When I decided to become a teacher, I never imagined I'd have a sword like the one pictured above hanging over the head of my profession and see the balance weighted against public education by thirty pieces of silver on one side. My profession, indeed, the very foundations upon which my livelihood rests, have come under constant attack in court.
In a short span of time, one's head could spin from all the court cases. First, there was the Vergara decision of June 10th, bankrolled by a Silicon Valley magnate named David Welch, living in Atherton, California, the wealthiest zip code in the U.S. In this case, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge decided that California's tenure law threatens students' basic rights to a sound education by shielding "grossly ineffective" teachers.
Most of the poorest teachers seem to work with the poorest students! The court didn't say how we could distinguish between "grossly ineffective teachers" and the grossly inadequate conditions in which some students live. How convenient to deal in logical fallacies and equate correlation with causality. Who could truly believe that the most glaring thing that separates inhabitants of Atherton from those of an inner city is a handful of "grossly ineffective teachers"? Yet, some of the wealthiest come down from their mansions on the hill to lead this witch hunt with torches in hand. They take it into a land in which teachers dedicate their lives to trying to help some of the neediest children in overcrowded, underfunded schools! At least one of the "grossly ineffective teachers" they pounced upon turned out to be a former Teacher of the Year. The Vergara decision will surely be appealed and one hopes sound logic will prevail.
Then, there is the case of Harris v. Quinn, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this week, striking a qualified blow at unions. The plaintiffs in this case, home health-care workers in Illinois, used the First Amendment to attack the power of unions to collect proportional "fair share" fees from individuals who do not join the union, but still benefit from collective bargaining agreements. Although the nurses won a victory, the decision stopped short of knocking down Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) which allows 26 states to require their public-sector employees to pay union dues. The home healthcare workers were identified as something different from full-fledged state employees. It was stated that the decision therefore cannot apply to all public-sector unions. Who knows though when this issue will be revisited again?
I saw some good news coming out of the courts in Chicago the other day. The Illinois Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and other unions sued to protect the rights of public-sector employees to their pensions. In Kanerva v. Weems, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the Pension Clause in the Illinois State Constitution, stating that the benefits "cannot be diminished or impaired," including health benefits. Hallelujah! Good news seems hard to find.
In one last piece of news, I read that the NYC Parents Union, led by Sam Pirozzolo and Mona Davids, has filed a suit on behalf of 11 students in Staten Island, challenging the tenure of NY teachers. If anything, suits like these will cause more talented teachers to flee the most challenging schools in even greater numbers. As it stands now, the teachers working in impoverished neighborhoods often do not stay long enough to earn tenure. Who wants to be a sitting duck with none of the due-process protections of tenure? How many will wish the swift sword of "justice" to fall upon their heads for trying to help students living in poverty, some with disabilities, and others with language deficiencies, succeed amid inhospitable conditions? Who wants to be a martyr? How about Mona Davids and Sam Pirozzolo? How about David Welch?
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