Yesterday, Judge Rolf M. Treo upheld the plaintiff's case in the Vergara Trial. He ruled that state teacher tenure laws and seniority rights in California are not constitutional. In his opinion, they harm students by subjecting them to ineffective teachers.
Los Angeles schools chief, John Deasy agreed. "Nothing we do in our schools is more important to the education of the child than the quality of his or her teacher." That makes for a nice, cheap solution to the "education crisis," especially if you are cheap in paying your teachers!
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, seemed to wish to take this decision a step further and strike down tenure across the country. In his words, "The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. Today's court decision is a mandate to fix these problems."
These people know not what they do. In a system of accountability based largely upon student test scores, the most talented teachers will be driven away from working with the neediest children in their underfunded, overcrowded classrooms. This is a tragedy.
I doubt Treo, Boutrous, Jr., Deasy and Duncan could survive a year teaching the neediest children under those conditions. When Obama and Duncan are ushered into schools, they seem to find sanitized versions. I would really like them to try to read a story in a classroom in which students have trouble sitting down, staying on task, understanding English or keeping their furniture on the ground.
This is just another move by which corporate-backed reformers wish to divert attention from underlying socio-economic problems by crucifying public-school teachers. What they do not realize is that they will also crucify the students. No teacher in his or her right mind will want to work in the schools that need the best teachers the most. The best teachers will flee. Will educational deformers then try to erect a Berlin Wall of education and commandeer their labor force like a modern-day Khymer Rouge?
I pity teachers with poor administrators and students living in poverty. They will face a double challenge. They will suffer at the hands of students under their care who suffer from "ineffective" test scores and they will suffer at the hands of vindictive administrators above them. They will be crushed from both sides.
There are too many stories of principals of questionable integrity. A recent NY Post article pointed to Principal Smolkin, still on the job after forging letters of complaint about his teachers, in one case charging the union rep. who questioned school policies with pedophilia. Who would want to become a teacher in such times or at such a school? If many of us could rewind the clock, would we still be in any classroom given the politics outside of it?
I have no doubt that this decision will be appealed and overturned in the name of sanity and the awful precedent it sets. College professors would no longer be secure. Older workers would face layoffs in so many professions. They would be targeted as "grossly ineffective," despite their experience, as an excuse for legalized age discrimination in a bid to hire a newer, cheaper labor force.
I'm betting Judge Treo does not have lifetime tenure. I'm betting he is subject to political pressures, perhaps, even the need to refinance a re-election campaign. I might be wrong, but I don't see how a judge with lifetime tenure, shielding him from the whims of politics, would have the gall to make such a decision. And, I don't see how anyone with any knowledge of the realities of the classroom could recognize in this court decision overall long-term benefits for our neediest students. It is open season on teachers in California and students will be caught in the metaphorical crossfire.
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