The Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution group, which focuses on improving education and increasing educational opportunities for poor minority students, analyzed 44 LAUSD schools with weak test scores last school year. At these schools, only 20 percent of students met or did better than state math standards and only 28 percent in English.

Yet last school year, 68 percent of teachers in these schools were not subject to official evaluations – either through oversight or via exemptions ordered by their principals. Of teachers who were evaluated, 96 percent were found to meet or do better than district performance standards. Over the past three school years, the figure edged up to 97 percent getting positive evaluations – meaning only about one in every 30 evaluated teachers is found wanting.

“We do see this in other districts, where almost everyone has a satisfactory rating and it’s disconnected from student achievement,” Seth Litt, Parent Revolution’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times. “It shouldn’t be disconnected.”

The findings parallel those that emerged from the landmark Vergara v. California lawsuit, in which nine students from state public schools represented by civil-rights attorneys hired by the Students Matter group alleged five state teacher job protection laws were so powerful that they had the unconstitutional effect of keeping incompetent teachers on the job and funneling them toward schools in poor communities.

Evidence presented by the plaintiffs in the case showed that only 2.2 teachers on average are fired each year for unsatisfactory performance in a state with 275,000 teachers at its public schools.

The case’s primary focus was on Los Angeles Unified. In a twist that few expected, some of the most powerful testimony against the teacher protection laws came from then-LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. He testified in early 2014 that even if a teacher were “grossly ineffective,” it could cost the district millions in legal bills to fire the teacher.

Later that year, state Judge Rolf Treu agreed with the plaintiffs that the five teacher protection laws unconstitutionally deprived the students of their right to a good public education. Treu likened the laws’ effects to those of segregation before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Treu’s decision was overturned on appeal on the grounds that the trial failed to clearly establish a factual nexus between student performance and the job protection laws.

3 state justices wanted to hear teacher tenure case

But education reformers were somewhat heartened by what happened next. Three members of the California Supreme Court wanted to hear an appeal of the appellate ruling, suggesting at the least some interest in Treu’s reasoning, which was mocked as novel and weak by attorneys for teacher unions. While they were voted down by the state high court’s other four justices, they could be a factor in future litigation.

As for Los Angeles Unified, litigation over school practices affecting minorities and high-needs students has been common for decades. In September 2017, for a recent example, the district reached a $151 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over the improper diversion of Local Control Funding Formula dollars that were supposed to be used to help struggling students in poor communities, especially English-language learners.

LAUSD was also the target in 2010 of what a federal government statement called “the first proactive civil rights enforcement action taken by the Department of Education under the Obama administration” – prompted by what then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the district’s failure to adequately educate many Latino and African-American students. The case was settled in 2011 after the district agreed to make several substantial changes meant to improve these students’ performance.

But evidence presented in the Vergara case showed no subsequent gains by these student groups.

Los Angeles Unified has 640,000 students, making it by far the largest school district in California. Only the New York City school system, which has about 1 million students, is larger in the U.S.

No Child Left Behind, championed by President George W. Bush and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, was enacted in 2002. It included a long list of mandates that states had to follow to receive federal funding. But it quickly became a lightning rod because of its heavy emphasis on testing. It was also criticized for setting unrealistic goals.

Last year, the House and Senate moved to pass a new federal framework that included far fewer requirements. But accountability advocates did manage to win a provision that they believe will force states to step in and improve poorly functioning schools. It mandates that states must intervene with schools which repeatedly fail to graduate two-thirds of students, fall in the bottom 5 percent of academic achievement or have chronic problems with low scores for ethnic groups.

U.S. Department of Education officials charged with drafting rules for this provision want states to adopt simple metrics based mostly on test scores that provide one number for each school, making it easier to assess academic performance.

California State Superintendent of Public Schools Tom Torlakson

But Gov. Jerry Brown, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson (pictured) and state Board of Education President Michael Kirst have for years disapproved of the single-score rating. This view — and the aggressive lobbying of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers — led to the scrapping of the Academic Performance Index that had previously provided snapshot looks at school performance.

Instead, the state Board of Education earlier this month unanimously adopted a system that rates schools on several factors, including math and English test scores; graduation, suspension and absenteeism rates; and effectiveness of English-learner courses. Kirst and Torlakson wrote a letter to a U.S. Department of Education officials urging that California’s multi-metric standard be accepted.

State evaluation ripped as confusing, unhelpful

But the proposal has come under fire within California. While it was being finalized, the state evaluation system was blasted in a Los Angeles Times editorial as being confusing and unhelpful. The Legislature was also skeptical. At the behest of Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, the Assembly and Senate passed a bill with almost no dissent that had a similar variety of metrics for schools — but also a bottom-line, single score on academic performance, as the U.S. Department of Education wants.

Last weekend, Gov. Brown vetoed the bill — AB2548 — saying the standards developed by the state Board of Education were superior.

This sets up a confrontation with the Obama administration in the short term and with the administration of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump after Jan. 20, 2017.

Brown, Torlakson and Kirst may be hoping for a more sympathetic ear from Clinton. A high-profile education reformer earlier in her career, in recent years she has echoed teacher unions’ criticism of assigning so much importance to results of standardized tests.

On several fronts, key business, education and political interests have heightened their push for the changes. Although opposition remains strong, pro-Common Core groups sense that a tipping point may be approaching. Rather than taking victory for granted, they are mobilizing, using overlapping strategies centered on the so-called “Smarter Balanced” assessments.

The computer-based tests, used to appraise students’ mastery of Common Core, are already receiving mixed reviews at best. As the Orange County Register reports, students have experienced the kinds of tech glitches that are familiar to Americans from the checkout aisle to Obamacare signups — frozen screens, no sound, slow clicks and password resets. Administrators have additional challenges on their mind. Amy Kernan, a vice principal interviewed by the Register, expressed concern that the “hallmark” adaptive testing portion of Smarter Balanced has yet to be pilot tested itself.

Federal pressure to meet deadline

Thanks to U.S. Department of Education demands, California has just one year to test out the exams. (Scores won’t be issued this year.) Remarkably, California is one of several states singled out by the DOE for punishment if it fails to meet the Smarter Balanced deadline. Despite widespread enthusiasm among California lawmakers for Common Core, legislators in 2013 passed a bill designed to suspend nearly all statewide student testing for one year — the better to prepare for Smarter Balanced implementation.

Signed into law in September by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Bill 484 provoked the swift ire of DOE officials. As activists objected that the bill would create a “black hole of information,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that California would lose up to $15 million or more in federal education funding for the move. Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, sent a sternly worded letter to Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, and Mike Kirst, president of the state Board of Education. “By failing to administer a reading/language arts and mathematics assessment to all students in the tested grades,” she wrote, “California would be unable to provide this important information to students, principals, teachers and parents.”

A scramble for funding

Last spring, Brown also authorized one and a quarter billion dollars of state-funded Common Core funds, to be distributed proportionally to each school district in California. In an effort to hang onto federal dollars, Sacramento officials resolved to proceed with Smarter Balanced testing only, speeding up the timetable for distributing the $1.25 billion.

What they didn’t anticipate was confusion over how that money would be spent. California school districts vary widely in their level of education technology and technical support. According to the Hechinger Report, some districts have already spent all of their share of the grant, while others have spent only a third — leading Brown to pledge this May an additional one-time sum of $26.7 million to grease the wheels for Smarter Balanced.

Public relations push

With so much uncertainty surrounding the cost of merely being able to administer the Smarter Balanced exams, Common Core supporters have issued a fresh statement touting the embattled agenda. Some 300 groups and individuals have signed a joint statement, sent to Gov. Brown and others, justifying the Smarter Balanced ordeal as a necessary step in the march toward fulfilling Common Core advocates’ promises.

At least one activist expressed clear concern that Smarter Balanced posed a significant threat to favorable public and educator opinion surrounding Common Core. Debra Brown, associate director of education policy for Children Now, expressed “trepidation” over the likelihood of unfavorable “knee-jerk reactions” toward the testing process.

The public relations effort follows on the heels of a February letter sent to state education officials by Common Core opponents. Californians United Against Common Core pegged the estimated cost of assessing Common Core at over $1 billion.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the president and Education Secretary Arne Duncan would again employ such hardball in a fast-developing showdown with the state of California over AB 484, legislation signed last month by Gov. Jerry Brown. I wrote about the measure here:

“This bill … would broadly suspend much federally mandated testing of students for at least a year and also block the release of test scores in some other circumstances. This has prompted sharp criticism from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan … because test scores are essential to evaluating student progress.

“The nominal reason for this extraordinary legislation? State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson says it would help schools to focus on a new testing regimen with different learning goals, called the Common Core standards.

“The real reason, however, is much more basic. On June 12, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant held that Los Angeles Unified — and, by implication, every California school district — could no longer ignore a 1971 state law that required that student performance be part of teacher evaluations.

“How do you keep the Chalfant ruling from inconveniencing teachers? You block student testing. If you can’t measure student performance, you can’t ding teachers.”

Don’t cross us, Brown and Torlakson

So who will pay for this defiance of the Obama White House? Following the Obama Budget Theater edict of make the cuts hurt as much as possible, it’s hurting students. Education-beat king John Fensterwald has the details:

“Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle … warned that some of the $3.5 billion for disadvantaged students that districts receive under Title I may be in jeopardy, including money for children with disabilities and migrant children … .”

In a grim way, the Obama administration’s ruthlessness is pretty funny. It will be entertaining to watch this proxy war between a ruthless president and the ruthless CTA. I wish they could both lose, but I’m rooting for the White House on this. Education reform shouldn’t be hammered in California just so Jerry Brown can keep the CTA happy.

The saga of AB 484 is just one more example of the sort of contrary details that one never sees in all the East Coast media fawning over Jerry.

The most obvious example is the fact that California has a 1971 state law — the Stull Act — that mandates student performance be included in teacher evaluations. This is just the sort of approach that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan like as part of their push to eliminate the 10 percent or so of teachers they say are too incompetent to be allowed in the classroom.

But guess what: The law has been ignored for decades in California. Why? Because for at least 20 years, the most powerful special interest in the state has been the teacher unions — the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. Keeping the CTA and CFT happy has been a higher priority in local school districts and in the Legislature than actually honoring a clearly written state law.

No job matches your specialty? So what? Here's your check

With monotonous regularity, stories come along to remind us of this dominance of the teacher unions. In the past two years, the main example has been the disgusting Mark Berndt scandal and fallout in California's largest school district. The veteran teacher couldn't be fired by Los Angeles Unified for feeding semen to students; he had to be paid $40,000 to quit. Since then, the Legislature has blocked measures to make it easier to fire classroom sexual predators such as Berndt. Instead, a fake reform passed this year actually would have made it tougher to fire pervert teachers. Thankfully, Brown vetoed it. He'll kowtow to teacher unions on a lot of fronts, but he draws the line at the Pervert Protection Act of 2013.

Now comes an example from the state's second largest school district. San Diego Unified has been pleading poverty for years. Now it turns out the allegedly fiscally bereft district is actually bereft of transparency and common sense. This is from the U-T San Diego:

“Teachers are [classified as] excessed when their positions are eliminated — usually due to an enrollment drop, increase in class size or — in the case of middle and high school — the discontinuation of a course or program. …

“San Diego Unified’s 2013-14 budget counts on some 300 teachers having retired or resigned last school year to save $27 million. …

“This week, excessed teachers will gather at a district forum to bid for vacant jobs, positions that will be awarded based on seniority and credentials.

“At the end of the forum, if there are more teachers than jobs, the district must create new positions since excess teachers are tenured employees who are guaranteed employment. …

“San Diego Unified employs more than 6,000 teachers. The number excessed each year varies — from 658 last year to 696 in 2011-12, 560 in 2010-11, and 347 in 2009-10, district records show.”

San Diego's version of “rubber rooms”

If anything confirms the fact that California's K-12 school system is more about providing union jobs than it is about providing students with an education, this is it. A school district that is allegedly so hard up for cash that it uses 30-year borrowing to pay for graffiti removal keeps hundreds of teachers on the payroll who don't teach.

This isn't as outrageous as the “rubber rooms” of New York City where hundreds of violent or deranged teachers sit around all day and collect pay to do crosswords and listen to their iPods. But it's just as revoltingly stupid.

That didn’t sway the Legislature, which passed AB 484 — the legislation Duncan ripped — or Gov. Jerry Brown, who praised the Legislature for its approval and whose aides helped craft the CTA- and CFT-blessed bill.

So what does the Obama administration do? Education reform has arguably been the single strongest policy initiative of the president, reflecting an unusual willingness to take on teachers unions, a core Dem constituency. And Obama is also a lame duck, with no election on the horizon. He can do a Nixon-goes-to-China thing if he wants and stake out for history his support of the common-sense idea that bad teachers need to be weeded out of public schools.

But no. It’s easier to duck a fight, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Duncan toned down his recent criticism of California in an interview with The Times, calling his previous threat to withhold federal funding from the state over a new plan to test students a ‘last resort.’

“‘We want to be flexible, we want to be thoughtful,’ Duncan said. ‘We don’t want to be stuck. There are lots of different things happening across the country. I don’t want to be too hard and fast on any one of these things because I have not gone through every detail, every permutation.'”

From critic to supplicant in one week

Duncan wasn’t done yet with his kowtowing.

“He also praised the efforts of California and specifically Gov. Jerry Brown to adopt high academic standards and move quickly to new and improved standardized tests.

“‘I give the governor tremendous credit,’ Duncan said. ‘He’s worked really, really hard’ in moving to new and rigorous learning goals. ‘He’s put real resources behind that.'”

Groan. How can the Obama administration give California credit for anything on the education front? As the Times article notes …

“Duncan’s department and California have been at odds at times over the high-profile Race to the Top grants and waivers from onerous provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The state lost out on both because of its unwillingness to mandate the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.”

A 1971 state law MANDATES that student performance be part of teacher evaluations. So when the Brown administration refuses the carrot in the Obama administration’s carrot-and-stick approach, it’s not just keeping federal dollars from California and blocking reform — it’s breaking state law!

Does the Times point out this ridiculous contradiction? Nope. Why? Who knows?

East Coast media more cynical about teacher unions

The West Coast media continue to lag the East Coast media in their coverage of teacher unions and education policy. They’re only about 30 percent cynical. The East Coast media have been 80 percent cynical for decades. Do you know about Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper”?

Woody Allen’s 1973 science fiction comedy Sleeper depicted teacher union leader Albert Shanker as a madman who destroyed the world …

That’s real-life Amercian Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, not a made-up character, who brought chaos to New York public schools in the 1960s. We have plenty of Shankers out here.

The starkest evidence that the union-first status quo remained entrenched in the Legislature came with the ramming through of the wish list of the most powerful forces in the state. I have an editorial in Sunday’s U-T San Diego laying out the sick picture and pointing to the CTA’s and the CFT’s key collaborator:

Protecting perverted teachers  …

“The top priority for California’s public schools in California should be helping students. Instead, priority No. 1 is protecting teachers from accountability … .

“This was on display with an alleged teacher discipline measure prompted by the horrifying case of Mark Berndt, a veteran Los Angeles Unified elementary-school teacher who delighted in feeding semen to his students. The school district paid Berndt $40,000 to resign in 2011 after determining that job protections demanded and won by United Teachers Los Angeles were so imposing that he couldn’t simply be fired.

“In 2012, an Assembly committee blocked a bill that would have streamlined the discipline process and allowed for decisive action in cases like Berndt’s. This triggered considerable political fallout that led to one Assembly member’s defeat. And so in 2013, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers ordered their puppets to adopt AB 375 — a fake reform that in some cases actually gives teachers even more job protections. The measure is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, where it should die.

“But don’t count on that. The allegedly independent, tough-minded Brown is the closest ally the CTA and CFT have ever had in the governor’s office.”

… and incompetent teachers, too

“Which brings us to AB 484, which should get at least as much attention as AB 375. This bill, also on Brown’s desk, would broadly suspend much federally mandated testing of students for at least a year and also block the release of test scores in some other circumstances. This has prompted sharp criticism from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, including a threat to withhold federal education funds, because test scores are essential to evaluating student progress.

“The nominal reason for this extraordinary legislation? State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson says it would help schools to focus on a new testing regimen with different learning goals, called the Common Core standards.

“The real reason, however, is much more basic. On June 12, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant held that Los Angeles Unified — and, by implication, every California school district — could no longer ignore a 1971 state law that required that student performance be part of teacher evaluations.

“How do you keep the Chalfant ruling from inconveniencing teachers? You block student testing. If you can’t measure student performance, you can’t ding teachers.”

The CA cold war over education

But the unions aren’t the only parties to blame. There’s also our alleged genius leader, Msgr. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“And what is the governor’s idea of school ‘reform”’? Returning more authority to the local level. Our allegedly worldly, brilliant governor somehow is ignorant of the fact that local control used to be the status quo — and it was an enormous failure. ‘If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war,’ declared the 1983 ‘Nation at Risk’ federal report that triggered the education reform movement.

“Thirty years later, at least in California, a cold war over education persists. But as AB 375 and AB 484 show, it’s not much of a war. The teachers unions are winning in a rout — and their arrogance has hit such extremes that they’re even willing to use their clout to protect classroom sexual predators.

“Congratulations, CTA. Congra-tulations, CFT.

“And congratulations, governor. Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

At least Katrina came and went. The CTA and CFT are like a perma-storm hanging over the Golden State’s classrooms. That their enabler is a guy who’s routinely billed as the sharpest guy in the room? What an indictment of CA’s media.

“Hours before a key vote in the Legislature, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has warned California not to administer a partial practice or field test on the Common Core standards to some students in lieu of giving the existing tests on state standards to all students next spring – or face consequences.

“’If California moves forward with a plan that fails to assess all its students, as required by federal law,’ Duncan said in a statement released Monday night, ‘the Department will be forced to take action, which could include withholding funds from the state.’

“Duncan was reacting to Assembly Bill 484, pushed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, which calls for immediately ending most state standardized tests, including those required by the No Child Left Behind law for federal accountability: English language and math tests for 3^rd through 8^th grades and grade 11. Students in districts capable of offering the computer-based field test for Common Core would take either the English language arts or math test, but not both, under the bill.”

That’s from John Fensterwald on EdSource.

Brown the villain every bit as much as Torlakson

The villain here isn’t just Torlakson, elected basically on the strength of teacher unions’ support and devoted to the CTA/CFT agenda. It’s Gov. Jerry Brown. It was two years ago that he undercut all education reform in California by pretending no one had any idea about how to improve schools. I wrote about the development for the L.A. Daily News.

“Brown doesn’t just seem skeptical of specific reforms but of the whole notion of education reform. Consider his florid veto message rejecting a bill that would have changed how schools are assessed. He called it ‘yet another siren song of school reform,’ a reference to Greek mythology that suggests not just disdain but contempt for reform advocates.

“The governor pairs this broad skepticism of reform efforts with a denunciation of federal officials such as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for not having ‘a trust or even a belief in local schools’ — as if school reform will ever percolate up from districts in which teachers unions are almost always the most powerful force and use their clout to maximize teacher compensation and jobs protection.

“So, to sum up, Brown knows schools need to improve. (Good.) But he is suspicious of reformers and appears to doubt sweeping reforms based on broad policy changes could even work. (Uh-oh.) And he thinks local school districts could innovate their way to success if given the chance. (Oh, no!)”

And now Duncan’s lack of “a trust or even a belief in local schools” is shown to be spot on. At least in California.

Great, just great.

By Chris Reed

For decades, it’s been common in K-12 public education to award raises to teachers for accumulating graduate school credits — even if the coursework has nothing to do with the subject that the teacher teaches. There has never been any evidence that this practice helps teacher performance in any way, but the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers have always fought to keep it, especially as a way for veteran teachers to boost their pay after their 20th year, when they normally are no longer eligible for the step raises they get most of their first 20 years just for showing up. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is among many reformers who thinks this is a nutty way to determine teacher pay.

Now a big California school district agrees. This is from the San Jose Mercury-News:

“SAN JOSE — In a groundbreaking contract, the San Jose Unified School District and its teachers union have agreed to peg pay increases to teaching skill rather than college credits, create a career ladder for outstanding teachers and slow the advancement of ineffective teachers — or ultimately fire them.

“The school board last week approved a three-year contract, effective July 1, after 72 percent of teachers ratified the contract in an election with a 76 percent turnout.

“‘I’m definitely excited about the direction and the opportunity that this contract presents,’ said Superintendent Vincent Matthews.”

A smart reform — but does contract violate spirit of state law?

But there’s a peculiar twist to this story. Thanks to a 2012 Los Angeles Superior Court ruling, school districts in California are on notice that the 1971 Stull Act is still a binding state law. And among the law’s many provisions is a specific requirement that student performance be part of teacher evaluations.

Yet the way the Merc-News story reads, student performance can only be considered if it is positive — not if it is poor. Huh?

“But though dubbed revolutionary by some, the new contract omits some elements once discussed but deemed too controversial, such as paying teachers to teach at high-poverty, low-achieving schools, and pegging teacher evaluations to student test scores.

“‘There is no reliable study showing that increase so-called accountability by making student test scores a significant part of evaluation improves outcomes for students or teacher performance,’ [Jennifer Thomas, president of the San Jose Teachers Association] said.

“While student performance will be part of the discussion on evaluations, teachers won’t be penalized if students don’t meet expectations.”

A strange Silicon Valley version of Lake Woebegon

In Lake Woebegon, all the students are famously above average. In San Jose, strangely enough, all the students who are below average don’t exist — at least when it’s time to consider how good a job teachers are doing.

Weird.

By Chris Reed

UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff’s blueprint for Democrats from a decade ago continues to reverberate. Lakoff stressed the emphasis of framing issues with the proper language and spoke of the power of metaphors. And so now we always hear government spending described as “investments.”

Now the teachers unions and their political pals/puppets are in their third or fourth year of their Lakoffian push to characterize all education reform efforts as being “corporate” and therefore evil. Take it away, Tom Torlakson:

“SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Sunday condemned efforts led by members of their own party to overhaul the nation’s schools, arguing that groups such as StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests.

“Before delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution excoriating the groups on the final day of the party’s annual convention here, speakers urged them to focus on protecting students and teachers.

“‘People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform — it’s a free country — but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you’re not a reformer, you’re not helping education, and you’re sure not much of a Democrat,’ said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a registered Democrat whose office is nonpartisan. …

“‘Let’s be perfectly clear,’ [said California Teachers Assn. President Dean Vogel]. ‘These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives and out-of-state Wall Street billionaires dedicated to school privatization and trampling on teacher and worker rights.'”

But this rhetorical hard sell is going to be tough. As the L.A. Times’ account laid out, the president and a likely future Democratic gubernatorial candidate qualify for the list of corporate tools that Torlakson and Vogel lambaste:

“The advocacy groups are calling for increasing parental choice, tying student performance to teacher evaluations and changing how teachers are hired and fired. President Obama, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker are among the elected Democrats who support the groups’ efforts.”

Romero calls the issue of poor schools afflicting struggling minority students a civil rights matter, and she’s right. But at a more basic level, the fight over teacher competence and job protections is part of the larger battle over government’s purpose in California.

Is its primary function to provide public services or to provide government jobs?

Incredibly enough, as this weekend’s Democratic convention showed, California’s dominant political party believes it’s the latter.