In California, a victory for unions — and a defeat for children.
California Governor Jerry Brown, along with most of the elected Democrats in the State of California, are celebrating the California Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal in the case of Vergara v. California. The Court’s decision represents a victory for the California unions, and a sad defeat for California public school students.
California students rank near the bottom in the country in reading and math, despite the fact that California taxes more, and spends more, than almost any State in the country. Part of the reason for the failure of California’s education system is that California’s children must strive to perform in struggling school system while California’s teachers work in a system that refuses to hold them accountable.
In Vergara, the Plaintiffs claimed that California’s teacher tenure rules denied students the opportunity for a quality education because they made it impossible for the State of California to dismiss bad teachers (leaving no room for the hiring of good teachers).
The Plaintiffs demonstrated that 98% of teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are guaranteed a job — for life — after only 18 months of employment. Indeed, over the course of ten years, only 19 teachers in California were ever fired for poor performance. When the California school system is forced to fire teachers, it does so according to seniority — meaning that young teachers will always be cut first, regardless of their skill or dedication in the classroom. Further, the process of firing a teacher for cause is so complex, time-consuming, and expensive, that the State is more or less barred from pursuing it. Through the (long and tedious) investigative process, the State must continue to pay the salaries of the teachers they are considering terminating, as well as the substitute teachers and the investigators.
The trial court sided with the Plaintiffs, but the California Court of Appeals did not. Unfortunately, now that the California Supreme Court declined to entertain the case at all, it appears the teacher’s unions have emerged victorious. The children of California will pay the price.
