
in this case they were tired of waiting.”
Teachers’
unions nationwide have fought changes in employment laws, contending
that their members must be protected from capricious or vengeful
administrators. In Colorado, where a sweeping law in 2010 created a new
system to evaluate teachers, the unions are suing over a provision that
lets principals decide whether to hire veteran teachers who lost jobs
because of budget cuts or drops in enrollment.
Randi
Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said
in a telephone interview that the California case echoes the fights she
had when she led the teachers’ union in New York, and called the lawsuit
“worse than troubling.”
“It’s
yet another example of not rolling up your sleeves and dealing with a
problem, but instead finding a scapegoat,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They
are not suing about segregation or funding or property tax systems — all
the things you really need to get kids a level playing field. They want
to strip teachers of any rights to a voice.”
State
education laws across the country are changing. School districts in 29
states use poor effectiveness as grounds for dismissal, according to a
report released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a
Washington-based think tank that tracks teacher policies. Just five
years ago, no states allowed student performance to be considered in
teachers’ evaluations, said Kate Walsh, the executive director of the
center. Now, 20 states require such data.
“We
have really seen mountains move in some places — the trend in the
country has been toward meaningful ways to evaluate teachers and to use
that evaluation to make tenure decisions,” Ms. Walsh said in an
interview. “But I don’t think anyone has figured out how to implement
them particularly well yet.”
Ian Lovett contributed reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment