The End of Tenure in California Public Schools?

Judge Rolf M. Treu of the Los Angeles Superior Court has ruled in Vergara v. California that tenure and other job protections for teachers in primary and secondary public schools are unconstitutional. I think this is a clear case of judicial overreach -- legislating from the bench.

I don't think it is a hard case to make that the implementation of employment protections in many public school systems is bad policy. However, bad implementation of the policy does not mean that the policy is unconstitutional. The ruling pays lip service to this distinction, but that seems to be all. The key excerpt from the ruling in this case is:

Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students.

Any policy under the purview of the public sector in which the benefits and costs fall unevenly by race would be deemed to violate the civil rights of the disadvantaged group. It is interesting to me that almost all of the tentative decision focuses on how bad the Challenged Statutes are at their worst, only two paragraphs focus on the effect on low-income and minority students in particular, and none of it discusses potential advantages of the job protections in the Challenged Statutes.

Even if those two paragraphs are the essential part of the ruling, the remedy is to ensure that the policy is implemented better, not necessarily to declare the policy unconstitutional. For example, based on what is presented in the ruling, consider a system in which:

1. The Permanent Employment Statute had a 3-5 year evaluation period (as a defense witness suggested and as is found in most other states), 
2. The Dismissal Statute had protections only at the level described in the Skelly v. State Personnel Board case cited in the ruling, 
3. The "Last In, First Out" Statute were relaxed to having seniority considered as one among many factors rather than the only factor (as the ruling notes is the case in 20 other states), and
4. The State could establish that there was no correlation between a school's incidence of low-income or minority students and the presence of ineffective teachers (where the latter was measured based on performance facing a standardized classroom).

This system would appear to violate no principle identified in the ruling. I don't expect this ruling to survive on appeal. I expect a higher court to require the State to implement a system like what I have outlined here.