A rigged class system
ACalifornia appeals court has struck down a landmark ruling declaring that state’s restrictive teacher tenure laws to be unconstitutional. Students who brought the case will now appeal to the state’s top court. The plaintiffs in Vergara vs. California must be vindicated, and the statutes in question must be struck down.
The same should be said for similar laws on the books in New York State, where the worst teachers are typically foisted on the neediest kids, and where a lawsuit inspired by Vergara is currently in the courts.
Two years ago at trial, Judge Rolf Treu weighed reams of evidence about the unequal education offered California’s high-poverty, low-performing schools, which predominantly serve black and Latino students. He and the world learned of a moral scandal: Toothless dismissal statutes shuffle the worst teachers around, where they almost inevitably wind up teaching the neediest students. That hurts kids.
Seniority-based layoff provisions make the jobs of newbie teachers first in line to be slashed, no matter how exemplary they may be, and protect the jobs of more experienced ones, no matter how awful. That hurts kids.
And because of laws that grant near-total employment protection to educators after a brief initial review period, it can take up to a decade and cost up to a half-million dollars to remove a teacher for educational malpractice — a burden so high it leaves poor teachers in classrooms, and disproportionately in the classrooms of low income and minority students. That hurts kids.
Not least, evidence introduced in the case and endorsed by the ruling shot an arrow into the heart of the old myth that teachers and schools are powerless to reverse the effects of poverty.
In fact, according to expert analysis offered by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty, a student assigned to a grossly ineffective math teacher — almost sure to be a disadvantaged student — loses nearly a full year of learning each year, as compared to a student assigned to a teacher of average effectiveness.
Wrote Treu in his ruling: “Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of grossly ineffective teachers on students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”
The three-judge appeals panel now says while the laws might not be wonderful, that’s a policy question, not a matter for the courts.
But when laws conspire to make it impossible for schools and districts to make sane decisions in the best interests of their students — and when the result is to systematically deprive young people of the quality instruction they most desperately need — that’s not just a shame.
It’s an outrageous affront to the right of students, especially the low-income students for whom public schools are supposed to be an escape hatch from poverty.
That’s true on the West Coast — and the East.