In communities from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., the debate over providing job security to teachers while still raising student performance in public schools has reached a fever pitch. In Los Angeles Superior Court, however, a case is being heard that has the potential to change the tone of the dispute.
On March 27, testimony ended in the case of Vergara v. California, in which nine public school students argue that the state of California and the state’s Department of Education are actively denying them an education equal to that of students in other parts of the state. The basis of their argument comes from the 1976 case of Serrano v. Priest, which argues that public school students in California have a constitutional right to “substantially equal opportunities for learning.”
The students claim that due to the state’s tenure, seniority and dismissal statutes for teachers, they are being subjected to teachers of inferior quality whose seniority in their school districts prevents them from being replaced by more competent instructors.
“This system is harming students every day,” said Theodore Boutrous, lead attorney for the students. Boutrous previously worked with the legal team that attempted to overturn Proposition 8, California’s now defunct same-sex marriage ban.
“When students are denied this lifeline – when they are told that they are incapable of success or when they are denied the basic building blocks of an education – the effect is catastrophic,” Boutrous said.
While California has more than 300,000 public school teachers, only 91 tenured teachers have been removed from classrooms in the last 10 years, according to the nonprofit Students Matter, which sponsored the lawsuit. Of these 91 teachers, only 19 were removed for poor classroom performance. The process of removing a tenured teacher in California can take as long as 10 years and cost millions of dollars. Once tenured — a process that takes only 18 months in California — teachers are considered permanent employees, fireable only for misconduct.
The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers have both joined this case as defendants. The state’s teacher unions are taking the position that this case is being encouraged by corporate education reformers such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee, former Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor.
Many have complained that the push toward educational reform is anti-union and even union-busting, encourages the diverting of public school funding to private and charter schools and is in league with educational companies such as Pearson, which profit from the preparation of assessment tests and computer-aided educational materials.
“One thing I can tell you for sure is that teachers matter,” said Raylene Monterroza, a high school junior and co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, who spoke to reporters during a recess. “It’s crazy that anyone thinks teachers don’t matter. When I’ve had great teachers, I’ve felt like my dreams were possible.
“Having teachers, who believed in me and cared about whether I learned and grew as a student or not, made all the difference in the world. But when I had teachers who seemed like they didn’t even want to be there and couldn’t teach, I had to find a way out.”
Outside of California, teacher evaluations have grown to be a hot-button issue. In New York, the question is whether it is fair to incorporate Common Core testing results in teacher evaluations. With the state’s education department downplaying the importance of the test and dismissing it as having any say in a student’s grade promotion, battle lines are being drawn in Albany over whether teachers should be held accountable for Common Core results.
In Minnesota, the rollout of the statewide teacher evaluation system is meeting resistance, with opponents trying to push back its implementation until the 2015-2016 school year. The delay — supported by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — would be the second delay since the system’s passage in 2011.