“As the state’s highest court, we owe the plaintiffs in this case, as well as schoolchildren throughout California, our transparent and reasoned judgment on whether the challenged statutes deprive a significant subset of students of their fundamental right to education and violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws”, he said.
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In a split decision, the California Supreme Court decided Monday that it will not hear a case challenging tenure and other job protections for public school teachers in the state. These low-quality teachers, he said, were more likely to be concentrated at low-income, heavily-minority schools, and as a result the state was providing unequal educational opportunities to certain groups. Liu goes on to detail numerous absurd rules and practices making firing bad teachers so hard in California, and overall believes that “Because the questions presented have obvious statewide importance, and because they involve a significant legal issue on which the Court of Appeal likely erred, this court should grant review” despite four of his colleagues disagreeing.
The case was watched closely by teachers all over the country-and right here in Monterey County-as their job security was in question.
Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar echoed those concerns in a separate dissent.
In a 2014 ruling, a trial court judge threw out teacher job protections, saying the damage to students “shocks the conscience”.
That opinion of Judge Treu’s was overturned on appeal in April of this year, basically on the grounds that, although the policies certainly harmed California students, the statutes in and of themselves (the specific things being legally challenged), as opposed to their implementation, did not have a disparate impact on any specific legally recognizable group such that an “equal protection” challenge can stand. Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, said the teacher-tenure lawsuits were a distraction from more important education issues such as expanding preschool access and recruiting more teachers of color.
Teachers have long argued that tenure protects them from being fired on a whim, preserves academic freedom and helps attract talented people to a profession that doesn’t pay well. “You can’t fire your way to a better public education system”.
Minnesota parents suing the state over teachers union protections say their lawsuit will continue despite the failure of a similar case in California. “The reformers in California turned to it because the Legislature was locked up by unions”.
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Welch of Students Matter said, in a statement, that the fight over education equality is not over.
