The U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in the Janus v. AFSCME case that public employees couldn’t be compelled to pay union dues was widely seen as a game-changing moment in U.S. politics.

The coverage on The Atlantic website was typical. It called the decision, which stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Illinois state employee Mark Janus, a “huge blow” to public sector unions and suggested the decision had the potential to “end” such unions in America.

But five months later, the experience of the most powerful public employee union in the nation’s largest state undercuts the assumption that Janus would take a quick toll on unions’ clout. In supporting Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, for state superintendent of public education against Marshall Tuck, the California Teachers Association spent $16 million as of Oct. 31 – $5 million more than it did in the entire 2014 superintendent election, where the union supported incumbent Tom Torlakson over Tuck, a former Los Angeles school executive with deep support from charter school advocates and a loose coalition of tech billionaires.

Torlakson narrowly defeated Tuck. This election, Tuck and Thurmond have been trading the lead in recent days. With millions of votes yet to be counted, no journalism organization has called the race.

The CTA does not issue regular updates on its membership status. But a recent Sacramento Bee analysis suggested that the union, as in previous years, had 90 percent membership among the 325,000 teachers it represented. So while it’s lost dues from the 10 percent of teachers who reject union membership, the CTA still collects more than $150 million in dues annually – making it the most powerful force in the California Democratic Party.

Union clout to be tested in coming fight over funding

The extent of the CTA’s clout is likely to be tested soon – whether Thurmond or Tuck is elected. That’s because both have said they oppose one of Torlakson’s most controversial, union-favoring decisions: His 2015 announcement that the extra funding going to schools with disproportionate numbers of English learners, foster children and impoverished students could be spent on general needs, such as raises for teachers.

Torlakson’s decision, which overrode a directive from a lower-ranking official in the state Department of Education, spurred outrage in education reform circles. The Local Control Funding Formula – the 2013 state law changing how districts were allocated state dollars – had been pitched as creating a lock-box of dollars that would be spent only on helping underachieving students.

But Torlakson’s decision had the effect of turning the local-control funding into a de facto block grant. Many districts have used the funds for employee raises.

If Thurmond or Tuck revive the lock-box theory of how the funds can be spent, that’s likely to create huge headaches for most school districts, which have received an average of $8 billion a year in local-control dollars since the law took effect.

Newsom close with both teachers unions and reformers

A key factor in the coming fight over funding is the position taken by Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who was strongly backed by the CTA but is also friends with the tech tycoons who want education reform. The governor’s control over parts of the Department of Education’s budget gives him a powerful lever to use on the state superintendent.

On the campaign trail, Newsom said teachers are underpaid and schools are underfunded. But he’s also rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s claim that education reform is a “siren song” in which trends come and go but schools never get better. In interviews, Newsom has noted the success of education reform in union states like Massachusetts and New Jersey.

It’s unclear when the count of the Thurmond-Tuck vote will be complete. But the recent statewide election with the most parallels to the race offers encouragement for Thurmond, a former social worker.

In the 2010 attorney general’s race, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, took such a substantial early lead over San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris that the San Francisco Chronicle pronounced him the winner on election night. But as millions of provisional and late ballots were counted, the tide turned steadily toward the union-backed Democrat. Three weeks later, Cooley conceded when Harris’ lead topped 50,000 votes. Harris ended up winning by more than 74,000 votes – about 1 percent of total voters.

The clout of the California Teachers Association was on full display last week when a bill by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, to reform a tenure law that can give lifetime job protections to teachers 18 months into their careers was abruptly

Since her election in 2012, Weber, a former school board president and college professor, has prodded her fellow Democratic lawmakers to not accept the California education status quo. Weber wants to make tenure rules more rigorous and like those in other states, to ensure the Local Control Funding Formula actually does what it was promised to do and helps English-language learners, and to seek state standards that make it easy to gauge whether schools are helping struggling minority students.

But Weber’s push for significant reforms have either been killed in the Legislature or by Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto pen.

Her latest reform measure, Assembly Bill 1220, would have delayed tenure decisions until a teacher’s third year on the job, but would have allowed marginal teachers additional time to establish their worthiness for tenure in a fourth year, and, in limited circumstances, a fifth year. Weber’s bill included a provision intended to make districts put more of an emphasis on professional development of marginal teachers.

The measure won early approvals and initially appeared relatively uncontroversial, with only five Assembly members opposing it in a preliminary June 1 vote. Weber supporters saw the provisions emphasizing helping struggling teachers as a valuable way to reassure teachers unions that the bill wasn’t an exercise in teacher or union bashing.

But later in June, the Assembly Appropriations Committee shaved off the fourth and fifth year tenure consideration provisions – without consulting Weber. Then, on July 6, Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, gutted and amended AB1164, a bill he had introduced about foster care policies, so it offered an alternative to Weber’s bill. Thurmond’s version would in some cases allow struggling teachers to win tenure consideration after a third year.

The bill was knocked by reformers as unnecessarily complex and inferior to Weber’s. But the clout of its prime supporter – the CTA – led Weber last week to withdraw her bill for now in hopes it would have better chances in 2018.

Thurmond then withdrew his bill, suggesting it was only introduced as a way to block Weber and her proposal. Both are members of the California Legislative Black Caucus.

CTA expected to back lawmaker who thwarted bill

The EdSource website connected the maneuvering to Thurmond’s plan to run for state superintendent of public instruction in 2018 when incumbent Tom Torlakson is termed out. That’s because the CTA has already sent signals it will endorse Thurmond, who has established his pro-teacher union bona fides with such measures as proposing that teachers be given subsidized housing.

The CTA’s strong and early support of Torlakson was key to the low-profile Bay Area state lawmaker winning the superintendent’s job in 2010 after finishing second in the primary, and to his narrow 2014 win over fellow Democrat Marshall Tuck, a Los Angeles charter school advocate with backing from school reform groups.

Tuck has already announced he will seek the job again in 2018.

The most expensive contest on the 2014 California ballot is set to return next year. 

“Marshall Tuck, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent schools chief Tom Torlakson in a contentious 2014 race that became a proxy fight over a lawsuit on teacher job protections, will run again for state superintendent of public instruction,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The former Los Angeles schools executive on Monday announced his candidacy for the 2018 election, citing a desire to bring ‘big change’ to a public education system that has ‘settled for mediocrity.'”

The two tangled last time on opposite sides of many Californians’ sense that teachers unions had often become an obstacle to improving education quality statewide. “They split over the Vergara court decision that held teacher-tenure protections discriminated against poor and minority students,” as CalWatchdog recalled previously. “Torlakson took the side of the unions and supported the appeal; Tuck made sustaining the decision a keystone of his campaign.”

“After Torlakson beat Tuck in a close election, 52 percent to 48 percent, Democrats hoped to unite on education and put their divisiveness behind them. But UC’s tuition hikes reopened the wound, putting officeholders in an awkward political position and pushing instinctively liberal students to oppose policies set by Democrats.”

Shifting agendas

Now, Tuck’s plans have focused around budget oversight and teacher quality. In his campaign announcement, “Tuck said his campaign will focus on ensuring that Gov. Jerry Brown’s new school funding formula – which provides additional money to districts with large numbers of poor children, English learners and foster youth – is really funneling money to the neediest students and that its accountability measures are more understandable for parents and the public,” the Bee noted.

“He also said California’s efforts to address its teacher shortage ‘so far have been way too small.’ He would consider raising compensation and changing training programs to get more potential teachers into the profession.”

More conciliatory

The rhetoric reflected a desire to stake out reform territory that would not prove as bitterly divisive as in 2014. “Tuck, 43, said he continues to favor revising the state’s tenure law, granting due process rights in less than two years, and revising the state’s teacher evaluation system,” according to EdSource. “But the issues of overriding importance, he said, are the need to establish ‘phenomenal’ training and mentoring programs for principals and new teachers and ‘for more support for students with the greatest needs.’ There was an overemphasis in the last campaign on the 10 percent of the issues that were divisive and less on the other 90 percent, he said.”

Tuck’s words also worked to calibrate expectations to the reality of the superintendency. “The position has little direct authority over California’s schools, but Tuck said he would use it to set a direction for the governor, State Board of Education and Legislature,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Tuck previously led Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles-based independent charter school chain that operates with a teachers union contract, and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a school turnaround organization. He has spent the last two years working as an educator in residence at the New Teacher Center.”

Torlakson’s own time has been consumed of late with education issues affecting undocumented residents. He recently “urged the state’s immigrant students not to be fearful of applying for the California Dream Act, a college financial aid program dedicated to helping undocumented students attend state universities and community colleges,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “As of last Friday, the number of California Dream Act applications has declined by 42 percent this year, due to President Trump-spurred unease over possible deportations, according to the California Student Aid Commission, which receives applications from students.”

While Tuesday night was grim for liberals, embattled teachers unions have won a big victory in California.

Incumbent state school superintendent Tom Torlakson repulsed a strong challenge from reform-minded charter school executive Marshall Tuck, defeating him by a margin of about 52-48 percent.

That’s from the Daily Caller. But given the stakes, it seems obvious that Torlakson’s relatively narrow win was a battle in a war that’s not going to end any time soon.

Who started the war? You’ll be surprised

And who touched off this war in California? As I wrote in the U-T San Diego, a case can be made that it was Gov. Jerry Brown — allegedly the close buddy of the CTA and CFT.

The education establishment is like a supertanker that requires the application of vast energy to make it change course. There are subtle but unmistakable signs this course change has begun.

The first factor driving this change was Gov. Jerry Brown’s declaration that the single most important issue in the Golden State is ensuring struggling minority students get a strong education so they can have productive lives. This was followed by Brown’s 2013 overhaul of school funding formulas, which was meant to ensure such students benefit from extra resources. Though the governor was careful not to frame this as an indictment of how these students are now being treated, that is the only interpretation that makes sense.

The second was Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu’s June ruling in the Vergara vs. California case that minority students received such inferior educations that it “shocked the conscience.” Treu cited the vast evidence presented in the Vergara trial that because of several state laws, bad teachers are almost impossible to fire, and are funneled to the minority schools most in need of the best teachers.This led to national news coverage, which accepted the premise that teacher union power hurt minority students.

The third was Tuck’s candidacy and its universal support among California editorial boards — conservative, libertarian and liberal alike. They too embraced the view that union power had metastasized in the public school system to the detriment of the most vulnerable students.

Finally, the canard that teacher and student interests are one and the same has been routed. Now it is only a matter of time before state Democrats are forced to address the emerging conventional wisdom that teacher unions, their most powerful faction, are doing harm to their most loyal factions: Latinos and African-Americans.

Is the gov a modern Machiavelli?

I have tried out this theory — that what’s happened appears to show how Jerry Brown is downright Machiavellian on education — with many people over the past few months. Journalists are more skeptical than non-journalists.

But the comments of a friend who is a sports fan have stuck with me. He said what Brown had done reminded him of a newly hired football coach commenting in obliquely negative ways on his roster. The goal is putting the who-is-to-blame focus on the general manager and the spotlight on the bigger picture, not the next game.

That’s sort of what Jerry Brown did. In a subtle way, he said California’s biggest problem was the CTA’s and the CFT’s fault. He’s framed the issue as if he were … Marshall Tuck.

The unions’ strategy of spending tens of millions of dollars — all of it ultimately snatched from taxpayers, who pay for the teacher salaries that fund union dues — on political ads paid off.

That means there’s little chance of immediate reform of the country’s most sclerotic public-school system, which perennially scores near the bottom on national test scores. As almost always in California, the unions win, the kids lose.

Still, things are developing in other areas. The Vergara court decision found that union seniority rules severely discriminated against disadvantaged kids — the very students the unions claim their political dominance helps. Torlakson backed the unions, natch. Tuck sided with the kids.

Latinos also are getting more upset every year with a system that just is failing their kids at every level. More Latinos are taking activist roles. One is former Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero, who authored the “parent trigger” law, under which parents can fire an entire school administration for bad performance.

Tuck also is well positioned for 2018, should he decide to run again. Torlakson will be term-limited out of office. And California’s schools will be even more in need of reform.

The October issue includes an endorsement of incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Tom Torlakson, long a teachers union ally; and an attack on his opponent, reformer Marshall Tuck. Both candidates are Democrats for a nonpartisan office. It wrote:

“In the contested election, Superintendent Tom Torlakson, a former classroom teacher, is promoting greater collaboration, while Marshall Tuck, a former Wall Street financier and charter school CEO, is pushing a policy of confrontation.”

But given the failure of California’s K-12 schools, which perennially rank near the bottom of the states on national tests, it’s hard to see how confrontation can be avoided if there’s to be any improvement.

Vergara

“Perspectives” brought up the recent Vergara court ruling, in which a judge found the state’s school seniority system discriminated against students in poor areas by providing a sub-par education. The paper wrote:

” ‘Teachers are not the problem in our schools; they are the solution,’ opined Torlakson after the recent Vergara lawsuit ruling. By contrast, in talking about teachers unions, Tuck stated: ‘Their seat at the table is too big and they have too much influence over education policy.'”

Given that “Perspectives” largely is aimed at J.C. teachers, the paper  covered that:

“While the statutory duties of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction cover early childhood through high school, Torlakson speaks out on behalf of higher educatoin as well. His brother is a community college instructor in San Francisco, and Torlakson himself taught community college in Los Medanos.

“Torlakson sided with the City College of San Francsico faculty and students against the unfair and illegal actions of the accreditation agency, calling on the ACCJC to reverse its sanctions.”

Torlakson’s statement is here.

A court trial on the accreditation issue is scheduled for Oct. 27. According to the Chronicle:

“City College has been in a state of limbo since 2012, when the [accrediting] commission gave it eight months to correct numerous fiscal and governance issues that were out of compliance with accrediting standards.

“In 2013 — after the state sidelined City College’s elected Board of Trustees and empowered a “special trustee” to make unilateral decisions — the commission still found the college was out of compliance. It voted to revoke accreditation, effective July 31, 2014.”

But shouldn’t the superintendent and the union favor tough standards to make sure students are learning and taxpayers are getting maximum bang for every education buck?

That’s one thing voters will decide in this race on Nov. 4.

According to the most recent campaign finance disclosure reports released Monday, Tuck has raised nearly $1.6 million since he launched his campaign to fix California’s failing schools. That’s roughly $200,000 more than incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. Both are Democrats.

In addition to raising more money, Tuck has more cash on hand heading into the final month of the campaign. Tuck’s $699,037 in available funds puts him with a nearly six-figure advantage over Torlakson, who reported $608,609 in cash on hand, as of Sept. 30.

Tuck’s strong fundraising shows donors are responding to his reform message. He’s the only statewide challenger to outraise an incumbent this year. In some cases, challengers are at a significant disadvantage.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Republican Ronald Gold, who is challenging Attorney General Kamala Harris, had $17,601 in available funds, with $80,000 in outstanding debts. Meanwhile, Harris reported $3.6 million in cash on hand for the most recent period.

Teachers union’s $1.9 million ‘issue’ campaign just beginning

But Tuck’s financial advantage is largely illusory. That’s because the California Teachers Association, the most powerful special interest group in Sacramento, has declared war on Tuck. The teachers union is the biggest player in the superintendent’s race, even dwarfing the candidates.

On Oct. 1, the state’s richest union launched its latest “issue” advocacy praising their loyal ally Torlakson. According to state campaign finance disclosure reports, the CTA reported spending $1.94 million in issue ads benefiting Torlakson. To put that number in perspective, it’s more than either of the candidates has raised for his entire campaign.

And the union is likely just getting started with its outside campaign spending. According to the Los Angeles Times, the CTA spent $2.5 million in independent expenditures during the June primary on Torlakson’s behalf. Despite the union spending, Torlakson received the fewest votes of any statewide incumbent, an anemic 46.5 percent of the vote.

Vergara decision alters the race

Since the primary, things have only gotten worse for Torlakson as more voters are becoming aware of a landmark court case, Vergara v. California, which has fundamentally changed the dynamics of the superintendent’s race.

In June, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu found California’s teacher tenure and dismissal process violates students’ rights by leaving low-income and minority students with the worst teachers. Immediately, the teachers union adopted a “you’re either with us or against us” policy, attacking anyone in their way, even the judge.

“The Vergara ruling makes clear that Judge Treu failed to engage the evidence presented in court by education experts and school superintendents who testified that teacher rights are not impediments to well-run schools and districts,” California Federation of Teachers President Joshua Pechthalt said in a press release condemning the ruling. “Instead he issued a blanket decision to scuttle these important statutes, absent the kind of compelling evidence that should be the standard for changing state law.” The CFT is the state’s second teachers union.

In August, Torlakson, a staunch union defender, announced he would appeal the decision. “The people who dedicate their lives to the teaching profession deserve our admiration and support,” he said in a statement. “Instead, this ruling lays the failings of our education system at their feet.”

In contrast, Tuck has praised the ruling and vows to drop the state’s appeal if elected.

“When I win … I’m immediately submitting to the appellate court our request to no longer be a defendant and will side with the plaintiffs in the case,” Tuck told the UT San Diego.

Tuck’s reform message resonating with all Californians

The teachers unions’ campaign onslaught could backfire. But, much like Republican Meg Whitman proved in 2010 with her run for governor, money sometimes can backfire. Every major newspaper in the state has endorsed Tuck — all citing Torlakson’s cozy relationship with the union as part of their reason.

“As for Torlakson, he seems too busy defending public schools to think about fixing them,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders. “Torlakson actually has attacked Tuck for working on Wall Street during his first two years out of college. That’s the sort of nasty salvo that made it easy for every major newspaper in California, including The Chronicle, to endorse Tuck.”

On Monday, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune became the latest newspaper to back Tuck.

“Torlakson has joined in a legal appeal of the Vergara ruling, and mouths the union line that people want to streamline the hiring and firing rules are ‘blaming teachers,'” the paper wrote. “Tuck applauds the Vergara decision and has called on the state Board of Education not to wait through an appeal before developing alternative rules, including longer evaluation periods before tenure is granted.”

Tom Torlakson supports a status quo in which an average of 2.2 of the state’s 275,000 public school teachers are fired each year for incompetence — a figure so ridiculous you barely need to add context. It shows the public school system is run for the adult employees, not the students.

Yet as he seeks a second term as state superintendent of public instruction against reformer Marshall Tuck, Torlakson continues to pretend he doesn’t like horrible teachers in the classroom and did something about it.

As he has done throughout his campaign, Tuck condemned Torlakson’s appeal of a Superior Court judge’s ruling in Vergara v. the State of California, overturning laws creating tenure in two years, governing dismissals and requiring layoffs by seniority. Those laws, he said, “have led us to a situation where we can’t have an effective teacher in the classroom” and are “crushing the hopes” of the state’s most challenged students. …

Torlakson agreed that when “teachers are not up to it, move them out” and said that he wrote and helped pass a law this year making it easier to fire “ineffective and abusive teachers.” The bill, AB 215, by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, dealt primarily with teachers charged with abuse, not poor performance.

That’s from John Fensterwald’s coverage of the final forum between the two Democrats running for superintendent. I’m glad he mentioned Torlakson’s, er, disingenuousness, but he was on the kind side. AB 215 has nothing — nothing — to do with getting rid of incompetent teachers. Fensterwald’s use of “primarily” to describe what the bill is focused on gives Torlakson a bit of cover he just doesn’t deserve.

At a little bit after the 51-minute mark of a forum in Los Angeles last week with state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck, the candidates are asked a question from the audience about the Vergara ruling, which is described as holding that state tenure laws are so harmful to low-income students that they violate the Constitution. Should the state accept the ruling, appeal it or work out a settlement in which tenure laws are amended but not scrapped?

Tuck succinctly says the state should accept the ruling and work to fix broken policies hurting students.

But when it’s Torlakson’s turn to respond, he ducks the substance of the Vergara ruling, misrepresents Gov. Jerry Brown’s position, misrepresents the legal arguments made in the state’s appeal and tells a huge whopper about the teacher discipline bill enacted this year — all in a little over a minute. Here’s my transcription of Torlakson’s comments:

We have a fundamental disagreement. I am for kids. I’m for low-income kids. I’ve been a fighter spending my whole career for those kids and their future.

I did say we should appeal that decision because I think it is fundamentally flawed. it’s wrong on the facts. It’s wrong on the law. The governor and the state board of education agreed. We’ve asked the state attorney general to file an appeal and bring it to a higher court level.

I believe job protections giving teachers a chance to have a hearing if they’re on a proposed layoff list to have them have a chance for a fair hearing having experienced teachers do that.

Teaching is a tough job. Not everybody is cut out for that work. I know that. And what we are looking at is how do we move teachers who can’t make it out of the profession faster.

And I helped with a law this year that was signed in by Governor Brown that will expedite the process of removing abusive teachers and ineffective teachers from our schools in it. It’s a tough job, but we should allow teachers to move forward and get rid of the ones who can’t make it and then the others have a chance through … we’re being cut off.

Sigh.

Gov. Jerry Brown did not reject the idea that tenure is bad for minority kids. In his recent debate with Neal Kashkari, he tiptoed around the issue.

In her appeal, Kamala Harris did not reject the idea that tenure is bad for minority kids. She questioned Judge Rolf Treu’s legal reasoning.

Finally, it is absurd for Torlakson to argue that a bill triggered by the difficulties Los Angeles Unified faced in firing a teacher who fed semen to his students has anything to do with targeting ineffective teachers. It’s not just absurd; it is, to use a technical term, a lie.

Here are the first three sentences of AB 215, the teacher discipline law Torlakson crows about:

Existing law prohibits a permanent school employee from being dismissed, except for one or more of certain enumerated causes, including immoral or unprofessional conduct. This bill would also include egregious misconduct, as defined, as a basis for dismissal. Existing law requires the governing board of a school district to give notice to a permanent employee of its intention to dismiss or suspend the employee, together with a written statement of charges,
at the expiration of 30 days from the date of service of the notice, unless the employee demands a hearing. This bill would additionally apply the above to egregious misconduct.

I look forward to the education beat reporters jumping on the plain evidence of Torlakson’s dishonesty. Maybe I’m naive, but I really do. The deceit is too obvious to miss or ignore.

… Torlakson’s support of teacher tenure laws that were invalidated by a superior court judge earlier this summer, and a more recent decision by the superintendent to seek an appeal of the ruling.

“I helped pass a law this year to make it easier to fire ineffective or abusive teachers, but I also believe that experienced teachers deserve a fair hearing when their job is on the line,” said Torlakson in his opening statement.

That’s just not true; the teacher-discipline bill approved by the Legislature this year makes it easier to fire perverts and those who engage in other types of “egregious misconduct.” It doesn’t make it any easier to fire teachers who are simply bad at teaching.

This is part of a larger picture of an education status quo devoted to the interests of teachers, not students, as Tuck has said all year. More from Cabinet Report on Wednesday night’s debate:

Tuck, a champion of charter schools who helped establish a network of takeover schools for the mayor of Los Angeles, has used the Vergara decision as a cudgel throughout the campaign. …

“Nine students had to file a lawsuit against the state superintendent and against the state to get rights to a quality education,” Tuck said. “And a judge said the laws around teacher tenure shock the conscience in terms of impact on high-poverty kids. And yet the state superintendent is appealing the case.”

Torlakson defended his position, saying the decision is fundamentally flawed. “I believe in job protections and giving teachers a chance to a hearing,” he said.

Reasonable job protections — or ridiculous ones?

But the problem for Torlakson, a former high school math teacher, is that his reasonable-sounding rhetoric is used to describe a process that isn’t reasonable. Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute has documented how in the the 1990s, a grand total of one teacher was fired for incompetence in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest district.

More recent numbers are just as stunning.

Pre-Vergara, out of 275,000 teachers statewide, 2.2 teachers were dismissed for unsatisfactory performance per year on average. Do you believe that only 0.0008 percent of professionals in any given field are unsatisfactory? Then why would that be the case in the teaching profession?

That’s from an op-ed in U-T San Diego by Randy Ward, San Diego County superintendent of schools. Here’s more from his piece:

[It] is extremely expensive and time-consuming to dismiss unsatisfactory teachers. The superintendents of Oakland and Los Angeles Unified School Districts testified to performance-based teacher dismissal costs ranging from $50,000 to $450,000. Costs like that represent a strong disincentive for principals and district administrators to use the process. Instead, they opt to shuffle the teachers around, with many of them ending up in the poorest communities and those with the neediest students.

What Vergara provides is an opportunity, an alternative to the views held by the shameless politicians in Sacramento who are appealing this verdict. We recognize and do not underestimate the powerful impact teachers have on our students’ lives, but we also know the adult-based statute system we have isn’t working. This is our chance to try something else. Ending “last in, first out,” where teachers are laid off by seniority rather than quality, basing tenure decisions on clear instruction-based rubrics, and lengthening the amount of time it takes to be granted teacher tenure would be decisive steps toward forging another path.

“Shameless” is a fair description of Torlakson. His depiction of his slavish support of the CTA and CFT as being tantamount to fighting for students is one of the most absurd spectacles in Golden State politics.