Teachers unions battle court ruling on tenure laws
The fate of nearly a century of job-security protections for California teachers is in the hands of a state appellate court, which is preparing to review a judge’s bombshell ruling that found tenure and seniority laws protect incompetent instructors, serve no educational purpose and, in particular, discriminate against poor and minority students.
The state and teachers unions have launched a frontal attack on the June 2014 ruling, arguing that neither the judge nor the nine student plaintiffs in the well-funded suit presented any evidence that the laws have harmed students or violated their constitutional rights.
In written arguments filed this month with the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers said the laws are based on sound policies — tenure protects experienced teachers from arbitrary or politically motivated dismissals, and basing layoffs on seniority is an objective process that promotes educational quality.
But the unions said those policy questions are legally irrelevant, because the students who filed the suit never showed that the laws affected their education. They showed no evidence that they were taught by an incompetent teacher who would have been fired or laid off had it not been for tenure or seniority protections, the unions said.
“The challenged statutes do not target plaintiffs (or any identifiable group of students) for discriminatory treatment,” said lawyers for the unions, which represent about 400,000 teachers. “None of the plaintiffs established that the challenged statutes ever caused them any harm or will do so in the future.”
Courts or Legislature?
Representing the state, Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office told the court that the California Constitution “does not give courts the right to make policy judgments of this sort,” but leaves those decisions to the Legislature.
The ruling in June by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu was the first to strike down a teacher tenure law in any state. The appellate court will hear the case late this year or early next year. If its ruling is appealed further, the case could reach the state Supreme Court by the end of 2016.
Although the laws remain in effect during the appeal, the nonprofit Students Matter, which filed the suit, said it is confident of winning appellate rulings that will require fundamental changes in the system.
The briefs by the state and the unions “recycle many of the same flawed arguments that (Treu) considered and rejected at trial, and fail to rebut any of the trial court’s findings that California’s teacher tenure, dismissal and layoff laws violate the constitutional rights of students throughout California,” the group, founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, said in a statement.
The tenure laws, which date from 1921, allow a school to fire a teacher for any reason during the first two years of employment, but a dismissal after that requires a showing of “good cause” before an independent panel. The seniority laws say schools must dismiss the least-experienced teachers first during layoffs, but make exceptions for newer teachers whose specialized training and experience meet the district’s needs.
Treu’s ruling followed an eight-week trial that included testimony by four students, one parent and competing groups of experts. He found that the laws violate the right of students to educational equality and “impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.” The latter finding was based on a 2007 state report that found that students at “high-poverty, low-performing schools” were more likely than others to be taught by inexperienced and unqualified teachers.
'Grossly ineffective’
Treu also said two years is too short to evaluate teacher competency, the dismissal procedures are so expensive and time-consuming that many schools don’t even try to dismiss “grossly ineffective” teachers, and the seniority rules shield incompetence.
“Grossly ineffective teachers are being left in the classroom because school officials do not wish to go through the time and expense to investigate and prosecute those cases,” the judge said.
President Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, praised the ruling when it was issued and said it gave California an opportunity to build “a new framework for the teaching profession.” After the trial, in the weeks before the ruling, the Legislature quickly passed a law streamlining the dismissal process to shorten timelines and reduce costs. Some legal analysts, Teachers unions battle court ruling on tenure laws - SFGate:
