“This is a B- student’s opinion”: Why the education reformers’ latest victory is built on sand
Michelle Rhee may love the recent anti-union ruling from California, but an expert tells Salon it's seriously weak
Just a little more than a week ago, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treudelivered his ruling on Vergara v. California, a potentially landmark case about tenure and seniority rules for California’s public school teachers. Perhaps ironically, the judge, who was first appointed by Pete Wilson —the state’s former Republican governor, who is now largely remembered for pushing an anti-immigrant measure that many believe turned a generation of California Latinos irrevocably against the GOP — found that tenure rules made it far too difficult for administrators to fire underperforming teachers, harming poor (largely non-white) children in the process.
Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest names in the so-called education reform movement were overjoyed. The case, which was brought forward by Silicon Valley-backed nonprofit Students Matter, resulted in a ruling that was, according to Michelle Rhee, “a clear win for all children in California public schools” as well as “a huge win for California educators and the teaching profession as a whole.” Rhee also praised Treu’s decision to frame the ruling around racial equality, writing that, in her mind, the case “has always been about civil rights.” Treu’s ruling, Rhee announced, was an affirmation of “the simple and undeniable premise that every child deserves equal access to a quality education — regardless of his or her race, ZIP code or family circumstances.”
Tabling the question of whether Vergara is good policy (the Atlantic says probably not; National Review says absolutely yes), Salon wanted to explore whether the ruling is good law. To that end, we called up UCLA School of Law professor Jonathan Zasloff to talk about the constitutional theory undergirding Treu’s decision as well as the quality of the judge’s reasoning. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.