In landmark trial, both sides debate whether teacher protection laws fail students

The instructor tenure, seniority and dismissal laws that the nonprofit system Students Affair wants a guess to overturn are essential to create a "professional, stable workforce" and attract teachers into a profession with depression pay and difficult conditions, a land deputy chaser general said Monday at the get-go of the much-anticipatedVergara 5 State of California trial.

"Eliminating due process and job security could bring nigh unintended consequences when California is embarking on innovative efforts," like the Local Control Funding Formula, to improve public schools, Deputy Attorney General Nimrod Elias told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu. The proceedings were streamed over the Net by the Courtroom View Network.

In the lawsuit, nine students from Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified and three other districts are challenging longstanding legal protections that their attorneys say lead to hiring and keeping "grossly ineffective teachers." The suit aims at 5 laws that the plaintiffs say interfere with districts' ability to make constructive decisions: statutes granting tenure or permanent status to probationary teachers after 2 years, mandating instructor layoffs based on years on the job and setting up a circuitous dismissal process that turns over appeals to an independent panel. Considering asymmetric numbers of bad teachers end up teaching poor and minority children, the lawsuit says, the laws violate the state Constitution's guarantee to all children of the opportunity for an equal education and should be thrown out.

Four hours of opening statements Monday revealed lilliputian common ground, with attorneys for the plaintiffs and for the defense agreeing only that, by the nature of a bong curve, some teachers volition exist more effective than others. There was no understanding, nevertheless, on how to identify those teachers; whether any of the 9 plaintiffs actually had the worst teachers; whether the laws or bad managers led to hiring and retaining ineffective teachers; and whether the plaintiffs have overstated teachers' touch on children, compared with factors similar poverty and crowded classrooms.

"Nosotros are non maxim we take all the answers," said plaintiffs' attorney Ted Boutrous. "Nosotros are not saying there are non other problems (in schools). We are non request the court to create an evaluation system. We are non attempting to scapegoat teachers for racism and poverty."

But, he said, the combination of the laws establishing tenure, ensuring layoffs primarily by seniority and creating an "arduous," expensive dismissal process together "create a cruel cycle to harm students every 24-hour interval." They "shackle" superintendents and principals from making the best employment decisions, and the results "scar students for years and sometimes for life."

In response, defense force attorneys said at that place was no evidence linking the statutes to the assignment of ineffective teachers to schools with the neediest students. They disputed the use of educatee exam scores alone, through a "flawed" methodology called Valued Added Measures or VAM, to place grossly ineffective teachers. And they said in that location was no bear witness that the nine pupil plaintiffs had grossly ineffective teachers.

The students, some of whom are now high school students, are expected to appear as witnesses. Beatriz Vergara, for whom the lawsuit is named, volition testify that her Los Angeles Unified teachers roughshod comatose in class and chosen her fellow Hispanic students the derogatory gang term "chollo."

But the defense will call to the stand  teachers whom the plaintiffs identified as ineffective to refute those characterizations. One of those teachers, Christine McLaughlin, a seventh form English language teacher at Pasadena Unified, was selected teacher of the year in Los Angeles County last twelvemonth. Defense attorney James Finberg, representing the California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers, played video testimonial in which students praised her as an inspiring and caring instructor.

Deputy Attorney General Elias acknowledged that some high-poverty schools practice have problems retaining teachers, who move to other schools when they can. But these schools are often "in dangerous areas with hard working atmospheric condition" and a small bidder pool. Throwing out these laws "is not going to break that bicycle," he said. "There is no testify that the laws force districts" to assign teachers to these schools.

The trial, expected to last at least a month, will pit dueling experts. Those for the plaintiffs will include Raj Chetty, a professor of economics at Harvard, whom Boutrous said will nowadays research showing that grossly ineffective teachers – roughly 5 to ten percentage of teachers – create "irreparable harm" for students. Poor teachers lower students' odds of graduating and getting into a good higher, and enhance the odds that students volition become meaning, and, over a lifetime, earn less money and save less for retirement, Boutrous said the research volition testify. Extensive inquiry of more than than a million Los Angeles Unified students over seven years by Harvard Schoolhouse of Teaching Professor Thomas Kane volition establish the loss of a half-year learning for students in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher, as measured by test scores, Boutrous said. And that loss compounds for every additional ineffective teacher a students is affected with, he said.

Just the blame is not the laws just how they're enforced, Finberg said. Nigh districts effectively dismiss teachers and make wise decisions in hiring them.

"Good district management is needed for well-run schools," he said.

 Summary of the arguments

In their opening statements, attorneys outlined the evidence they will present on the laws in question in coming weeks. (To run across the slides that Ted Boutrous presented in his opening statement, go here.)

Tenure law

In California, probationary teachers are at-will employees who can be fired without cause simply who are entitled to permanent status or tenure, with due process protections, after two years.

Plaintiffs: California is an "outlier," one of simply a handful of states with such a short probationary period, Boutrous said. To bring a recommendation of tenure to the school board and meet legal notification requirements, the determination on whether to give tenure must be made by January of the 2nd yr, afterward just 16 months on the chore. Such a brusque time leads to hurried judgments and mistakes.

Defense: Administrators largely agree that they have more than than enough time to identify grossly ineffective teachers, "the worst of the worst," Elias said. "They will prove that they will err on the side of caution," denying permanent status "if they accept any doubts about it."

The nine plaintiffs, including Beatriz Vergara, who brought suit against the state. This slide, without names, was shown in court in opening arguments Monday. Some of the students attended the session.

Dismissal statutes

Plaintiffs: California has "a broken system," Boutrous said, with a "byzantine series of hurdles" leading to a right of appeal earlier a 3-person panel that takes control of employment decisions away from districts. Superintendents volition testify that they lack the resources to go through the arduous process of firing grossly ineffective teachers, he said. Instead, they adopt workarounds: they pay off teachers through settlements; transfer them to other schools, where they become another master's problem; or ship them to "safety rooms," where they are paid not to teach. Even 62 percent of teachers surveyed agreed that students would be better off if ineffective teachers were dismissed, according to economist Eric Hanushek, who will testify.

Defense: Tenure is not a guaranteed job for life, said Finberg, representing the teachers unions. Due-procedure protections insure that districts' decisions volition not be made arbitrarily, and protect teachers from cronyism, favoritism or punishments for teaching content, such every bit development, that some school board members don't similar. The small number of formal dismissals is deceiving. In 80 percent of the 530 dismissal actions filed between 2008-12, teachers reached a settlement or abandoned the challenge. And in most cases that go the full route, the districts have won, Elias said.

Layoffs past seniority

State law protects veteran teachers, although there are exceptions for less experienced teachers who have specialized grooming and who teach in areas where teachers are in short supply, such as special education and loftier school science.

Plaintiffs: The "last in, first out" statute creates "an irrational system, firing some of the brightest and most enthusiastic teachers while retaining" the worst, Boutrous said. As was proven in the Reed case in Los Angeles Unified, the LIFO statute, as it is known, has decimated the staff at depression-income schools schools where newer teachers were unduly assigned. A report by an expert witness, Daniel Goldhaber, a research professor at the University of Washington, found that only 16 percent of teachers laid off by seniority would be laid off based on an effectiveness-based system, Boutrous said.

Defense force: In that location is a positive correlation between feel and effectiveness and and so "in the aggregate," more than effective teachers are retained than laid off through seniority. And reductions in forcefulness should take nothing to do with instructor functioning. It is not intended to exist "a safety internet for districts that accept not dealt with ineffective teachers," Elias said. Without this seniority protection, districts will allow become their more expensive teachers, he said.

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Source: https://edsource.org/2014/in-landmark-trial-both-sides-debate-whether-teacher-protection-laws-fail-students/56672