Tenure is a hot-button issue for parents, education advocates and teachers themselves. Under California law, teachers can be granted tenure — essentially permanent employment — after about 18 months on the job. California is one of just five states to grant tenure after two years or less.
A tenured teacher can’t be fired without just cause, such as severe misconduct or incompetence. The movement to grant teachers tenure became popular in the early 20th century as a means of protecting educators from being fired for the wrong reasons, such as a new political party winning office or a teacher giving a low grade to a child from an influential family.
While the practice was instituted for good reason, it makes firing a tenured teacher a slow and expensive process. If a teacher takes full advantage of the procedural protections offered by state law and collective bargaining agreements, it can take several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to fire him.
The tenure system has been criticized by some education advocates, and it was challenged in the courts by the plaintiffs in the 2014 case Vergara v. California. In that decision, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled that the state’s laws governing teacher tenure, firing and layoffs violate students’ constitutional right to an equal education, because poor and minority pupils are disproportionately affected. Often, a teacher who receives complaints is simply funneled to a school in a disadvantaged area.
“There is no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms,” said Treu.
Only about two teachers a year are dismissed for poor performance in California, out of 275,000, said Marcellus McRae, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “You don’t need a lot of adjectives and adverbs to be able to figure out that’s a broken system.”
The ruling is under appeal by the state and California’s two major teachers unions, and existing tenure protections remain in place. After the judge made his ruling, State Superintendent of Schools Tom Torlakson said the ruling unfairly blamed teachers for the failings of the school system when teachers deserve admiration and support.
“We do not fault doctors when emergency rooms are full. We do not criticize the firefighters whose supply of water runs dry,” Torlakson said. “Yet while we crowd our classrooms and fail to properly equip them with adequate resources, those who filed and support this case shamelessly seek to blame teachers who step forward every day to make a difference for our children.”
But, a case at Miramonte Elementary in Los Angeles drove California lawmakers to act. In 2012, teacher Mark Berndt was arrested and charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct, including feeding semen-laced cookies to his unwitting students. The school district moved to fire Berndt, but ultimately paid him $40,000 to resign because it was easier and less expensive than fighting his appeal.
In reaction to this case, California state lawmakers made it easier to fire educators. A new law added “egregious misconduct” to the state’s list of fireable offenses, which already includes immoral or unprofessional behavior. Under this new law, a teacher accused of the egregious misconduct, including sex abuse, attempted murder and drug crimes, would be given just 30 days after being fired to seek an independent hearing.
