Los Angeles Superior Court ruled in favor of Vergara in 2014, but an appeals court overturned that decision in April, which sent the matter to the California Supreme Court. A bad teacher can do a lot of damage, to students and to taxpayers who pay for the lost potential and unearned paychecks, and often those teachers, driven out of rich school districts, end up in front of the state’s poorest and most vulnerable children.
Advertisement
The challenged policies regarded how hard it is to fire bad teachers, and seniority rules that dictate that when teachers are let go, performance isn’t considered in the decision.
The New York defendants are now waiting to argue before an appeals court that the lawsuit should be tossed, after a Staten Island judge declined to dismiss the suit.
Justices Ming Chin, Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar dissented, arguing the petition should have been granted.
As the case has wound through court, state lawmakers have actually changed some of the disputed laws: They lengthened the period needed to earn tenure to four years, and altered the statewide teacher-evaluation system.
Boutrous said additional lawsuits in state and federal court challenging the teacher tenure law were possible. Knowing the difference is as fundamental as education itself.
The Burlingame-based California Teachers Association and Burbank-based California Federation of Teachers were allowed to join the case as parties defending the laws, which the unions said encourage veteran teachers to stay in the profession and young people to join it.
The Vergara v. State of California lawsuit, including Beatriz Vergara among the public school student plaintiffs, was backed by Students Matter, a nonprofit group founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch. What was instead fatal to the claim advanced on behalf of the arbitrarily burdened children, according to the appellate court, was plaintiffs’ failure to prove the existence of an identifiable group treated differently by the challenged laws, a group separate and apart from the individuals allegedly harmed by those laws.
While the 2012 case exclusively concerned the Golden State’s teacher-tenure laws, some of the most robust in the nation, it was widely seen as the forefront of a national movement to use the courts to bring down job protections that some in the education reform community contend keep bad teachers in the classroom. This was a heavy burden and one plaintiffs did not carry.
“I am disappointed”, said Mayes.
Three of the seven Supreme Court justices wanted the court to hear the case.
Dozens of states have moved in recent years to get rid of such protections or raise the standards for obtaining them.
Advertisement
“These laws help reduce teacher attrition”, he said.
