BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the California Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling in the teacher tenure case, Vergara v. California, bringing to a close an effort by so-called school reformers to challenge tenure and other rights of K-12 teachers protected by state law. The Vergara litigation was closely watched across the country as a test…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a unanimous decision issued today (April 14), a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal for the Second District overturned the infamous lower court decision in Vergara v. State of California, which had declared tenure and seniority protections for K-12 teachers enshrined in California’s Education Code unconstitutional. Los Angeles County…
BY HANK REICHMAN In June, 2014, California Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu overturned California statutes guaranteeing due process protections for K-12 teachers with more than two years experience (so-called “teacher tenure”) and layoff by seniority. The case, Vergara v. California, was the topic of a number of entries on this blog. The basic argument…
A bit more than a year ago a California Superior Court, ruling in Vergara v. California, overturned California statutes guaranteeing due process protections for K-12 teachers with more than two years experience (so-called “teacher tenure”) and layoff by seniority. At the time I posted several items on the case, first here, then here, here, and…
California Governor Gerry Brown has appealed a state judge’s horrendous ruling that threw out teacher job protection laws on the ground that they deprived students of their constitutional rights. In a one-page appeal filed yesterday, Brown and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris argued that a decision of such breadth should be made by a…
It should be crystal clear from my two previous posts (here and here) on the topic that not only do I oppose the recent California Superior Court decision in Vergara v. California, which overturned California statutes guaranteeing “teacher tenure” and layoff by seniority for the state’s K-12 teachers, I have also questioned its legal rationale. …
The Plaintiffs’ Teachers Were Not Actually “Grossly Ineffective” This is excerpted from David B. Cohen’s post on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, and the bulk of the excerpt is a passage from a post-trial brief: “I was curious to learn whether the plaintiffs in the Vergara trial actually had ‘grossly ineffective teachers.’ The answer is ‘no, they…
Yesterday I published a post on this blog entitled “The Vergara Decision and the Threat to Tenure,” in which I discussed the potential direct and indirect impact on higher education of a recent California Superior Court decision voiding the state’s K-12 “teacher tenure” laws and summarizing and excerpting some of the critical response that has…
Last week’s appalling California Superior Court decision in Vergara v. California, which overturned California statutes guaranteeing due process protections for K-12 teachers with more than two years experience (so-called “teacher tenure”) and layoff by seniority, has engendered considerable concern among instructors in higher education. To what extent does this decision threaten the protections of the…
Dear Secretary Duncan: Yesterday, when political ideologues were running full page ads attacking teachers and calling kids garbage — I was in the small town of Emporia, Kansas helping to dedicate a memorial to educators who made the ultimate sacrifice for their students. The headlines in the last few days have been dominated by political…