A loss for students

The California Supreme Court decided this week to leave the state’s teacher tenure law as is. It’s a loss for students. This case dates to 2014, when a Superior Court judge struck down tenure protection and the state’s “last-in-first-out” retention policy for teachers. He ruled in favor of nine students who argued that California’s tenure rules made it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers, and thus leave so many bad teachers in the system that some students (particularly low-income and minority students) don’t get the education guaranteed in the state’s constitution. An appeals court in April overturned that ruling, and Monday the state’s highest court decided not to review it. The national president of the American Federation of Teachers delighted in the court not messing with the appeals court’s ruling “upholding California educators’ due process rights.” And regarding kids’ rights to a decent education taught by competent instructors? Crickets.