California Court Affirms Teacher Tenure Rules

In more good news for workers, the California Supreme Court refused to hear a suit that challenged the tenure rules for state teachers. The suit was brought by wealthy backers on the supposed behalf of poor and underserved students who they claim were being harmed by “bad” teachers who had received tenure. The suit was kind of a mess as the supposed plaintiffs were not taught by the ineffective teachers named, several of the plaintiffs attended schools that do not have teacher tenure, and one of the teachers named also happened to be teacher of the year in Pasadena. More likely, this suit was just another attempt to break the teachers’ union and probably help the proponents of charter schools. In fact, a recent study showed that unionized school districts actually have higher teacher quality that non-unionized districts and are more likely to dismiss poor quality teachers. But that won’t stop the proponents of this suit – they vow to take their case to the legislature next year. If they were really concerned about the poor and minority students as they claim, they would focus on the huge disparity in education resources that exist between districts, primarily due to inequality in wealth. Erasing this inequality, perhaps by even, God forbid, taking money from wealthier districts in order to provide more resources for poorer ones, would do far more for the students they claim to care about than getting rid of a few bad teachers.