The landmark Vergara case: Ten years in the rearview.
When bad teachers turn up in well-to-do school districts, engaged parents make enough noise to get those teachers transferred out of the school. And where do bad teachers end up? In low-income districts where parents are less likely to buck the system. It’s poor kids that get stuck with failing teachers.
Ten years ago, that was the plaintiff’s argument in Vergara v. the State of California and the California Teachers Association, a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight California students. The student plaintiffs attended schools in four districts, though the complaint targeted only two — Los Angeles Unified and Alum Rock Elementary Unified in San Jose.
The students argued that provisions of California’s education code — rigid tenure rules, a seniority-based firing system that ignores teacher quality, and a “due-process” system that makes it all but impossible to remove incompetent or criminal teachers — violate student rights. As a result of these “arbitrary distinctions” in teacher hiring and firing, the complaint read, “children of substantially equal age, aptitude, motivation, and ability do not have substantially equal access to education,” violating the equal protection provisions of the California Constitution.
In other words, the litigation wanted to make teaching a job whereby the good teachers stayed and the bad ones were shown the door, just like in the private sector.
Just to show how skewed and screwed up the system was at the time (and still is), on average, just 2.2 of the state’s 300,000 teachers (0.0008 percent) were dismissed for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory performance in any given year. This compares to 8 percent of employees in the private sector dismissed annually for cause.
After all the legal wrangling and predictable teachers union palavering, Judge Rolf Treu issued an unequivocal decision on June 10, 2014. In his 16-page ruling — a resounding victory for students and a crushing defeat for the teachers unions and the California governing elite — Judge Treu did not mince words. He found that the plaintiffs met their burden of proof on all the issues, writing, “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience...” He concluded with, “All Challenged Statutes are found unconstitutional….”
But the education establishment in California just could not abide the decision. In August 2014, Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a one-page notice of appeal indicating the state would fight the Vergara ruling. In April 2016, the Court of Appeals shocked the plaintiffs by overturning the original decision. Some of the wording in the ruling was quite interesting: “Critically, plaintiffs failed to show that the statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students.”
Or in plainer English, “All kids are hurt by crappy teachers, so get over it.”
Sadly, in 2016, California’s Supreme Court declined to review the case in a 4-3 split decision, thereby upholding the challenged statutes.
So where are we now? Just 34% of California 4th-graders scored proficient in math on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). And, only 30 percent of California eighth-graders scored proficient in reading on the pre-pandemic 2019 NAEP. Not surprisingly, California’s student enrollment has dropped by 110,000 students. Part of the reason for the exit is that families are leaving the state, but many of those who remain have taken to alternatives — charters, private schools and homeschooling.
For the first time in over 20 years, the state has dropped below the 6 million student mark. While the leavers’ reasons vary, many are just fed up with the malign influence of the teachers unions.
Read the full article by Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.
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