Data and thoughts on public and private school funding in the U.S.
Chronicles of (the conceptually incoherent & empirically invalid) world of VergarNYa
Posted on July 8, 2014
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As with the Vergara case in California, a central claim of the New York City Parents Union is that the presence of statutory tenure protections in New York State leads to a persistent and systematic deprivation of a sound basic education which falls disproportionately on the state’s low income and minority children.
Let’s review again the basic structure of this argument. The argument challenges state statutes that impose restrictions on district contractual agreements pertaining to procedures for evaluation and dismissal of teachers once they achieve “tenure” or continuing contract status.
The argument goes – within districts, minority and low income are disproportionately assigned the “least effective” teachers.
Within districts, minority and low income children are disproportionately affected by assignment of the least qualified teachers, including novice teachers and those not classified as “highly qualified.”
And this occurs because of statutory definitions of and job protections pertaining to “tenure.”
Now, to the extent that substantive disparities of the types mentioned above exist, the next trick is to show some connection to the laws in question.
These laws are presumed to affect all districts which operate under them similarly.
If these laws are unchanged over time, it is presumed that districts have little room to affect positive change in the distribution of teacher attributes when operating under these laws.
If a similar or greater share of variation in teacher attributes actually exists across districts (across separate teacher contracts) as opposed to within, then it is likely that some other factors are Chronicles of (the conceptually incoherent & empirically invalid) world of VergarNYa | School Finance 101:
