2 ex-Calif. governors come out against teacher tenure
By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
Former Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe joined the legal attack on California’s teacher tenure laws, telling a state appeals court the job-security and seniority statutes leave some of the state’s neediest students in the hands of incompetent teachers.
It is “nearly impossible to remove ineffective teachers from classrooms” because of the state laws, lawyers for Wilson and Schwarzenegger said in a filing to the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. After 15 years of legislative inaction and an unsuccessful 2005 ballot measure backed by Schwarzenegger to change the tenure law, it is time for the courts to act, they said.
No other state allows “such lopsided school laws which favor teacher interests over the rights of students,” said a second brief coauthored by Tribe, a Harvard law professor with liberal leanings whose students have included future PresidentBarack Obama and U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. Other academics who signed the brief included Rachel Moran, a UCLA law school professor and former dean.
The tenure system is absurd. What other job exists where, if you’ve kept it for 4 years, you pretty much have to commit a capital crime to be fired?
The priesthood.
Good because there is a teacher at STHS that needs to go! The way he treats kids is deplorable and I know if he weren’t protected by tenure, he’d be out of a job!
Tahoe mom… your school is not alone. There is a primary teacher at Bijou who is an absolute unqualified loser who NEVER should have been granted tenure the day hired. The children in her class suffer every day. :(
The tenure system in its current form is indefensible.
Hmmm, snap!!!!
Ha…the girlie-man and the guy who can’t speak English.
Tahoe mom: more than likely you have entitled brat child and this teacher finally told them so.
Ps. Good luck changing the tenure laws. Lol
Yes, Liberule, if some parents actually took charge of their little brats then things might turn around. Too many of them today blame their little rug-rats actions on EVERYONE else. “Oh my child showed up so they are entitled to an award.” “Oh it’s not their fault they broke the rules”. P A T H E T I C!!
And now the early “entitlement” wiz kids are entering the work force and can’t grasp why they don’t immediately start at the top. Unplug their I-pads, etc. and see how they figure out life. Pretty sad.
How juvenile of you, Liberule, to “assume” that my kid deserved the treatment received by a teacher that even the head of the department has agreed would be grounds for termination if the teacher didn’t have tenure. You know what assuming does…right? Except I’m not the a** here.