Why the Vergara Decision Isn’t Enough

Edu­ca­tion re­form, which once united the parties, in­creas­ingly traps them in the cycle of po­lar­iz­a­tion and para­lys­is that’s crip­pling pro­gress on al­most everything else.

In Wash­ing­ton, the two sides are so di­vided that neither is ser­i­ously at­tempt­ing to reau­thor­ize the core fed­er­al edu­ca­tion stat­ute that lapsed in 2007. The seem­ing con­sensus around rig­or­ous “Com­mon Core” cur­riculum stand­ards is col­lapsing as a stam­pede of Re­pub­lic­an state lead­ers (joined by some Demo­crats) has re­nounced them.

So it was a throw­back to an earli­er gen­er­a­tion of bi­par­tis­an edu­ca­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tion when a chor­us of left- and right-lean­ing re­formers last week uni­formly cheered a Cali­for­nia court de­cision in­val­id­at­ing the state’s laws for hir­ing, fir­ing, and as­sign­ing teach­ers.

The Ver­gara v. Cali­for­nia de­cision from a Los Angeles County Su­per­i­or Court judge was a genu­ine earth­quake that is likely to prompt lit­ig­a­tion tar­get­ing laws in oth­er states that make it too hard to fire un­der-per­form­ing teach­ers — and too likely that stu­dents who need help most are as­signed the teach­ers least qual­i­fied to provide it. But it’s a mis­take to ex­pect that elim­in­at­ing those laws alone will close the achieve­ment gaps still im­ped­ing low-in­come and minor­ity stu­dents. The de­cision, in fact, should prompt great­er de­bate about wheth­er we are re­ly­ing too heav­ily on schools to over­come so­cial in­equal­ity.

The Cali­for­nia rules that Ver­gara swept away show how pub­lic edu­ca­tion, at its worst, pri­or­it­izes the needs of adults over chil­dren. Cali­for­nia law al­lowed teach­ers to ob­tain ten­ure after only one and a half years at work, which one wit­ness likened to re­quir­ing a mar­riage de­cision after one and a half dates. The stat­ute re­quir­ing rote re­li­ance on seni­or­ity in lay­offs meant that bet­ter-per­form­ing young­er teach­ers were reg­u­larly sac­ri­ficed to pro­tect less-ef­fect­ive eld­ers. Be­cause of these and re­lated policies, stu­dents in high-poverty Los Angeles schools were two-thirds more likely than their more-af­flu­ent coun­ter­parts to ex­per­i­ence a teach­er lay­off, and 40 per­cent less likely to be as­signed an Eng­lish teach­er rated as highly ef­fect­ive, ac­cord­ing to stud­ies by the Edu­ca­tion Trust”‘West, which ad­voc­ates for low-in­come stu­dents.

No single rem­edy can close the en­trenched achieve­ment gaps con­front­ing low-in­come and minor­ity stu­dents. (Getty Im­ages)So no one who cares about ex­pand­ing op­por­tun­ity should mourn the laws Ver­gara over­turned (at least pending ap­peal). Valer­ie Cuevas, Edu­ca­tion Trust”‘West’s in­ter­im ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or, cor­rectly says that more cit­ies should learn from dis­tricts like North Car­o­lina’s Char­lotte-Mecklen­burg, which sends its strongest teach­ers “to teach the toughest of the toughest.” Un­der its “stra­tegic staff­ing” ini­ti­at­ive, that dis­trict has com­bined fin­an­cial in­cent­ives and pub­lic ac­claim to re­cruit its highest-rated prin­cipals and teach­ers to 27 of its pre­vi­ously most-troubled schools. “Tak­ing on tough as­sign­ments is very af­firmed in our dis­trict,” says Ann Clark, Char­lotte’s deputy su­per­in­tend­ent.

But Clark quickly ac­know­ledges that even this in­nov­at­ive sys­tem hasn’t elim­in­ated the dis­trict’s achieve­ment gaps. And in Cali­for­nia, Edu­ca­tion Trust’s stud­ies have found that “siz­able per­cent­ages” of stu­dents taught by the highest-rated teach­ers don’t im­prove their aca­dem­ic per­form­ance.

Those are but two of the many re­mind­ers that no single rem­edy can close the en­trenched achieve­ment gaps con­front­ing low-in­come and minor­ity stu­dents. Des­pite cease­less waves of re­form since the early 1990s, the white-black gap in eighth-grade read­ing has nar­rowed by only about one-sev­enth; His­pan­ics still sig­ni­fic­antly trail whites too. Low-in­come 9-year-olds lag slightly fur­ther be­hind more-af­flu­ent class­mates in read­ing today than they did in 2004.

If any­thing, lar­ger eco­nom­ic and so­cial trends are com­pound­ing this chal­lenge. Child­hood poverty is both deep­en­ing (with 22 per­cent of kids liv­ing in poor fam­il­ies) and con­cen­trat­ing. Nearly half of pub­lic-school stu­dents now at­tend schools where a ma­jor­ity of their class­mates qual­i­fy as low-in­come; in 2000, only 28 per­cent did so. Lop­sided ma­jor­it­ies of Afric­an-Amer­ic­an and His­pan­ic stu­dents today at­tend ma­jor­ity-poor schools.

This in­tensi­fy­ing isol­a­tion is re­quir­ing schools and teach­ers to over­come deep­er in­equit­ies in com­munity and fam­ily re­sources. Re­search from a re­cent Uni­versity of South­ern Cali­for­nia con­fer­ence on con­cen­trated poverty found that the read­ing, math, and be­ha­vi­or­al gaps between low- and high­er-in­come stu­dents evid­ent in eighth grade are al­most fully ap­par­ent when they start first grade. And chil­dren whose par­ents hold col­lege de­grees re­main much more likely to at­tend preschool than those whose par­ents don’t.

These trends send the clear mes­sage that truly ex­pand­ing op­por­tun­ity for lower-in­come kids re­quires a com­pre­hens­ive re­sponse that ex­tends well bey­ond school re­form. But that aware­ness doesn’t ab­solve school sys­tems from tak­ing every pos­sible step to max­im­ize their ef­fect­ive­ness with­in the classroom. And that means sub­ject­ing more work rules that fa­vor the sys­tem’s adults over its kids to the ex­act­ing scru­tiny that pro­duced the power­ful Ver­gara de­cision.

“If you want to achieve true equal­ity of op­por­tun­ity, there’s only so much that gov­ern­ment, even at its best, can do,” ac­know­ledges Bruce Reed, formerly the chief do­mest­ic policy ad­viser to Pres­id­ent Clin­ton and now pres­id­ent of the Broad Found­a­tion, which funds school-re­form ef­forts. “But we are not any­where close to where gov­ern­ment is hold­ing up its end of the bar­gain, and we shouldn’t throw up our hands and say, ‘This is just too hard.’ “