The five laws that in effect protect chronically ineffective teachers against firing are the "permanent employment statute" — lifelong tenure after 18 months; the "written charges statute"; the "correct and cure statute"; the "dismissal hearing statute"; and the "last in first out statute."
These statutes make it nearly impossible to fire a teacher who fights it. For example, according to L.A. Weekly's 2010 article "Dance of the Lemons," teacher Roque Burio got five "below-standard" evaluations, but years of retraining failed. LAUSD finally paid Burio $50,000 to leave quietly.
ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH PATRICK PFARR
Related Content
More About
The Weekly reported that LAUSD spent $3.5 million over a decade to fire seven teachers who fought back and were protected by multiple hearings and court processes. LAUSD got rid of only four of the seven.
Nobody knows how many "lemon teachers" exist in the huge, 45,000-person LAUSD teacher force. But Students Matter believes 5 percent of California teachers are "grossly ineffective" — so bad that retraining can't help them.
In LAUSD, that would translate to 1,600 grossly ineffective teachers. Yet until recently, parents didn't fight back, and they still have no legal way to learn if their child has a "lemon" teacher.
Only principals and individual teachers can privately view detailed LAUSD longitudinal data showing how well each child scored on standard tests under several previous teachers — compared to how well the child scored under the current teacher.
The secrecy led the L.A. Times to publish its series "Grading the Teachers."
The newspaper named and ranked more than 6,000 LAUSD teachers — and now has named and ranked 11,500 — based on how well their individual students did on test scores, compared to the same students' test-score track record under previous teachers.
Boutros, Olson and Lipshutz are betting they can protect kids from failing educators.
In 1971, the state Supreme Court in Serrano v. Priest held that all school districts have a constitutional right to equal funding.
In its court filings, Students Matter argues that sticking a classroom with an ineffective teacher who chronically lets students fall behind is like unequal funding: "Students assigned to grossly ineffective teachers ... are denied equal access to the fundamental right to education."
"It would be revolutionary in its consequences if it succeeds," says David Plank, executive director, Policy Analysis for California Education. "The legal theory and the radicalism of the policy change are orders of magnitude greater than Doe v. Deasy."
Reach the writer at hillelaron@mac.com.
