The Vergara Verdict: Tenure and Seniority Laws Ruled Unconstitutional in California

Here are two accounts of the decision in the Vergara trial. This one appears in politico.com. This one appears in the New York Times.

The plaintiffs argued that poor and minority children suffered because they had ineffective teachers who could not be fired. Lawyers for the teachers unions maintained that the causes of low performance were poverty and inadequate school funding. The plaintiffs prevailed and promised to take their cause to other states with strong teacher job protections, like New Jersey and New York.

There will be appeals, and the battle will spread to other states. As due process is removed, it seems to be replaced by evaluations of “effectiveness” based on test scores.

The long-range question is whether the “reformers’” efforts to remove all job protections from teachers will affect the number of people who choose teaching as a career and how they will affect the nature…