Places Everyone!! Curtain Up!! 

Daleth

    Monday 1-27,  began the great puppet show that will be forever known as Vergara v. California.  This play, the latest in a tendentious and dangerous series, opens with the surly martinet and over actor, Mr. John Deasy, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage.  The puppet masters have purchased the most shameless shysters available to be his prompters or does he prompt them?  The text copied from L.A. School Report follows, my commentary is in bold.  LASR employs some lame-ass hacks and I will indulge in snark when I feel like it. 

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From L.A. School Report
Posted on January 27, 2014 by Mark Harris ...
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The thrust of the students’ case is that five state statutes make it difficult and expensive to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. In the opening statement for the students, Ted Boutrous argued that every child has a constitutional right to a quality education — a right that has been violated due to the current teacher employment statues (sic.  The PR shill who wrote this meant statutes.  A Freudian slip perhaps. Statues often get covered in bird shit and that's what the author wants to do to teachers.) that he claimed handcuffs (sic again! statutes handcuff.  This fool was never in my kindergarten - such assaults on grammar were kindly corrected. I daresay that he is incompetent and not his teachers.  The impoverished in spirit need someone to blame.) administrators in weeding ineffective teachers out of the classroom. Those statutes involve tenure, seniority and the dismissal process.

      Huh?  How do we know what is an ineffective teacher?  This determination  is made by one person, the principal.  Of course, school administrators are above reproach in their ability to recognize ineffective teachers and it is very easy for them.  BroadDeasyGates gives them a rubric: choose teachers over forty, especially those with seniority,  high on the salary schedule, and close to vesting in lifetime health benefits, then pick them off starting with those you like the least.  The quota seems to be about one per twenty faculty. 

Boutrous (the highly paid shyster lawyer) said the statutes also impose a disproportionate harm on poor and minority students, saying these students are more vulnerable to harm from ineffective teachers whom districts cannot dismiss.

      WTF?  Are there no ineffective teachers in richer neighborhoods?  How can he claim that ineffective teachers are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods of color?  What could explain such an uneven distribution?  Stop calling us minority, we are now the majority.  How do you figure that an ineffective teacher harms us more?  

Anticipating defendants’ arguments, he said the case was not attempt to undermine teachers’ due process rights or an attempt to make teachers a scapegoat for problems like racism and poverty.

     Please Mr. Boutrous, do you have a bridge to sell me?  Your powers of persuasion are so magnificent that I want to believe any wild thing you might say.  You have to have a bridge somewhere.  I hear there is one in Brooklyn.

Defense attorneys — Nimrod Ellis (sic!!! His name is Nimrod Elias.) for the state and James Feinberg for the California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association — argued that the statutes aren’t the problem. Rather, they said, the key issue is poor management by school administrators. Ellis (Elias) suggested that well managed schools are fully capable of getting rid of ineffective teachers. 

     Thin ice my brothers.  Very, very thin ice.  Will our heroes allow the shysters to frame the discussion?  Will they accept the shyster argument that there is a "problem?"  Will they be able to cite the fact that over 90% of ineffective teachers in the LAUSD are over 40 and have decades of experience?
     I love the name Nimrod though. 

Additionally, the defendants contended that the students would be unable to show that the teachers they were assigned were grossly ineffective. Feinberg told the court that there are socio-economic factors outside a teacher’s control, which are responsible for the widening achievement gap. He insisted that declaring laws unconstitutional will not close that gap.

     Our heroes may pull it off yet.

The defense lawyers wrapped up their opening remarks by stating that they welcomed the challenge, but the real policy change must come from the legislature in Sacramento -– and that plaintiffs will not be able to prove that these statutes violate their constitutional rights.

     The ice gets thinner.  Is there a problem?  Is it a good idea to imply that there might be something to their argument? 

Deasy, under friendly questioning from a students’ lawyer, Marcellus McRae, walked the court through current state laws governing the hiring and firing of teachers, student performance markers, rules regarding tenure and the impact they have on the school district.
   
     Now, this is the heart of the matter.  What will GatesBroadDeasy try to prove here?  None of my kindergarteners would dare tell a story and leave out important evidence. "Impact on the school district" implies so much.  UTLA hides the data but the majority, 93% of targeted teachers are experienced.  What happened to suddenly make us have such an impact?  Vulcan-mind-meld-left-wing conspiracy perhaps?

A major focus was the so-called “tenure statute,” which in California enables teachers to gain permanent employment — or tenure — after just 18 months on the job. In his answers, Deasy explained that the process for evaluating a teacher for purposes of tenure actually begins after just 13 months of actual teaching, a period of time he dismissed as too short for such a critical decision.
    
“No way this is sufficient amount of time, in my opinion, to make that critical judgement,” he said. “Not even to make it after two years of work.”

    No tenure after two years of teaching?  Can you say 'at will' and 'right-to-work?  This from a man who taught in a classroom for only six years. 

Deasy said the average cost of dismissing an ineffective teacher, which involves as many as 17 administrative steps, is $250,000 to $450,000, with many cases costing the district a lot more.

      This figure gets repeated and repeated.  If they railroad a teacher, write him or her up at every step, and drive him or her to resign/retire then this costs nothing.  If a teacher makes it through this abuse and one year of teacher jail it costs maybe $100,000 (wages and benefits) to pay a teacher to sit while a substitute covers the class.  Do they claim this as part of their cost?  If a teacher then is suspended and appeals to OAH this means that they are spending$250,000 to $450,000 on very expensive outside lawyers to get rid of one ineffective teacher and they are not talking about sexual or physical abuse.  Remember, he's trying to tell us that it costs this to get rid of an "ineffective teacher."  What are these 17 administrative steps?  Will our lawyers make him spell this out?
      Does the district not have lawyers on staff?  I know a teacher who went through this scenario and at his OAH hearing the LAUSD had three highly paid lawyers from O'Melveny and Myers, the most expensive law firm in the city and the most well connected to political power.  My friend's lawyer estimated that the LAUSD's bill for this at about $300k.
   Let's look at this another way.  How many teachers can the LAUSD hire for $250,000?  Somebody send me the numbers but as recall this is enough for three bottom of the salary schedule young, pretty teachers with benefits.  This would reduce class size though Mr. Deasy doesn't believe that class size is ever a factor.  How does the BroadDeasyGates approach help the achievement gap again?
    The district should be made to account for this money.  It seems that this part of it's budget has an endless supply.  Why does UTLA not address this?  What about "our friends" on the school board?
 
He also testified that the current tenure statute doesn’t allow school administers (sic, Markie it's called spellcheck.  Try it sometime.) to adequately assess a teacher’s performance or growth potential. He went on to say that he believes the tenure rules allow for “grossly ineffective teachers” to remain in the classroom.
    
     Huh?  What does belief have to do with this?   Will there be any evidence presented?  Will they try to define "adequately assess a teacher's performance or growth potential?  Such an outstanding opinion making thought leader should have no trouble with this.
 
   Okay let's break this down.

     BroadGates wants Deasy and his minions to be able to tell if a teacher is effective based upon what exactly?   Since most new teachers leave after five years then what is "growth potential?"  
      In "The Takeover Artist," Los Angeles Magazine, posted online 5-12, JD  said of recent college graduates “We have the hottest job pool that you could imagine, and we’re laying people off rather than dipping into it.” This was 2011.  Huh?  WTF?  Did no one at UTLA see this coming?  In 2010-2011 there were 969 rifs then more in 11-12 until by September '13 there were 3900 rif'd teachers who lost their seniority.  UTLA hasn't said much about this. How many of these rif'd teachers are still unemployed?  700 Great White Hope TFAs were hired 13-14 and JD wants to hire 1300 teachers 14-15. UTLA president Warren Fletcher reported that student population served by our members is down 21,000 which translates to 800 fewer teachers this year.  This is Twilight Zone Math, it doesn't add up and we don't hear anything about it from UTLA. 
       Someone help me with this question.  Did Trygstad et al. defend rifd teachers at no charge to them?  If they did, then UTLA must have picked up the tab because TTS don't work for free. At this point did UTLA not think that legal insurance might be a good idea for the rest of us?  So, UTLA through lack of leadership and intelligence left us vulnerable and now has no money to defend Unjustly Jailed Teachers.  This gives insight into UTLA reps' message to all unjustly jailed teachers that we'll never work again and that UTLA has no obligation to defend us.  I'll examine this in a later post. Does this not sound planned?  The kicker is that Warren Fletcher ignores us and quotes Sun Tzu's, The Art of War. Maybe it's actually The Art of Capitulation that he's reading. 
     Can Deasy refer to reliable statistics that show what percentage of teachers are ineffective?  Can someone define this using a reasoned argument?  I mean peer reviewed scientific studies of teacher effectiveness not predetermined pieces such as Gates buys.  Monica Garcia and Vivian Ekchian (head of Personnel) using the Gates stack approach say that one third of teachers are incompetent.  Btw Microsoft dropped this approach recently because they were losing too many valuable people.  This is also straight out of the Nazi play book.  Keep repeating something and people will start to believe it.  What about people who teach for awhile and go into administration?  Are one third of them incompetents?  I find the percentage much higher.