Not a surprise:
A new advocacy group is helping parents
prepare a challenge to New York's teacher tenure and seniority laws,
contending that they violate children's constitutional right to a sound
basic education by keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms.
Campbell
Brown, a former CNN anchor who has been a critic of job protections for
teachers, launched the group, Partnership for Educational Justice, in
December. She said six students have agreed to serve as plaintiffs,
arguing they suffered from laws making it too expensive, time-consuming
and burdensome to fire bad teachers.
The
preparations to challenge the state's tenure laws this summer follow a
landmark ruling in California earlier this month. Los Angeles Superior
Court Judge Rolf M. Treu struck down the state's laws on tenure,
dismissal and seniority, saying they disproportionately saddled poor and
minority students with incompetent teachers. Evidence that ineffective
teachers hurt learning, he wrote, "shocks the conscience."
California
unions that intervened in the case, Vergara v. California, said they
would appeal, and legal analysts predicted the ruling would inspire
similar suits around the country.
Carl
Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers, said his union
believes the Vergara decision will be overturned, and the facts are
different in New York than in California. While he said that New York's
new evaluation system has flaws, it aims to bolster teacher quality.
"The
system is designed to help all teachers improve, and for those who
struggle or don't belong in the system, to remove them in an expedited
hearing," he said.
Michael Mulgrew,
president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City,
said by email: "It is a shame so many so-called 'reformers' can't find a
way to do something that would actually help students, teachers and
schools."
Ms. Brown wants a verdict in
her group's case to spur legislators to come up with better education
policies. "My hope is this would be a wake-up call to politicians who
failed to solve these problems for years," she said.
Her
team has been meeting with parents to find plaintiffs. One is Jada
Williams in Rochester, who wrote a seventh-grade essay complaining about
teachers who she said gave no real instruction and failed to manage
unruly students. Her mother, Carla, said in an interview: "When a child
in class is educationally neglected, that's a criminal act."
David Welch,
the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who financed Students Matter, the
advocacy group that filed the Vergara suit, has given Ms. Brown
guidance, and came to a meeting of about 30 people at her apartment in
April to discuss it, she said. A mother of two children in private
school, Ms. Campbell said she gave seed money to the Partnership for
Educational Justice. She declined to disclose other donors. She has
applied for nonprofit status.
Jay Lefkowitz,
a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis, is leading the New York
case pro bono. Mr. Lefkowitz, a former deputy assistant to President
George W. Bush,
fought for Wisconsin's school vouchers and prevailed through the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr.
Lefkowitz said "it boggles the mind" that in the New York education
system the vast majority of teachers were rated effective or better last
year even though 69% of students in grades three through eight didn't
pass state proficiency tests.
"The
system lacks integrity and students are being forced to pay the price,"
he said. Unions often note that many factors affect learning, such as
poverty and parent involvement.
Mr.
Lefkowitz said he plans to challenge statutes mandating that during
budget cuts, districts must dismiss the newest teachers first, with no
consideration of their performance. Unions have long argued that without
seniority rules, districts would lay off more highly paid veterans to
save money.
He said he will also
challenge what he said are overly complicated disciplinary procedures
that dissuade administrators from trying to revoke tenure; some of these
cases have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Union
officials emphasize that tenure doesn't guarantee a job for life, but
enforces due process to shield teachers from arbitrary firings, nepotism
and vindictive bosses. A district may seek to revoke tenure if a
teacher gets two bad annual ratings in a row.
Mr.
Lefkowitz plans to argue teachers are granted tenure before it is clear
they deserve it. In New York, teachers generally get tenure at the end
of three years of acceptable service, but principals can add another
probationary year.
In the California
case, the plaintiffs brought an equal-protection claim, arguing that a
disproportionate share of bad teachers end up in schools serving
disadvantaged students.
The New York
constitution says children have a right to a "sound basic education."
Mr. Lefkowitz plans to argue that laws leading to the retention of
ineffective teachers hurt students no matter what their background. He
said he plans to file the suit in New York Supreme Court in Albany.
I think the plaintiffs in this case will have a more difficult time getting the verdict they want because
a) tenure takes longer to get in NY - many teachers are taking 4 or 5 years before they are getting it in NYC - and many teachers never get tenure at all and just leave the system and
b) APPR effectively ended tenure protections - teachers can be fired two years running if they're rated "ineffective"
The plaintiffs can argue that it costs millions to fire so-called "bad teachers" all they want.
Under APPR, it takes two years of "ineffective" ratings to fire teachers - something that is easily engineered the way the system was devised by the state.
Reformers can also claim that 69% of students were less than proficient on the state exams, so 69% of teachers must be less than effective all they want as well.
That argument is easily countered by the moves the governor and the Legislature made to acknowledge how awful the CCSS implementation was, something that directly affected the state test scores, as well as all the publicity surrounding the SED artificially setting the new CCSS test bar a lot higher than the one for the old tests.
I don't think Campbell Brown and her merry men and women in reform are going to have as easy a time in this kind of suit as the reformers had in the initial Vergara case hearing.
But that doesn't mean they're not going to try.
