In June of 2014, defendants in “Vergara v. California” in Los Angeles, California lost their case. As a reminder, plaintiffs included nine public school students (backed by some serious corporate reformer funds as per Students Matter) who challenged five California state statutes that supported the state’s “ironclad [teacher] tenure system.” The prosecution’s argument was that students’ rights to a good education were being violated by teachers’ job protections…protections that were making it too difficult to fire “grossly ineffective” teachers. The prosecution’s suggested replacement to the “old” way of doing this, of course, was to use value-added scores to make “better” decisions about which teachers to fire and whom to keep around.
In February of 2016, “Vergara v. California” was appealed, back in Los Angeles.
Released, yesterday, was the Court of Appeal’s decision reversing the trial court’s earlier decision. As per an email I received also yesterday from one of the lawyers involved, “The unanimous decision holds that the plaintiffs did not establish their equal protection claim because they did not show that the challenged [“ironclad” tenure] laws themselves cause harm to poor students or students of color.” Accordingly, the Court of Appeal “ordered that judgment be entered for the defendants (the state officials and teachers’ unions)…[and]…this should end the case, and copycat cases in other parts of the country [emphasis added].” However, plaintiffs have already announced their intent to appeal this ruling to the California Supreme Court.
Please find attached here, as certified for publication, the actual Court of Appeal decision. See also a post here about this reversal authored by California teachers’ unions. See also here more information released by the California Teachers Association.
See also the amicus brief that a large set of deans and professors across the country contributed to/signed to help in this reversal.
