Slobjob Zizek posted:

Read the decision, it's pretty short: http://www.scribd.com/doc/229021741/Vergara-v-California

As most of you should know, if any federal law (or state law for some states) is quasi-racist in the US it gets auto-overturned because of the 14th Amendment (and corresponding portions of state constitutions).

The interesting part of this decision is the idea that teacher quality directly affects student outcomes. This is the product of research by economists like Raj Chetty and Tom Kane (expert witnesses here).

Anyway, this is just a lower court decision, but still an interesting result of social science research.

Papercut posted:

paranoid randroid posted:

Considering Pando's recent takedown of Khanna as a nothing sandwich with a bit of corporate schmear, this is pretty alarming.

ProperGanderPusher posted:

Mark my words: when the culture war bullshit is over and gay marriage and weed are no longer issues people give a poo poo about, a shitload of formerly Obama-loving Silicon Valley types will start voting for and supporting the GOP.

JesusSinfulHands posted:

Welp, I guess I should get the rest of my extended family out to vote here in CA-17, although Honda doesn't seem like he's in big trouble to me. Khanna would have to get something like 95% of the non-Honda/Khanna vote in the primaries to win the general election, which seems a little high to me, even with incumbency effects and all. Need to find some political science research on the topic...

AshB posted:

My disclaimer is that I don't know much about these issues, so I'm just asking questions out of genuine curiosity here. I don't think the legal reasoning in that opinion is very strong, but if it's upheld, why would it be a bad thing to pass legislation with more objective criteria for firing teachers rather than basing it on seniority? I mean I guess the "objective criteria" they would look at first is test scores, but would it be so bad if they forewent looking at test scores and used other criteria for assessing teachers? Seniority seems pretty arbitrary too.

litany of gulps posted:

From my own experience working within these educational reform movements, it doesn't really come down to firing the ineffective teachers. The older teachers get run out on a rail, generally targeted aggressively by administrators from the beginning of the school year. After that, everyone that doesn't fit the mold gets the axe. Once you start getting 50% turnover within a school year after year, it's very easy for administration to sort of break the preexisting culture of a school and replace it with something else.

It usually seems to come down to culture rather than student achievement. An older teacher with successful students will get run out long before a younger, more tech saavy teacher with unsuccessful students, in large part because the upper level administrators (district managers) will be walking classrooms looking for specific styles of teaching and for compliance with district initiatives rather than actually looking at test scores. Now, at the end of the year, your pay adjustment for next year may be based on those test scores (and things like student surveys to see if the kids liked you).

litany of gulps posted:

From my own experience working within these educational reform movements, it doesn't really come down to firing the ineffective teachers. The older teachers get run out on a rail, generally targeted aggressively by administrators from the beginning of the school year. After that, everyone that doesn't fit the mold gets the axe. Once you start getting 50% turnover within a school year after year, it's very easy for administration to sort of break the preexisting culture of a school and replace it with something else.

FilthyImp posted:

So the question to ask is, why does the lawsuit look to punish bad teachers, instead of find ways to promote the actions of good teachers?

litany of gulps posted:

You've gotta be careful with this too, because often the reform movements try to conceal their punishment-oriented regimes by couching them in vocabulary that claims to promote good teaching.

For example, the Teacher Excellence Initiative in Dallas ISD is a program designed to alter the pay scales for teachers. Rather than basing pay on years served and education level, it will be based on performance evaluations, student test scores, and student surveys.

When discussing this initiative, proponents will carry on about how the top end of the TEI scale allows for skilled teachers to make far more money in a shorter time period than the previous system, which ideally would encourage skilled teachers to work for the district.

You dig a little deeper and you realize that there are quotas on each level of pay, and the top several categories combined have a quota of 2% of the teachers in the district. Beyond that, it requires numerous observations from people who are rating you based on adherence to district rhetoric rather than any real achievement. Realistically, hardly anyone is going to reach those high pay levels, and thus the carrot part of the initiative is an illusion.

The Atlantic posted:

But here’s where Judge Reulf’s theory is faulty: Getting rid of these bad laws may do little to systemically raise student achievement. For high-poverty schools, hiring is at least as big of a challenge as firing, and the Vergara decision does nothing to make it easier for the most struggling schools to attract or retain the best teacher candidates.

From 2009 to 2011, the federal government offered 1,500 effective teachers in 10 major cities—including Los Angeles—a $20,000 bonus to transfer to an open job at a higher poverty school with lower test scores. In the world of public education, $20,000 is a major financial incentive. All these teachers were already employed by urban districts with diverse student populations; they weren’t scared of working with poor, non-white children. Yet less than a quarter of the eligible teachers chose to apply for the bonuses. Most did not want to teach in the schools that were the most deeply segregated by race and class and faced major pressure to raise test scores.

Principals have known about this problem for ages. In Chicago, economist Brian Jacob found that when the city’s school district made it easier for principals to fire teachers, nearly 40 percent of principals, including many at the worst performing, poorest schools, fired no teachers at all. Why? For one thing, firing a coworker is unpleasant. It takes more than a policy change to overturn the culture of public education, which values collegiality and continuous improvement over swift accountability. That culture is not a wholly bad thing—with so many teachers avoiding the poorest schools, principals have little choice but to work with their existing staffs to help them get better at their jobs.

The lesson here is that California’s tenure policies may be insensible, but they aren’t the only, or even the primary, driver of the teacher-quality gap between the state’s middle-class and low-income schools. The larger problem is that too few of the best teachers are willing to work long-term in the country’s most racially isolated and poorest neighborhoods. There are lots of reasons why, ranging from plain old racism and classism to the higher principal turnover that turns poor schools into chaotic workplaces that mature teachers avoid. The schools with the most poverty are also more likely to focus on standardized test prep, which teachers dislike. Plus, teachers tend to live in middle-class neighborhoods and may not want a long commute.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/california-rules-teacher-tenure-laws-unconstitutional/372536/

FilthyImp posted:

So the question to ask is, why does the lawsuit look to punish bad teachers, instead of find ways to promote the actions of good teachers?

Northjayhawk posted:

The teacher unions have often been preaching more money and smaller class sizes, but in California that is ludicrous because depending on the year they are already either the highest-paid or the 2nd-highest paid teachers of all the states in the nation, so money isn't an issue.

Northjayhawk posted:

That Article misses the mark. The problem is not attracting great teachers to poor schools, hey someday that would be nice, but there's a bigger problem to fix first.

The problem here is that since it is basically impossible to fire horrible or ineffective teachers, they inevitably get shuffled off to poor schools. (which is where the equal protection argument comes from) Why? Because parents in wealthier districts raise holy hell until the administrators transfer the dregs of teaching into districts where the parents can't speak English and/or have too many other socioeconomic problems and don't have time to check on the school or complain. This is what the judge was talking about when he referred to "the dance of the lemons".

The teacher unions have often been preaching more money and smaller class sizes, but in California that is ludicrous because depending on the year they are already either the highest-paid or the 2nd-highest paid teachers of all the states in the nation, so money isn't an issue.

This isn't complicated. Government employees in California already are protected by strong unions and have solid dismissal processes to ensure due process. There's no reason why that same process can't work, if a district really wants to fire a teacher and can objectively articulate and show a reason for dismissal, they should be able to do it. Tenure is also a ridiculous concept at the grade school or high school level because it is generally intended to protect college professors who may decide to engage in controversial research, which just is not applicable below the college level.

Blindeye posted:

As long as you hemorrhage or cannot lure talented people to teach, you are stuck with dumb motherfuckers who can't teach but are willing to not give a poo poo. At the end of the day the administration needs x warm bodies in the classrooms, and as long as they don't molest anyone it's better than no teacher. You have to work from the incentivizing top performers down, not by being able to cut the lowest wrung of the ladder easier.

Northjayhawk posted:

That Article misses the mark. The problem is not attracting great teachers to poor schools, hey someday that would be nice, but there's a bigger problem to fix first.

The problem here is that since it is basically impossible to fire horrible or ineffective teachers, they inevitably get shuffled off to poor schools. (which is where the equal protection argument comes from) Why? Because parents in wealthier districts raise holy hell until the administrators transfer the dregs of teaching into districts where the parents can't speak English and/or have too many other socioeconomic problems and don't have time to check on the school or complain. This is what the judge was talking about when he referred to "the dance of the lemons".

The teacher unions have often been preaching more money and smaller class sizes, but in California that is ludicrous because depending on the year they are already either the highest-paid or the 2nd-highest paid teachers of all the states in the nation, so money isn't an issue.

This isn't complicated. Government employees in California already are protected by strong unions and have solid dismissal processes to ensure due process. There's no reason why that same process can't work, if a district really wants to fire a teacher and can objectively articulate and show a reason for dismissal, they should be able to do it. Tenure is also a ridiculous concept at the grade school or high school level because it is generally intended to protect college professors who may decide to engage in controversial research, which just is not applicable below the college level.

Northjayhawk posted:

Well, by the state's own admission, at least 1-3% of CA teachers are, their words, "grossly incompetent". Not just below average or ineffective, but ridiculously bad. That is a fact that all parties in the case, plaintiffs and defendants, agreed on.

It is almost impossible to fire them in CA, and they usually get transferred to poor schools or stuck in an empty room for 8 hours a day with pay. Why should that be?

Northjayhawk posted:

I guess I can live with tenure, if the process of granting it was rational. Most states do have it, but almost no one forces a school to make a decision in less time than CA. Having to make a decision in less than 1.5 years is just not enough time, 5 years is a better mark. If the security of tenure is that important to the teachers, give the administrators more time to establish that a teacher is worth it. Its still a decently-paying gig, so they should be able to attract reasonable talent.

Regarding rewarding high performers, the teachers unions in California actually oppose that. They believe, basically, that it is impossible to objectively determine if one teacher is better than another, and so they insist that tenure and higher education degrees be the only 2 things to base all important employment-related and pay decisions on. (Rewarding high performers inevitably lead to debate about bad teachers, better in the union's eyes to say that there's no way to determine who is a good or bad teacher)

As far as your objections to cutting the worst teachers, we can't wave our hands and say thats not important right now, the courts are still going to insist that "grossly incompetent" teachers not be lumped into the poor schools due to equal protection concerns. The only reasonable way to do that is to somehow make it reasonably possible to fire those teachers.

Northjayhawk posted:

That Article misses the mark. The problem is not attracting great teachers to poor schools, hey someday that would be nice, but there's a bigger problem to fix first.

The problem here is that since it is basically impossible to fire horrible or ineffective teachers, they inevitably get shuffled off to poor schools. (which is where the equal protection argument comes from) Why? Because parents in wealthier districts raise holy hell until the administrators transfer the dregs of teaching into districts where the parents can't speak English and/or have too many other socioeconomic problems and don't have time to check on the school or complain. This is what the judge was talking about when he referred to "the dance of the lemons".

The teacher unions have often been preaching more money and smaller class sizes, but in California that is ludicrous because depending on the year they are already either the highest-paid or the 2nd-highest paid teachers of all the states in the nation, so money isn't an issue.

This isn't complicated. Government employees in California already are protected by strong unions and have solid dismissal processes to ensure due process. There's no reason why that same process can't work, if a district really wants to fire a teacher and can objectively articulate and show a reason for dismissal, they should be able to do it. Tenure is also a ridiculous concept at the grade school or high school level because it is generally intended to protect college professors who may decide to engage in controversial research, which just is not applicable below the college level.

Papercut posted:

You seem to have a misunderstanding of what tenure is. Tenure does not mean a teacher can't be fired, rather tenure is the "strong due process" that you're referring to. All it means is that if the administration wants to fire a teacher, they have to go through a neutral arbitrator to do so.

Papercut posted:

You seem to have a misunderstanding of what tenure is. Tenure does not mean a teacher can't be fired, rather tenure is the "strong due process" that you're referring to. All it means is that if the administration wants to fire a teacher, they have to go through a neutral arbitrator to do so.

Northjayhawk posted:

As far as your objections to cutting the worst teachers, we can't wave our hands and say thats not important right now, the courts are still going to insist that "grossly incompetent" teachers not be lumped into the poor schools due to equal protection concerns. The only reasonable way to do that is to somehow make it reasonably possible to fire those teachers.

litany of gulps posted:

Poor schools often have the highest numbers of emergency and alternative certification teachers working in them (as well as TAs given classrooms like full teachers). An emergency or alternative certification usually means you have a bachelor's degree (in anything), you get trained for 0-14 days, then are placed in a classroom and called a teacher. At the end of the year, if your principal signs off on your certification, you become a full, qualified teacher.

Why would a poor school want a completely unknown, untrained teacher? Well, if the prospective teacher requires your signature at the end of the year, then they're under your thumb. If you're in it for ideology, that's ideal. If you can't find any candidates because, as part of a reform movement, you've fired off tons of teachers and everyone is running scared, then it may just be your only option.

I question how many of these grossly incompetent teachers aren't trained teachers at all, but rather random people with degrees that wanted to play at teacher and got the opportunity to because the districts can't find anyone qualified to do the job.

Nonsense posted:

Excuse me but haven't you watched Waiting For Superman like every good American who cares about the future of our children to pay a conglomerate every step of the way through a lifetime of education?

Nonsense posted:

Excuse me but haven't you watched Waiting For Superman like every good American who cares about the future of our children to pay a conglomerate every step of the way through a lifetime of education?

Papercut posted:

Maybe in their next round of negotiations, the teacher's unions could insist that all contractual language use "due process" in place of "tenure". Let all of these privatizers attempt to sell the public on taking away teacher's due process.

Northjayhawk posted:

Well, by the state's own admission, at least 1-3% of CA teachers are, their words, "grossly incompetent". Not just below average or ineffective, but ridiculously bad. That is a fact that all parties in the case, plaintiffs and defendants, agreed on.

Vergara v. California posted:

Dr. Berliner, an expert called by State Defendants, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are grossly ineffective.

Dave47 posted:

1) There is a fundamental right to equal access to due process. (5th and 6th amendments.)

2) Both sides agree that judges are super-important to justice.

3) Both sides agree* that 1-3% of judges are "grossly ineffective." (Given the size of the judicial branch, this is literally thousands of judges.)

4) Grossly ineffective judges hurt defendants, and deny them equal access to the law. (Probably you can quantify this in terms of lost wages, but the human cost is obviously enormous.)

5) A preponderance of evidence shows that grossly ineffective judges impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority defendants.

6) Therefore, strict scrutiny is triggered, and we're off to the races.

Leperflesh posted:

Here's a fun game:


My point here, if it's not obvious, is that the judge's line of reasoning could be applied to any area of essential government service where incompetence has a measurable and significant impact on people's lives... and it's almost always the case that when it does, those impacts are disproportionately borne by minorities and the poor. Police, transportation, criminal justice, OSHA, EPA, you could come up with quite a few. If the result is that the government employees performing those tasks lose any right to seniority being a consideration for retaining their jobs, that would be... well, interesting, at the very least.

AshB posted:

Also, although I can see the argument that the focus should be on attracting better talent rather than figuring out who to fire, that's not really an argument for why tenure is good. Attracting talent and firing bad teachers are two distinct issues. The more persuasive point for keeping tenure is that it just gives employees a form of due process rather than meaning "you can't get fired."

on the left posted:

The problem there is that talented teachers avoid problem schools like the plague, as evidenced earlier in the thread. Given a choice between well-behaved students who want to learn, and students who won't listen and might stab you or beat you up, anybody with a choice is going to choose the better school. This effect would be bad enough with equal school funding (equal teacher salaries), but if most teachers turned down 20k in additional cash to work in a disadvantaged school, things aren't looking good.

on the left posted:

This effect would be bad enough with equal school funding (equal teacher salaries), but if most teachers turned down 20k in additional cash to work in a disadvantaged school, things aren't looking good.

etalian posted:

On a side note how that wild high speed rail coming along?

In hindsight it probably would have been better to use the money to just unfuck masstransit for all the main population centers.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Are Greens that eager to vote for Obama?

CPColin posted:

Maybe more Greens figure the GOP is weak enough now that they can stop voting for Democrats?

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

It's really really frustrating! It doesn't seem like the HSR project is being developed with any kind of coherent vision for connecting people to the train stations. Maybe we could spend some of the money on making California's conventional rail network viable or at least spend the money where it's going to do the most good for the environment? Instead it seems like a prestige project that state Democrats are now bound to defend to the death. Hope I'm wrong, but I've been watching this thing drag along since the 90s and it's pretty drat unimpressive.