Gary Ravani
Jan 22, 2014

Gary Ravani

Gary Ravani

Last twelvemonth a group calling itself Students Matter filed a lawsuit, Vergara v. the State of California. The lawsuit  challenges a number of labor protections for California'south teachers, including due process rights for dismissals and seniority rights during layoffs.

The accommodate, which goes to trial side by side calendar week in country Superior Court, and its backers' publicity strategy fit firmly within the unfortunate recent tradition of wealthy anti-spousal relationship ideologues masquerading as ceremonious rights crusaders and education reformers.

A representative of the high-priced corporate police house pressing Vergara recently wrote an article in EdSource Today attempting to identify the accommodate in the footsteps of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington, Brownish v. Board of Education and California's Serrano v. Priest school funding decision.

Let's examine the real history and evaluate the claims based on fact. Do students and their learning really matter to Students Matter?

Recall the epitome of Martin Luther King Jr. standing before the multitudes during the March on Washington delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech communication. Behind Male monarch stand leading activists from the ceremonious rights customs, the faith community and unions. Many today forget the March was as much near how labor and economic justice matters every bit it was about civil rights.

Now re-imagine that scene with King speaking, but this time with the corporate lawyers and megamillionaires backing this lawsuit standing behind him. Having trouble with that? About people would.

Dr. King was murdered in Memphis while supporting the labor rights of sanitation workers. To propose in that location is something analogous between Dr. Male monarch's sympathies and the anti-labor Vergara arrange boggles the listen. Labor rights mattered to Dr. Rex.

The Vergara lawsuit asserts that laws protecting more senior teachers in times of layoff cause the schools to keep "grossly ineffective teachers in classrooms while pushing highly constructive, simply less senior teachers out." Still, one backer of Vergara, the Teaching Trust Westward, constitute in a 2005 study, "While characteristics similar feel, certification, and education are not perfectly correlated with actual effectiveness they are certainly related." If constructive teachers matter, then information technology follows that protecting more senior (i.e., more experienced) teachers as well matters.

The commodity cites purported research in the attempt to define "grossly ineffective teachers." The technique used is the debunked "value-added methodology." Reputable pedagogy experts, including the National Research Council (NRC), found that no research supports value-added methodology as a reliable manner to evaluate teacher effectiveness. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), California's testing vendor and accountability manager, has posted a study that also "raises serious questions" about the methodology.

So, if reliably measuring whether teachers are "grossly ineffective" matters, why are the Vergara proponents using the grossly unreliable value-added methodology to support their arguments?

Vergara proponents also cite Chocolate-brown v. Lath of Education, which found that segregated educational facilities are never equal. The UCLA Civil Rights Project finds California'due south current schoolhouse segregation situation "farthermost." If school segregation matters, why isn't Students Matter pursuing that directly?

The article cites the Serrano 5. Priest lawsuit, relating to equity in school funding. California's per-educatee funding is right effectually 49thursday in the nation, meaning compared to other states, most students in California's schools are not receiving "equitable" funding. If equity matters, why isn't Students Matter pursuing that directly?

The litigators for Vergara miss a fundamental truth about what matters in the classroom: You exercise not enhance children'due south access to a audio education by declaring war on their teachers' rights.

Clearly, a group of wealthy, cocky-appointed pedagogy reformers is using a high-priced corporate law house to hide behind a number of child "plaintiffs" to deport out an agenda of undermining the public schools. Less clear is if what really matters to students really matters to Students Affair.

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Gary Ravani taught center school for more than thirty years in Petaluma. He served for xix years as president of the Petaluma Federation of Teachers and is currently president of the California Federation of Teachers' Early Babyhood/K-12 Quango.

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