Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
In a win for unions, appeals court reverses ruling that threw out teacher tenure in California
 |
| Beatriz Vergara |
In a win for unions, appeals court reverses ruling that threw
out teacher tenure in California
In a
major victory for unions, a California appeals court reversed a lower court ruling that threw out tenure and other job
protections for the state's public school teachers.
The case was being
closely watched across the country because advocates argued allowing
administrators to more easily fire bad teachers would improve schools and
student performance. Right now, there are a series of job protections that are
evoked before school districts can remove a teacher.
“I think it’s a win
certainly for educators, but also a win for students,” California Teachers
Assn. President Eric C. Heins said of Thursday's ruling. “The trial never made
the connection between the harms they were alleging and the statutes they were
challenging. I think the laws have been working.”
A judge’s 2014 ruling in the case, Vergara vs. California, held
that several key job protections for teachers are so harmful to students that
they deprive children of their constitutional right to an education.
Lawyers representing the
state of California and its powerful teachers unions argued earlier
this year before the three-judge panel that the decision should be
reversed and that the laws in question do not violate students’ rights.
At issue was the
ruling by L.A. County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, which nullified
the state’s system of awarding strong protections for teachers — including
tenure, which takes effect at the end of their second year on the job.
Treu’s decision would have ended
tenure as well as the practice of “last-in, first-out,” which typically results
in districts laying off less-experienced teachers during budget cuts —
regardless of how well they do in their job.
And Treu
also threw out rules that provide teachers a longer and more complex system to
challenge dismissals.
Backers of
the lawsuit argued that making it easier for schools to get rid of bad
teachers would help schools.
Treu
concluded the state's tenure and seniority systems harmed all students,
but especially poor and minority students, leading to outcomes that
"shocked the conscience."
Had the
ruling been upheld, teachers at unionized schools would no longer be
entitled to a level of job security that's rare, even in the public sector.
Opponents,
including Gov. Jerry Brown and the state's teachers unions,
characterize this solution as simplistic and even dangerous.
They say
that killing tenure and seniority would result in a lower-quality teaching
corps, and that the profession would attract and retain fewer of the sort of
talented people who have other career options.
The
plaintiffs said they plan to appeal the ruling. Lead counsel Theodore Boutrous
called the ruling a “temporary setback” in a statement, adding that the Court
of Appeals “mistakenly” blames school districts. “The mountain of evidence we
put on at trial proved … that the irrational, arbitrary, and abominable laws at
issue in this case shackle school districts and impose severe and irreparable
harm on students,” Boutrous said.
But
the ruling’s strong and direct language would make it difficult for the
plaintiffs to win an appeal with the California Supreme Court, an expert
said. The ruling repeats that the plaintiffs did not offer enough evidence
to show that teacher tenure statutes are themselves unconstitutional, said
Stuart Biegel, a UCLA education and law professor.
For the
Record
5:02 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly
said the court ruled that the plaintiffs did not have enough evidence to show
teacher tenure statutes are not in themselves unconstitutional. It has been
corrected.
------------
“This
shows that it’s not going to be so easy to win such a case in a court of
law” in other states, Biegel said. "But it doesn’t necessarily show
that teacher tenure is alive and well and shouldn’t be reformed.”
“The court
found that it was administrative decisions that caused the harm that plaintiffs
had been discussing,” rather than the statutes themselves, Biegel said.
The
reasoning of the ruling is sound, according to Kevin Welner, a professor at the
University of Colorado-Boulder, and the director of that school’s National
Education Policy Center.
“The case
is built by two different houses of cards, one stacked on the other: the
factual record and how they were presenting the law,” he said. “The appellate
court knocked down both houses here.”
The ruling
should send a message to Treu because it was unanimous and went through the
lower ruling point by point, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American
Federation of Teachers union. “The lower court judge basically ruled on
his ideology, not on the evidence,” she said.
Weingarten
acknowledges that the current tenure laws are problematic, and said that the
state of California should “work together” to improve them. But, she added,
“you can’t fire your way to a teaching force.”
Vergara
has caused small ripple effects across the country. A similar suit supported by
the Partnership for Educational Justice, an organization founded by former CNN
news anchor Campbell Brown, is ongoing in New York.
On
Wednesday, the organization announced another lawsuit against
tenure, this time in Minnesota. There, four mothers filed suit, alleging
that the state’s tenure and teacher dismissal laws are unconstitutional because
they impede their children’s ability to access a constitutionally
promised "general and uniform" and “thorough and efficient” public
school system.
The
statutes, the parents allege, “perpetuate Minnesota’s opportunity
gaps."
In
California, blaming administrators rather than the system as it is set up
wouldn’t have as much of a national reach, said Mark Paige, a public policy
professor at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
“They
wanted the knockout punch, and had they gotten that through sort of a
systemwide strike-down, then the dominoes could have fallen in Minnesota and in
New York,” Paige said. “But had they gone with a … focus it probably wouldn’t
have served the objective of striking down tenure entirely.”
This case
has brought much-needed attention to the way that state teacher tenure and
layoff policies, paired with local agreements between teachers unions and
school districts, cause high-need students to get stuck with inexperienced
teachers and high turnover of those teachers, Strunk said.
Even if a higher court maintains
this decision, Strunk said, “we’re seeing a lot of pressure on state
legislatures to do something.”
California
Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes, who represents Yucca Valley, said in a
statement that he disagreed with the ruling, though he added that the
Legislature can and should act on tenure without a court mandate.
“Legislators
in Sacramento have the tools available right now to end bad policies such as
‘Last In, First Out’ and our currently flawed teacher tenure system,”
Mayes said. “It is time to stop defending laws that are clearly
indefensible and deprive low-income and minority students of a good education.”
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