(02/04/14) Reprinted from California Federation of Teachers
Vergara trial begins, and so does media circus
On Monday, January 27, 2004 the Vergara vs. State of California trial began. The high priced legal team arguing the case includes Ted Olsen, who presented the argument for the “Bush” side of Bush v. Gore. CFT and CTA issued a joint statement as the trial began, and CFT president Joshua Pechthalt has appeared on a number of local radio programs and TV news segments discussing the case, and one of our members from the ABC Federation of Teachers, Laurie Lacar, was quoted in a national Associated Press story. The arguments will look familiar to anyone who went through the 2005 Schwarzenegger special election, when Proposition 74 singled out K-12 teachers for attack. This time it’s “tenure,” seniority, and due process rights during dismissal in the crosshairs. Vergara is another in the long line of billionaire-backed education “reform” efforts. What’s new is using the courts to push something that has failed at the ballot box and in the Legislature.
What’s at stake in the Vergara law suit?
Last year a group calling itself “Students Matter,” funded by David Welch, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire, filed a lawsuit, Vergara v. the State of California. The lawsuit challenges a number of constitutional rights for California’s teachers, including “tenure,” due process rights, and seniority rights during layoffs. The suit, hiding behind a group of students, alleges that these teacher workplace rights infringe the constitutional right of students to an equal education. CFT and CTA joined the defense last year, challenging Vergara as a “…meritless lawsuit by corporate special interests attacking teacher professional rights.”
The lawsuit ignores the real problems of public education
Education Code rules to protect teacher rights from administrative mismanagement are not "unfair" to either students or new teachers. What harms students? Economic inequality, poverty, their parents' joblessness, and underfunding are unfair to students. But this lawsuit ignores these barriers to educational success. The premise of "Vergara" is that public schools are failing, and bad teachers are the reason why. Get rid of the “bad teachers,” and the schools will succeed. This simplistic idea is wrong in a number of ways. Most public schools are successes, by most reasonable measures; and while the role of the teacher is always an important in-school factor, external factors like poverty and underfunding have the greatest impact.
Stripping teachers of their workplace professional rights will harm, not improve, student learning
Anti-public education “reformers” are forever repeating that rules and regulations make it impossible to fire "bad teachers." Here are the facts. During the first two years of a teacher's career, a lengthy probation period, administrators can fire them for any reason, or for no reason at all. After that, the requirements are for the administrator to document the problem necessitating the teacher's dismissal, and convince two out of three people on a panel of experts to agree. That's it. A teacher's simple right to a hearing before dismissal is not unfair to students. To the contrary: students need a stable, experienced teaching workforce, not a revolving door of educators.
This attack on the teaching profession will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers
Attracting and retaining teachers has always been one of the biggest problems in the field of education. Teaching is a difficult, underpaid, and too often undervalued profession – and recent attacks like “Vergara” have only worsened these problems. Most teachers leave the field within the first five years. We need to be encouraging teachers to enter the profession and stay—not demonize them. The laws targeted in this case provide due process when a teacher is accused of misconduct or poor performance, and objectivity in times of layoff. These laws benefit the education system as a whole.
“Tenure” protects academic freedom
The right to a hearing before dismissal (what people call “tenure”) became law through the understanding that political pressures and arbitrary actions of administrators could and often did destroy academic freedom: the right to teach to academic standards and curriculum in a balanced fashion, with all points of view aired, rather than through one viewpoint. The need for academic freedom, and therefore for “tenure,” was demonstrated repeatedly, for instance, during the McCarthy era. Note also the case of Sal Castro, an historic figure who advocated for ethnically relevant courses for Latino students in Los Angeles in the 1960s. The district dismissed him essentially for being an advocate for students and he was only able to get his job back when the community organized for mass actions and took over the school board to get him reinstated. Educators play a special role in a democratic society in challenging assumptions and raising difficult questions. This is not true in many countries where the state dictates all.
Seniority is transparent and fair, and not the reason why layoffs occur
Another wrong premise is the assumption in "Vergara" that seniority order dismissal during layoffs means bad teachers are kept while good teachers are dismissed. The problem with layoffs is not seniority. The problem is the underfunding that causes the layoffs—lack of revenues, exacerbated by the ongoing aftereffects of the economic recession. It is more accurate to say low tax rates on the rich has caused our funding crisis for public education, hence layoffs, then to pretend that orderly dismissal rules are "unfair" to new teachers.
Seniority is the only fair, transparent way to administer layoffs. It ensures equal treatment for all teachers. It replaces the arbitrary authority of administrators to rule by whim. Research consistently shows more experienced teachers provide better student learning outcomes than inexperienced teachers. But we all know schools need a mix of younger and more experienced teachers. Younger teachers bring energy and the most recent pedagogy. Older teachers bring wisdom, the knowledge that comes with facing and solving many classroom problems over the years.
The wealthy backers of this suit are not pro-public education; they are anti-union. The funders of "Vergara" do not fit any pro-public education or pro-civil rights profile we know about.