The Education Earthquake Continues In California

Our education system has been in the middle of a decade-long reform period that is working wonders. The spread of charter schools, the imposition of standards (over Glenn Beck’s dead body), and the requirement for testing so that failing schools can be identified and overhauled are all very quickly improving education in America in a dramatic way. Now there’s a new piece of the puzzle from California.

One of the biggest problems facing the reformers (aside from the sudden outbreak of fringe idiocy) has been the opposition of unions. They have fought every single reform to the death, without a moments regard for whether or not that reform would make things better. But little by little, the unions are starting to fail. In fact, in the past decade, the left has actually come to realize that the teachers unions stand in the way of repairing and improving the system. As a result, the left is starting to abandon their defense of the unions. They’ve given up on the idea that more money will solve the problem. They are admitting that testing and standards and better teachers are required. And they are looking to weaken the unions.

That brings us to California.

One of the biggest problems education reformers face is the inability to get rid of the lousy teachers. Bill Gates once noted that “if every child had math teachers as good as those in the top quartile, the achievement gap between America and Asia would vanish in two years.” Unfortunately, when you can’t dump bad teachers, you can’t do that. In only 23 states can a teacher be fired for unsatisfactory evaluations... the rest are protected by tenure.

In California, a teacher has a one in 125,000 chance of being fired for incompetence. Getting rid of teachers is almost impossible and can cost millions to make happen – California teachers get tenure after two years. And when layoffs happen, the new teachers are require to be fired first, leaving the tenured teachers no matter how they perform.

So imagine everyone’s surprise when an advocacy group called Students Matter sued California on behalf of nine minority students and argued that California’s tenure rules “allowed grossly ineffective teachers to remain in their jobs, and that such teachers were disproportionately to be found in poor and non-white areas.” Interesting. This is a brilliant attack, using liberalism against liberalism.

Well, Judge Rolf Treu bought this and struck down five tenure laws, saying they violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to equal education. In fact, he called the evidence of this overwhelming and the result “shocking.” The case is on appeal, but stands a decent chance of being upheld. From there, it is likely to spread to other states.

Naturally, the unions freaked out. They’re screaming that teachers can now be fired on unreasonable grounds and that the expensive teachers will be fired first. And with a massive amount of gall and irony, they whined that using a court to strike down these laws wrongly circumvented the legislative process... something that never once bothered them when they sued the state time and again to impose things the legislature didn’t want.

This is another piece of the puzzle and may result in a major improvement in public education. It will be interesting to see if this ruling gets upheld and if it spreads to other states.

Thoughts?