Tenure ruling affirms the right to a quality education
Published June 13, 2014
Editorial by News and Observer, June 12, 2014.
State Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) took it as good news when a California judge ruled this week that California’s tenure protection laws for public school teachers are unconstitutional. Berger’s office immediately emailed the Associated Press story about the ruling, apparently seeing the judge’s decision as vindicating Berger’s campaign to end teacher tenure protections in North Carolina.
But a closer look at the ruling and its background shows it is hardly the victory Berger and other conservatives appear to think it is.
The case was brought by nine students. The plaintiffs argued that California’s generous protections for teachers and its byzantine process for firing incompetent ones effectively deprived millions of California students – especially those in low-income communities – of the basic education required by the state constitution.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu agreed. He said there are too many bad teachers (as many as one in every 20), students are deprived because of it and it’s too expensive and time consuming to fire teachers under current law. He said state statutes protecting teachers needed to be rewritten.
What matters for North Carolina is that the ruling doesn’t matter much in terms of tenure.
Tenure concept unchallenged
Treu did not have a problem with tenure itself. He found fault in granting it after 18 months, a period he found inadequate to properly evaluate a teacher’s competence. He suggested three or four years of teaching.
In North Carolina, teachers must teach four consecutive years before qualifying for career status, or tenure. That status entitles them to due process if they feel they’ve been fired without proper cause.
Treu also took issue with the length of time it takes for a contested dismissal to go through multiple appeals, but he supported teachers’ rights to the “due process.”
In California, laws protecting teachers are shaped by lobbying and contributions from powerful teacher unions. In North Carolina, a right to work state with perhaps the weakest union presence in the nation, teachers have only minimal protections.
Berger has tied a proposed 11 percent pay increase for teachers to their willingness to surrender their rights to tenure. But there is little evidence that tenure is a problem in North Carolina. School boards have plenty of time to decide whether they want to keep probationary teachers, and state law provides broad grounds for dismissal should a teacher’s performance decline after he reaches career status.
N.C.’s teacher loss
The problem in North Carolina isn’t firing teachers. It’s keeping them from quitting because of low pay, growing class sizes and the effort to take away their modest job protections.
Here is where Treu’s ruling resonates in a way that may mute conservatives’ initial applause. His ruling opened by citing Brown vs. Board of Education. It focused not on the failings of teachers, but on the rights of students. He said the California legislature must amend its tenure laws to meet its constitutional obligation to provide “each child in this state with a basically equal opportunity to achieve a quality education.”
That echoes the language of Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning in his ruling in the landmark Leandro case that found that every student has a right a “sound, basic education.”
Conservatives may see a victory against incompetent teachers in the California ruling, but it ultimately was a reminder of the state’s obligation to provide all its children an opportunity for a sound education. In a state where teachers are underpaid and leaving, where half the state’s teacher aides are on the chopping block, where a mere $15 per student is allotted for textbooks and where legislative leaders propose leaving the quality of education up to the state lottery, it is irresponsible lawmakers, not incompetent teachers, who must be held more accountable.
June 13, 2014 at 9:19 am
Richard Bunce says:
When the majority of government school students are not proficient at basic skills as is the case for decades now... a "sound, basic education" is not being delivered by the government. No group of employees require any greater regulation for their dismissal including government employees and government teacher employees.
June 13, 2014 at 9:53 am
Norm Kelly says:
Here we go again. An editorial from the N&D that appears, from the headline, to support teacher tenure; questions the validity of action by the state legislature. Guess I should read this one before making judgment. But, why bother, it's almost certain my opinion on this N&D post is valid without reading anymore of it. But I'll read it anyway.
Already this post is funny. When California makes the most bizarre rulings, lib rags like the N&D make outrageous statements about how it will impact NC. But when California courts make a ruling that the N&D doesn't like, that might put a hole in part of the education establishment, suddenly the N&D says that it probably has no impact on NC.
So, 'tenure' is a word that carries a bad connotation? Naturally. It's a bizarre concept. So, in order to get people to start accepting this bizarre concept, libs are trying to change the terminology? It's now called career status. Cuz this is something that exists in the private sector? And it's something that the average taxpayer can relate to & accept? Funny how words mean things, until it might negatively impact friends of libs.
So, exactly WHO doesn't support a teacher's right to due process? Is this the question? Do we want to allow ANYONE to simply decide they don't LIKE a particular teacher and therefore fire them just for the fun of it? Is this what's on the line? Is it possible that if a single student complained that Mr/Mrs Smith hurt their feelings that the principal could simply fire the Smith teacher without any possible recourse by the Smith teacher? Is this what big education is trying to claim? Is this what rags like the N&D are claiming? So, let's be honest and look at some facts, something rags & libs don't do often, if ever. Does 'career status' or tenure exist in the private sector? Does due process exist in the private sector? How often do people get fired in the private sector just for the heck of it? How often does a whim strike management in the private sector, that someone gets up on the wrong side of the bed and decides it would be a good day to terminate someone, just to make the day better? Again, let's do something that libs don't like: show the stats in the private sector so we can see how negatively this same process would impact the education establishment. Can't do it or won't do it? Funny thing about that! Is this ANOTHER straw man argument by the left? What isn't these days?!
Funny that when the lottery was put in place virtually on party lines (dems voted for it!), they chose to call it the Education Lottery because the proceeds were expected to boost education spending. When libs put this POS in place, they told us, as did the lib rags in the state, that the money would be wisely used by the education establishment to improve the system. Now that the Republican legislature is on the same page as all the libs in the state, both pols and rags, suddenly the rags are having a problem with it? Why is it that when Republicans finally agree with the libs, the libs have a fit? Is it because depending only a certain amount on a bogus, undependable income source is acceptable, honorable, honest, but depending 'too much' on that same bogus income source suddenly shines the light of disaster on the bogus income source? So long as the arbitrary limit set by libs of how much one depends on an unreliable income source is not exceeded it's a good thing. But if ANYONE dare pass the arbitrary lib limit on the unreliable income source, suddenly it's BAD! How does one, any lib, decide what the arbitrary limit is? Only a mixed up lib mind can answer that one. But since this too is arbitrary don't expect ANY lib, either a pol or an editorial board member at a rag, to even attempt to answer this.
Lottery good; tenure good; alternatives bad. Deficit spending good; balanced budget bad. Voter fraud good; voter ID bad. Tax 'the wealthy' good; expect everyone to contribute to the state budget bad. Warped? Yes. Lib? Yes. Illogical? Yes!
