Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Vergara v. California's Corporate Heart | California Progress Report

Vergara v. California's Corporate Heart | California Progress Report:



Vergara v. California's Corporate Heart

Posted on 25 February 2014
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly versionSend by emailSend by email
By Julie Gutman Dickinson



Are job protections for teachers to blame for educational underachievement among low-income students of color in California? That’s the provocative question ostensibly at the heart of Vergara vs. California, which seeks to invalidate the tenure, due process and seniority rights of hundreds of thousands of educators.
Astute observers of the nation’s escalating education wars, however, may be asking another question: When did it become permissible to use the welfare of children as a fig leaf for an all-out legal attack on teachers?
Or, as historian and teacher John Thompson wrote recently in Scholastic, “Are corporate reformers unabashedly using the courts as a battleground for battering employees’ rights, as opposed to helping children?”
Sadly, the answer to Thompson’s question appears to be an unequivocal yes. For while the outcome of Vergara will have far-reaching national implications, it is hardly unique in its attempt to scapegoat teachers for sub-par educational performance. Similar efforts are underway across the country, as some so-called “education reformers” seek to simultaneously privatize public education and weaken the hard-won protections of teachers.
Though efforts to remake public education have attracted both Democrats and Republicans, the three-pronged strategy of austerity, privatization and demonization is familiar to