By Nadra Nittle

The achievement gap. Teacher input. Parent engagement.

Local educators, among them Long Beach Unified Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser, weighed in on these issues and more during a panel discussion, “Education Reform in a Post-Vergara World,” held Wednesday at The Grand Long Beach.

Organized by California Democrats for Education Reform — a new statewide group chaired by school reformer Steve Barr in partnership with Joe Boyd, former executive director of the Teacher Association of Long Beach — the discussion featured Steinhauser, Barr and TALB President Virginia Torres as panelists, with Boyd as moderator and school board members, educators and other community members as special guests.

Read the full post here.

California Democrats for Education Reform launches today under Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools. Read more about their plan for building strong schools in the state below:

Building Strong Public School Systems by Working Together

California Democrats for Education Reform believes that the education of our children is a shared responsibility. As Democrats we need support for parents, teachers, and school leaders by promoting public policy that provides adequate resources, encourages collaboration, and joint accountability for the success of our public schools.

This statewide effort aims to promote progressive changes in support of strong school systems through political and community organizing. The organization is committed to listening to teachers, parents, and community leaders, in an effort to build consensus around common sense education reform.

Californians have the capacity to make our schools the best in the world. We have bright shining examples of great public schools that can be replicated in communities across the state – and we should scale up those best practices, but we lack the political consensus to make common sense reform a reality.

California Democrats for Education Reform believes that the vast majority of Democrats of all stripes want the same thing, but need to recommit to collaboration and partnership around school reform. To that end, the first phase of our organizing effort has THREE goals:

1. Travel the state listening to teachers, parents, union leaders, community leaders, business leaders, and our elected leaders.
   • What do Californians think is working in their local schools?
   • What should be replicated in other schools across the state?
   • Where are our local schools coming up short?
   • What should we tell our State leaders about making our schools better?
2. Assemble and challenge a workgroup of education experts, union leaders, reform leaders, parents, civic and business leaders, community leaders, and legislators to form recommendations for common sense education reforms that fit in 21st century schools.
3. Build organizing capacity and political support around the need to work together to implement reform that improves our schools and builds solidarity in the Democratic Party around school reform.

The task ahead is creating the political consensus necessary to implement these reforms and best practices.

California Democrats for Education Reform launched in July of 2014. Steve Barr, Chair of California Democrats for Education Reform, is among the most accomplished school reformers in the country – best known for founding Green Dot Public Schools, one of the nation’s most successful charter school networks, while embracing teacher unionism. Partnering with Steve is Joe Boyd, a former union organizer with over two decades of experience and a talented team of community organizers and teachers.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the California Democrats for Education Reform Facebook page at facebook.com/CaliforniaDFER.

By Christopher J. Steinhauser and Joe Boyd

If you are of a certain age, as we are, you will recall the days when your buddies all wanted to put “headers” on their V-8 Chevy, Dodge, or Ford. The effect was a loud, thumping rumble that turned heads in the school parking lot or at the drive-in theater. Headers didn’t add much performance, but they sure sounded great.

The current school reform debate reminds us of those thumping V-8s. All of the attention is focused on firing or laying off teachers, and tenure, thanks to a recent court ruling in the Vergara v. California lawsuit. This lawsuit isn’t over and the case will be appealed. But are we discussing the policy changes that will improve our schools?

We firmly believe that all students deserve a highly qualified teacher. And revisiting the parameters of teacher tenure could be helpful, as long as we keep things in perspective. The focus on removing ineffective teachers will affect a relatively miniscule number of employees, no matter what system is devised, and these processes are a very small part of what makes for a great school system. And building a great school system in California is where the dialogue around school reform belongs.

Read the full article here.

By Liam Kerr

ON TUESDAY, TEACHERS unions and education reformers clashed yet again in newspaper headlines around the country. Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers called it a “sad day for public education,” while the Los Angeles Times trumpeted an “opportunity to change a broken system.”

The rhetorical appeals were familiar, but the context was not: The subject wasn’t a piece of legislation, a rally outside a state house, a super PAC-fueled election, or a series of backroom dealings with lobbyists. Instead, a milestone in progressive education reform took place in the calm of a courtroom. Nine California students faced the State of California and its two biggest teachers unions, each presenting their facts before an impartial judge. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled that California’s teacher tenure laws were violating students’ civil rights by denying them equal access to a quality education—the state’s paramount interest in the realm of education. The decision launched national media frenzy, but the ruling was straightforward: A judge upheld the property rights – and workers’ rights – of teachers, but determined that the pendulum had swung too far away from the civil rights of California students.

Vergara v. California was brought by a group of nine public school students who claimed that five state statutes related to teacher tenure violated their rights under the California constitution. By that system, teachers were awarded tenure after only 16 months on the job, the process to dismiss “grossly ineffective” teachers was inordinately costly and time-consuming, and district-wide layoff decisions were based solely on seniority.

The Court found that each of these statutes violated students’ civil rights by adversely affecting the education of California students, especially for low-income and minority students. By ruling the statutes unconstitutional, Vergara does not forbid or eliminate tenure altogether; on the contrary, it holds that tenure and due process are fundamental safeguards to a teacher’s property rights to his or her position. Currently, districts decided whether or not a teacher would be awarded tenure in March of his or her second year of teaching. Curiously, teachers were certified in May of that year—meaning that teachers received tenure before being certified. The result was that districts were sometimes saddled with tenured, but uncertified, teachers after a woefully short timeframe to evaluate performance. Most states, including Massachusetts, afford 3-5 years before making tenure decisions. In striking down the policy, the court both affirmed the importance of tenure and urged a better policy.

The court completely rejected California’s “Last In, First Out” (LIFO) policy. Under LIFO, districts must base staffing decisions—whether on hiring or laying teachers off—on seniority alone. The most junior teachers must always be the first to go, even when those junior teachers are more effective. As the court found, this policy is especially damaging to low-income and minority students. The court also ruled that California’s system of protections for tenured teachers whom districts wish to dismiss constitutes not just due process, but “über due process” (original emphasis)—not merely protecting educators’ rights, but keeping “grossly ineffective teachers” in the classroom. Again, the court found that these teachers tend to be placed in classrooms with high numbers of low-income and minority students. The court therefore voided this statute, urging the state to come up with a new, more practical due process policy.

Vergara is, at its heart, a progressive victory in a civil rights case, an evolutionary step toward ensuring the same basic rights guaranteed in the state constitution. Two significant previous cases ensured districts serving poor and minority students in California would receive more: the 1971 case Serrano v. Priest guaranteed more money, and, in 1992, Butt v. California guaranteed more instructional time.

Vergara takes the next logical step, from “more” to “better.” Yes, underserved students need adequate funding and time in school. But the ruling showed that the future of educational equity court cases will not be quality-blind.

While Vergara affirms the paramount importance of children’s civil rights, it does not abandon teachers’ property rights. Educational systems, posits the court, have one overriding priority—they must offer all public students the best education possible, and they must do so equally. This idea is paradigmatically progressive—it hopes to better society by using public resources to close opportunity gaps. Any policy that disparately impacts the education a child receives based on that child’s social status is not only regressive, but also “shocks the conscience,” wrote Judge Treu. The state has an interest in protecting teachers’ rights, but its overriding interest is providing a good education to all of its students. Lengthening the period of time before granting tenure, streamlining the process for dismissal of teachers, and getting rid of LIFO all can serve both students and their teachers.

The verdict is also a winner in the court of public opinion. Even the rank and file in California’s teachers unions acknowledge the basic problem, with 65 percent agreeing that ineffective teachers were “unlikely to be dismissed for unsatisfactory performance.” An objective, non-ideological viewing of the facts leads most voters to side against teachers on these issues. As such, union responses – from the national American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association to chapters throughout the country, including Massachusetts – did not defend the specific policies at issue in the case. The focus was on an abstract bogeyman from the 1 percent, or vague allusions to due process. The tactic was summarized by former Clinton education advisor Andy Rotherham, who cited a legal maxim that “if you have the law on your side argue the law, if you don’t have the law argue the facts, and if you don’t have either then pound the table.”

The impact of this ruling is still far from the classroom-Vergara will certainly be appealed, and implementation still depends on quality management. But the ruling reverberated across the country because, like the civil rights litigation that preceded it, a legal focus on access to quality education has the potential to spread quickly.

While it may not reach Massachusetts, civil rights litigation has changed the Commonwealth’s education landscape before. The school finance-focused McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, first filed in 1978, articulated specific rights for all students served as an impetus for the 1993 Education Reform Act that brought reform along with billions of dollars in additional state aid.

Vergara relied on expert testimony from a new generation of research beyond the most basic inputs of time and money. It also proved that in the quiet of a courtroom, there are no sacred cows. Massachusetts courts have already affirmed that the Constitution of the Commonwealth requires the Legislature to ensure equal opportunities throughout Massachusetts. Some will pound the table. But the law and the facts are now clearly on the side of reform.

Liam Kerr is Massachusetts state director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Read the full post here.

By Lyndsey Layton

When a California judge struck down tenure and other job protections for teachers this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) both applauded, revealing fissures in the once-solid alliance between labor unions and the Democratic Party.

“It’s a pivot point but one that’s been coming for a long time,” said Charles Barone, a former aide to Miller who is policy director for Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group formed in 2007 that promotes many ideas opposed by unions.

By Stephanie Simon

A court ruling on Tuesday striking down job protections for teachers in California deals a sharp blow to unions — and will likely fuel political movements across the nation to eliminate teacher tenure.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu found five California laws governing the hiring and firing of teachers unconstitutional. But it was his language, more than the ruling itself, that will shake the political debate.

Treu found that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state — and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.

Read the full post here.

Landmark 1983 report, ‘A Nation at Risk,’ warned of school mediocrity.

By Gloria Romero

(From OC Register, April 30th, 2013)

Education-reform advocates throughout the country recently convened to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the landmark 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” from the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Intended as a wakeup call, the report declared that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”

One of its most foreboding lines warned, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

While the report, indeed, jump-started a national dialogue on reform efforts, very few of the commission’s recommendations were ever implemented.

We remain a nation at risk. And, in today’s global economy and with demand for international competitiveness that has pressurized and irrevocably transformed the need for a more-rigorously educated workforce, we face heightened risks.

The report’s warnings and call to action continue to reverberate. Today, 1 in 4 American students fail to earn a high school degree on time. We trail other nations in the percentage of students who complete college. The achievement gap between too many minority students and many of their white counterparts continues to exact demands for constitutional relief in our state and national judicial systems. Education has become an issue of national defense, economic prosperity and civil rights.

The members of the commission, drawn from government, business and the education arena, concluded that American schools were failing to produce a competitive workforce. They identified key themes needing addressing – themes that sound all too familiar today, including low test scores and weak teacher preparation programs. They recommended taking steps to improve teacher quality, dedicating more classroom time to the new basics, increasing academic rigor and raising standards for college admission.

Ironically, during the 30th anniversary commemorations of the report, the California Teachers Association led the charge in Sacramento to defeat legislation authored by Democratic Sen. Ron Calderon of Montebello, which would have increased rigor and accountability in how California teachers are evaluated. The bill had strong support from education reformers.

Are our schools better off now than they were 30 years ago? Today, 29 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup responded that they have confidence in K-12 schools – a low mark since Gallup commenced asking education questions. Despite the nation spending twice as much on education than was spent 30 years ago, our international rankings on math and science remain anemic. We’ve seen reading scores rise only one point from 1980-2008 among 17-year-olds about to graduate high school.

Our nation is still at risk. What needs to be done? More studies and commissions? Absolutely not.

On the 25th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” the same handwringing over what to do was best addressed by the nonpartisan group Strong American Schools: “Now is not the time for more educational research or reports or commissions. We have enough commonsense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools.

“The missing ingredient isn’t even educational at all. It’s political. Too often, state and local leaders have tried to enact reforms of the kind recommended in ‘A Nation at Risk,’ only to be stymied by organized special interests and political inertia. Without vigorous national leadership to improve education, states and local school systems simply cannot overcome the obstacles to making the big changes necessary to significantly improve our nation’s K-12 schools.”

How many more anniversaries will we “commemorate” before our students, and nation itself, are no longer at risk?

(From LA Times, April 14th, 2013)

By Seema Mehta

SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Sunday condemned efforts led by members of their own party to overhaul the nation’s schools, arguing that groups such as StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests.

Before delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution excoriating the groups on the final day of the party’s annual convention here, speakers urged them to focus on protecting students and teachers.

“People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform — it’s a free country — but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you’re not a reformer, you’re not helping education, and you’re sure not much of a Democrat,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a registered Democrat whose office is nonpartisan.

The advocacy groups are calling for increasing parental choice, tying student performance to teacher evaluations and changing how teachers are hired and fired. President Obama, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker are among the elected Democrats who support the groups’ efforts.

But such moves are anathema to teachers unions. California Teachers Assn. President Dean Vogel argued that the organizations are working to eliminate workers’ rights and “hellbent on turning students into test-taking machines.”

“I’ll tell you right now, they want to do that, they have to come through us,” Vogel said.

“Let’s be perfectly clear,” he added. “These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives and out-of-state Wall Street billionaires dedicated to school privatization and trampling on teacher and worker rights.”

Gloria Romero, a former Democratic majority leader in the state Senate who leads the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, called the Sunday resolution “stupid.”

“They drank some Kool-Aid that has been fresh squeezed for them by the most powerful political interest in California, the California Teachers Assn.,” she said, adding that improving schools for minorities and the poor should be a priority for the party.

Read the full post here.

By Allysia Finley

(The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2012)

California’s paycheck protection ballot initiative has just gotten its biggest endorsement yet—from former state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero.

Unions are expected to pour tens of millions of dollars into killing the proposition, which would prohibit unions from using members’ dues for political purposes—effectively destroying their stranglehold on Sacramento.

Read the full post here.