Educators4Excellence | Raginghorseblog

Educators4Excellence | Raginghorseblog:

Vergara v. California Part One: Thoughts on Hannah Arendt, a New Totalitarianism and Completing The Circle of Domination

April 21, 2014

The Vergara Nine surrounded by handlers.

It is a peculiar, dark and unhinged world in which we dwell and it seems to grow more so all the time. Consider the extraordinary case of Vergara v. California, now winding down and awaiting a judgment. Here we have nine students, bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur David Welch, co-founder of Infinera, and founder of the advocate group StudentsMatter, suing the state of California. The suit claims that teacher tenure laws have denied them their civil rights.

Yes, for those who have not been following the case, you read that correctly.

The claim is that tenure laws — which merely insure that a teacher who has already passed through a probationary period of at least three years has the right to a hearing or due process before he or she is fired — are denying the nine students, a multicultural lot who range from high school seniors to fifth graders, nothing less than their civil rights.

The nine have been represented by the law firm of Dunn, Gibson & Crutcher which includes superstar attorneys Theodore Boutrous and Theodore B. Olson, the latter of whom won the case representing George W. Bush at the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore — not typically the kind of folk you would expect to be interested in civil rights. Given the specious argument of the case and considering who has orchestrated and funded it, teachers naturally believe the real purpose of the suit is to undermine the teachers’ union in California which would surely have a ripple effect across the country. At the start of the trial, Marcellus McCrae, a partner in the firm representing the plaintiffs, denied such a motive and stated that destroying the teachers’ unions is not the suit’s goal.
“Let’s be very clear,” McCrae declared at the beginning of the trial, “ We are not seeking to take away teachers’ rights – only five overly expensive and time-consuming statutes in the education code that prevent the removal of grossly ineffective teachers.”

Somehow the idea of grossly incompetent administrators allowing the continuance of grossly ineffective teachers does not enter into the picture. One of those “five overly expensive and time-consuming statutes” is due process, the removal of which would make the profession of teaching as secure and as dignified as that of a 17-year-old employee of McDonalds.

The students’ suit – if you are hallucinating that students actually initiated this action — demands that the court declare each of Educators4Excellence | Raginghorseblog: