-By Larry Sand
Parents sue the LA school board and teachers union, forcing them to obey a law that they have ignored for 40 years.
There is nothing new about unions bullying weak-kneed school districts, but this may be the mother of all abuses– for forty years, school districts and unions have collaborated to break the law in California. According to the Stull Act (Section 44660 of the state’s education code), part of a teacher’s evaluation is required to include a student achievement component, but this has not happened anywhere in the state. Last week, after consulting with EdVoice, a reform advocacy group in Sacramento, parents of some students in Los Angeles Unified School District sued the school district and teachers union for what amounts to a dereliction of duty. While the lawsuit is aimed at LA, it will have state-wide ramifications.
Originally enacted in 1971, the Stull Act, named after State Senator John Stull, was amended in 1999 to include,
“The governing board of each school district shall evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to:
The progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to subdivision (a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion referenced assessments….”
In other words, a part of a teacher’s evaluation is supposed to be contingent on how well his students do on state mandated tests. This is hardly a radical notion, as half the states in the rest of the country now evaluate teachers in part by student performance on these tests.
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Fake Teacher Evaluation Racket is Busted in Los Angeles”