Posted on 06/11/2014 7:41:25 AM PDT by mandaladon
It won’t be as simple from now on for ineffective California teachers to coast off to a lifetime career on easy street.
In a Los Angeles Superior Court ruling today, Judge Rolf M. Treu “found five California laws governing teacher tenure, layoffs and dismissals unconstitutional,” reports Politico.
“Treu found,” reporter Stephanie Simon wrote, “that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state —and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.”
There’s no doubt that not all teachers are created equal. Some are excellent, of course. But not all of them are, and in California, it’s almost impossible to fire a tenured teacher.
The case, which was brought by nine public school students, challenged five California statutes related to teacher tenure, including one that requires teachers to receive tenure—or be dismissed—after a mere 16 months on the job. In contrast, 41 other states give school authorities a full three years to make that tenure decision.
Students Matter, a group affiliated with the nine students in the case, asserts that poor teachers were hurting California students. “According to the testimony of Dr. Raj Chetty, a student assigned to a grossly ineffective teacher loses $50,000 in potential lifetime earnings compared to a student assigned to a teacher of average effectiveness,” states the group’s fact sheet.
Minority students have been particularly hard hit. “According to the testimony of Dr. Thomas Kane, in Los Angeles Unified [school district], African American students are 43 percent more likely than white students to be taught by a teacher in the bottom 5 percent of effectiveness,” Students Matters wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
The teacher’s union got HAMMERED in California...
There are snowball fights in hell right now.
I’ll point this out because few people ever consider the consequences of this stuff. Let’s say one single district finally disposes of four-hundred poorly performing teachers. Where exactly do you think they will be hired onto next? Bachelors degree....owing $60,000 in student loans, and regarded as a marginal teacher? What industry would suddenly open up some doors to hire someone with an education degree but lousy comments on their ability to teach?
I think this is a massive problem that we are creating, but necessary for the kids. It’s just that I can’t think of any industry willing to take 40,000 teachers from across the nation and give them a job because they are so lousy at what they do.
Yeah, this is indeed a different experience.
Cosequences?
Seattle, McDonalds
“The ruling should help boost California public school students’ access to a decent education. This “tentative decision” (the court’s words), based on the California Constitution, will likely be appealed. While assessing the quality of education is normally a policy matter best left to the legislature, unless you’re a lousy teacher, this should be a cause for celebration..............Let’s hope so “
It was interesting to watch the local tv news channels in the Gay Frisco area. Many black principals and higher were agreeing with the court decision.
Why would we care if they never get another job? Wouldn’t that be their problem?
Why are you worrying about lousy left wing teachers getting fired?
Fire them and hire some new eager to teach young people.
Put the lousy fired teachers on unemployment and welfare EBT cards. That will be cheaper for tax payers instead of paying them close to $100,000 per year with all the benefits.
Then it's root, hog, or die... they'll get good at something then, because they'll have to. That's how the market works, or how it should work.
I saw on Fox this morning, a spokesperson for the teacher’s union said then, “schools will be a factory for turnover.”
I say, good-bye to bad rubbish.
But why about black kids being taught by substandard teachers?
It would be interesting to know who those substandard teachers are that are teaching black kids and how did they get into those schools?
When I heard that it hurt minority students, my first thought it was smart and hard-working Asian kids who got lazy and ignorant tenured and heavily involved union teachers and wanted better.
what does that matter? what does someone do when he loses his job? any number of things... it is not up to society to place them back in positions for which they have degrees... i guess i do not understand what you are getting at...
anyway, i do not get the whole tenure thing for the first 13 years of government education... these are the years when teachers should be conveying facts... teachers do not need protection for their ideas because they should not be instilling their ideas... they should be letting students come to their own conclusions...
This is not about getting rid of incompetent teachers, no matter what they claim.
Maybe it’s about putting a scare into teachers....to make sure they all toe the CommieCare line without complaint...
Big Deal. The terrible students are still there.
If they are poorly performing, it is because they are lazy. That would be an issue in any future job outside of teaching they might wind up in. When I was in school I knew which teacher in my school really tried hard, (and was a good teacher), vs the lazy ones that were there for the paycheck.I had one teacher who made us read a chapter in our textbook during each class, and take the textbook test at the end of each chapter. He never stood up and actually gave a teaching lecture to us. That was laziness.
The consequence I don’t want to see is where teachers spend even more time just prepping students for a test rather than teaching them grade level information and skills. I don’t know what other options there are for evaluating the teacher than standardized testing.
I prefer the homeschool model anyway.
I think this is a massive problem that we are creating, but necessary for the kids. It’s just that I can’t think of any industry willing to take 40,000 teachers from across the nation and give them a job because they are so lousy at what they do.
How is that different from say, getting an Engineering degree?
If you are lousy at the work and get fired, it's the same case.
The option is to find a different, easier field to work in.
This is a smoke screen. This is about the teacher’s pension fund which has a 7 billion dollar shortfall. Right now, a purge is going on to get rid of any teacher near retirement age in the LA school district. They are going through records going back 20 years to find any justification to let career teachers go. With this court decision, you’ll now hear stories of wholesale firing of teachers over 50 with no justification needed. Good teachers with 30 to 40 years of experience are being thrown on the street with no pension to show for their years of sacrifice.
Perhaps they should consider manual labor.
It’s a problem for them, but they are a problem for us. You have to start somewhere.
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