Can a court decision really have an impact on the educational trajectory of a child?
(Originally published on November 4, 2011, as part of Leadership for Educational Equity's "Teach For America Alumni of Los Angeles" blog: http://blog.educationalequity.org/blog/story/2011/11/4/121226/173)
Today, 57 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, most students attend public schools that are both racially and socioeconomically homogenous.
Can a court decision really have an impact on the educational trajectory of a child?
For a group of families the answer is yes.
Five mothers, a father, and nine children are suing LAUSD in Superior Court for failing to comply with the Stull Act—a section of the California Education Code stating that teachers must be regularly evaluated, "with data that reasonably measures, among other criteria, whether or not the students under an employee's charge are actually learning."
***********
Using social science and Mendez vs. Westminster School District, a vital legal precedent from a federal appeals court in California, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas demonstrated convincingly that separate facilities deprive students of equal educational opportunities essential to their success in life. Even if the physical facilities, equipment, and staffing could be proven to be materially “separate but equal,” education would retain substantive inequity, because racial segregation deprives students of the important interactions with diverse peers that enhance learning. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling ending de jure segregation, de facto desegregation, did not follow.
Even with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which threatened to deny government funding to noncompliant states, desegregation had to be enforced by the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Swann v Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, which affirmed the appropriateness of busing to achieve integration. It took parents in Tampa eleven years after Brown to win a desegregation lawsuit against local school districts that forced black students to walk past many all-white schools to get to a black one. In New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and elsewhere, angry crowds violently resisted desegregation well into the late 1970's.
Today, 57 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, most students attend public schools that are both racially and socioeconomically homogenous. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, and UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, approximately 40 percent of black and Latino students are in schools than are over 90 percent black and Latino. The average black student goes to a school where 59 percent of their classmates live in poverty. The average Latino student goes to a school that’s 57 percent poor. Compare this to white students who are enrolled in schools that are 77 percent white, and 32 percent poor.
Can a court decision really have an impact on the educational trajectory of a child with illiterate parents, or unemployed ones; with illness left untreated because an absence of documented immigrant status, or no place to study because of homelessness, or the need to take shelter in a crowded, frenetic, volatile place?
Eradicating racial segregation in education was the battle that launched the civil rights era. That battle has since been abandoned. Today when we speak of education and civil rights, we refer to the notion that a student’s zip code should not dictate the quality of instruction they receive, not how racially or socioeconomically diverse their classmates, or teachers and principals are. A lengthy argument ensues about what exactly quality of instruction means, and how you measure it.
But for a group of parents in Southern California, the debate has been settled and accountability for failure falls squarely on the shoulders of ineffective teachers and principals, as well as the superintendents and elected officials who do nothing when the tests designed to measure learning, show little to no progress.
The plaintiffs—five mothers, a father, and nine children—are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in Superior Court, claiming LAUSD "annually fails hundreds of children," and violates the children's "fundamental right to basic educational equality and opportunity" by failing for the past four decades to comply with a law known as the Stull Act—a section of the California Education Code stating that teachers must be regularly evaluated, "with data that reasonably measures, among other criteria, whether or not the students under an employee's charge are actually learning." The parents and students brought this lawsuit as “Does” for fear of intimidation and retaliation against themselves and their families.
Named as defendants are Superintendent John Deasy, the seven members of the Board of Education, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and the California Public Employment Relations Board.
Read more:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/31/local/la-me-teacher-evals-20111101
http://rishawnbiddle.org/outsidereports/lausd_evaluations_letter.pdf
http://www.pe.com/local-news/topics/topics-education-headlines/20111102-a-legacy-of-segregation.ece
According to plaintiffs, LAUSD "never obeyed" the Stull Act's mandate to establish standards of pupil achievement and evaluate teachers according to their students' progress. They claim that "groups of politically powerful adults," have obstructed the law since it was enacted in 1971. According to the plaintiffs, the AALA and UTLA have "historically fought" teacher evaluations based on student progress and collectively bargained to prevent implementation of the law.
"The result is decades during which prior LAUSD superintendents and school boards have entered into unlawful collective bargaining contracts with these associations of adults that prevented compliance with the statutory mandate of evaluating certificated staff based even in part on available evidence of whether or not the children are learning… Indeed, the 2009-2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and, on information and belief, the current one-year extension of the CBA between the AALA and the LAUSD does not allow for administrators to be evaluated as mandated by the Stull Act regarding the progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to Section 44662(a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion-referenced assessments."
According to plaintiffs the superintendent has publicly revealed his hostility to performance reviews, and that poor teachers are disciplined under the current system only if "they fail to meet an illegal standard of satisfactory performance or are convicted of the commission of serious crimes leading to mandatory credential suspension or revocation."
"The system is protecting the working conditions of the certificated personnel, as well as preserving the political power of the board and the superintendent… For disenfranchised and socio-economically disadvantaged children, these adults have created systematic harm to students by allowing contracts to produce a concentration of under-qualified and ineffective certificated staff in chronically failing schools… There can be no dispute that the nation's second largest school district is a broken school system that has failed millions of children over the past 40 years… The very purpose of the district has been turned on its head by adults focused on employment conditions and political power instead of individual performance assessment and accountability measured at least in part on whether or not children are actually progressing toward standards of expected achievement. It is simply unacceptable under California Constitutional and statutory law to ignore the plight of students any longer… This petition seeks a writ of judicial mandate to compel the LAUSD immediately to comply with the clear mandate of the Stull Act and its strengthened statutory revisions, and further seeks a preliminary injunction to enjoin the district, its superintendent, members of the Board of Education, and the representatives of certificated personnel from using collective bargaining force to compel the district to continue to violate the Stull Act."
Today, 57 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, most students attend public schools that are both racially and socioeconomically homogenous.
Can a court decision really have an impact on the educational trajectory of a child?
For a group of families the answer is yes.
Five mothers, a father, and nine children are suing LAUSD in Superior Court for failing to comply with the Stull Act—a section of the California Education Code stating that teachers must be regularly evaluated, "with data that reasonably measures, among other criteria, whether or not the students under an employee's charge are actually learning."
***********
Using social science and Mendez vs. Westminster School District, a vital legal precedent from a federal appeals court in California, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas demonstrated convincingly that separate facilities deprive students of equal educational opportunities essential to their success in life. Even if the physical facilities, equipment, and staffing could be proven to be materially “separate but equal,” education would retain substantive inequity, because racial segregation deprives students of the important interactions with diverse peers that enhance learning. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling ending de jure segregation, de facto desegregation, did not follow.
Even with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which threatened to deny government funding to noncompliant states, desegregation had to be enforced by the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Swann v Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, which affirmed the appropriateness of busing to achieve integration. It took parents in Tampa eleven years after Brown to win a desegregation lawsuit against local school districts that forced black students to walk past many all-white schools to get to a black one. In New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and elsewhere, angry crowds violently resisted desegregation well into the late 1970's.
Today, 57 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, most students attend public schools that are both racially and socioeconomically homogenous. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, and UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, approximately 40 percent of black and Latino students are in schools than are over 90 percent black and Latino. The average black student goes to a school where 59 percent of their classmates live in poverty. The average Latino student goes to a school that’s 57 percent poor. Compare this to white students who are enrolled in schools that are 77 percent white, and 32 percent poor.
Can a court decision really have an impact on the educational trajectory of a child with illiterate parents, or unemployed ones; with illness left untreated because an absence of documented immigrant status, or no place to study because of homelessness, or the need to take shelter in a crowded, frenetic, volatile place?
Eradicating racial segregation in education was the battle that launched the civil rights era. That battle has since been abandoned. Today when we speak of education and civil rights, we refer to the notion that a student’s zip code should not dictate the quality of instruction they receive, not how racially or socioeconomically diverse their classmates, or teachers and principals are. A lengthy argument ensues about what exactly quality of instruction means, and how you measure it.
But for a group of parents in Southern California, the debate has been settled and accountability for failure falls squarely on the shoulders of ineffective teachers and principals, as well as the superintendents and elected officials who do nothing when the tests designed to measure learning, show little to no progress.
The plaintiffs—five mothers, a father, and nine children—are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in Superior Court, claiming LAUSD "annually fails hundreds of children," and violates the children's "fundamental right to basic educational equality and opportunity" by failing for the past four decades to comply with a law known as the Stull Act—a section of the California Education Code stating that teachers must be regularly evaluated, "with data that reasonably measures, among other criteria, whether or not the students under an employee's charge are actually learning." The parents and students brought this lawsuit as “Does” for fear of intimidation and retaliation against themselves and their families.
Named as defendants are Superintendent John Deasy, the seven members of the Board of Education, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and the California Public Employment Relations Board.
Read more:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/31/local/la-me-teacher-evals-20111101
http://rishawnbiddle.org/outsidereports/lausd_evaluations_letter.pdf
http://www.pe.com/local-news/topics/topics-education-headlines/20111102-a-legacy-of-segregation.ece
According to plaintiffs, LAUSD "never obeyed" the Stull Act's mandate to establish standards of pupil achievement and evaluate teachers according to their students' progress. They claim that "groups of politically powerful adults," have obstructed the law since it was enacted in 1971. According to the plaintiffs, the AALA and UTLA have "historically fought" teacher evaluations based on student progress and collectively bargained to prevent implementation of the law.
"The result is decades during which prior LAUSD superintendents and school boards have entered into unlawful collective bargaining contracts with these associations of adults that prevented compliance with the statutory mandate of evaluating certificated staff based even in part on available evidence of whether or not the children are learning… Indeed, the 2009-2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and, on information and belief, the current one-year extension of the CBA between the AALA and the LAUSD does not allow for administrators to be evaluated as mandated by the Stull Act regarding the progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to Section 44662(a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion-referenced assessments."
According to plaintiffs the superintendent has publicly revealed his hostility to performance reviews, and that poor teachers are disciplined under the current system only if "they fail to meet an illegal standard of satisfactory performance or are convicted of the commission of serious crimes leading to mandatory credential suspension or revocation."
"The system is protecting the working conditions of the certificated personnel, as well as preserving the political power of the board and the superintendent… For disenfranchised and socio-economically disadvantaged children, these adults have created systematic harm to students by allowing contracts to produce a concentration of under-qualified and ineffective certificated staff in chronically failing schools… There can be no dispute that the nation's second largest school district is a broken school system that has failed millions of children over the past 40 years… The very purpose of the district has been turned on its head by adults focused on employment conditions and political power instead of individual performance assessment and accountability measured at least in part on whether or not children are actually progressing toward standards of expected achievement. It is simply unacceptable under California Constitutional and statutory law to ignore the plight of students any longer… This petition seeks a writ of judicial mandate to compel the LAUSD immediately to comply with the clear mandate of the Stull Act and its strengthened statutory revisions, and further seeks a preliminary injunction to enjoin the district, its superintendent, members of the Board of Education, and the representatives of certificated personnel from using collective bargaining force to compel the district to continue to violate the Stull Act."
posted by Unai Montes-Irueste at
1:57 AM
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