[Mr. K]

"Many Democrats are coming around to the reality of the situation, and are standing up for poor and minority students."

You mean coming around to the reality Republicans have been telling people for years?

[mazda77]

Them chickens are a comin’ home to roost, dontcha know.

[Neoliberalnot]

Any ruling coming out of CA is suspect since the judiciary is so corrupt. This could be a scheme to rid the system of whites and replace them with blacks and Mexicans.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

The article fails to mention one of the biggest problems this poses for the Democrats. If they reform the school and get minority students a quality education, then presumably they may be able to think for themselves. Then, they may start questioning the Democratic mantra....

[Olog-hai]

Democrats prioritizing traditional families here? Highly unlikely.

[Pearls Before Swine]

You mean that after 50 years of The Great Society there are some black families left? /S

[rbg81]

Let me just say that:
1. I have no luv for Teachers Unions, and
2. The concept of “tenure” for K-12 teachers is ridiculous

With that out of the way, I don’t think it fair that the teachers get the lion’s share of the blame here. When you’re talking about the inner city, you’re dealing with a population that is either apathetic, or even hostile, to learning. Even if you took good teachers and put them in such an environment, how long before they quit or give up?

Case in point: I know a young man who taught at an inner city school and was stabbed by a student. The student got a slap on the wrist. That was the first and last year the young man was a teacher. He is now pursuing a degree in computer science instead.

Until the inner city culture changes, you are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Elsie]

MANY?

What %? 0.037???

[yldstrk]

I cannot tell you what awful math teachers I had

[ken5050]

Didn’t Obama kill the charter schools in DC..how can this reporter say that Obozo’s “coming around?”

[bert]

-——energize Democratic families——

Ha.... the point of being democrat is to not want to be energized. Then there is the family. There is real question that those most effected don’t really have families in the conventional sense. They are pretty much a village

[A_perfect_lady]

And, unsurprisingly, districts usually place failing teachers in predominantly black and Hispanic schools.

Actually, no. The district doesn't place them there. They end up there because the students are so difficult that teacher turn-over rate is very high. Teachers who get hired there usually can't hack it, and either manage to scramble out to a better school or -- more often -- leave teaching altogether because even working at Starbucks is preferable to being assaulted by a little gangster and learning that no one is going to do anything about it.

So those are the schools with the openings, and those are the schools who will hire anyone they can in hopes that the teacher can just keep the kids in the room for 55 minutes and nothing gets set on fire. If you think I'm kidding, be aware that I am a LAUSD teacher, and I've seen it.

I mean, yes, there are bad teachers (or rather, there are teachers who would have been fine in a classroom in Iowa 70 years ago when children had manners, parents had responsibility and control, and the principal had a big wooden paddle,) but they can't manage a classroom full of entitled minority students with crippled home-lives, no discipline, and carte blanche to do anything they want.

[zeugma]

Judge Rolf M. Treu’s ruling struck down teacher tenure, while freeing districts from spending hundreds of thousands to fire teachers and from having to fire newly-hired teachers first during layoffs.

The primary way this ruling will be used will be to fire the 'ideologically impure' first. In a sane world, you'd expect to see layoffs for incompetence, but when was the last time you noticed a surplus of sanity in acedemia?

[zeestephen]

Blacks and immigrants will still vote 80% for the Democrat Party.

Exhibit One:

Detroit and East St. Louis.

[GladesGuru]

Any and all attempts to force good teachers into black or Hispanic schools will fail. Good teachers will want to teach students who want to learn, and they do not want to (nor will they) teach violent, rude, brutal Urban Ferals.

Nor do they want to have their car keyed, be beaten by students, be raped by students, be killed by students, ad nauseam.

When minority students acquire the student behaviors of successful white students, they can be taught with some success.

HOWEVER ! ! - given the IQ disparities between black and Hispanic students and white students, to expect black/Hispanic scores to reach the white scores is to ask the teachers to do the impossible.

When professional race card players (most if not all Democrats) say they will accomplish anything that will result in black/Hispanic academic test score equality with white scores, they assure the cheating made infamous in the Atlanta, GA school system.

[T Ruth]

This ruling may make it harder for incompetent teachers to keep their jobs, but I don't see how it hurts the unions per se. The unions will just have different members paying dues.

Also, this decision is a bad precedent. Just because this judge doesn't like the results of the challenged laws, he decides they're unconstitutional. Based on reasoning like this, any judge can do anything.