David Berliner—Witness in Vergara Courtroom—Denies He Called Any Teachers “Grossly Ineffective”
Last week I blogged on the California teacher tenure decision in Vergara v. California. I concluded overall that, “The Vergara attorneys sought to portray the needs of children as separate and very different from the needs of their teachers. In fact, teachers and children in our poorest communities share the need for society to invest in improving their public schools.”
But what had struck me as I read the decision was the supposed statistical evidence incorporated right into the decision itself by Judge Rolf Treu to prove that tenure among teachers violates the civil rights of California’s poorest children of color. I was particularly struck by the judge’s interpretation of evidence from respected education researcher David Berliner, professor emeritus at Arizona State University and a long supporter of teachers and their need for unions. I wrote about my puzzlement: “In one case the judge seems to have extrapolated from what he heard—from expert David Berliner, who is described to have “testified that 1–3 % of teachers in California are grossly ineffective.” Treu continues, “Given that the evidence showed roughly 275,000 active teachers in this state, the extrapolated number of grossly ineffective teachers ranges from 2,750 to 8,250.”
I thank Diane Ravitch who posted The Statistical Error at the Heart of the Vergara Decision, for bringing to my attention an important piece published on June 12 by Jordan Weissmann, the senior business and economics correspondent for Slate. Weissmann interviewed David Berliner by telephone about his testimony that between one and three percent of California’s teachers are grossly ineffective: “But where did this number come from? Nowhere, it turns out. It’s made up. Or a ‘guesstimate,’ as David Berliner, the expert witness Treu quoted, explained to me when I called him on Wednesday. It’s not based on any specific data, or any rigorous research about California schools in particular. ‘I pulled that out of the air,’ sayDavid Berliner—Witness in Vergara Courtroom—Denies He Called Any Teachers “Grossly Ineffective” | janresseger: