The Big Money Behind California's Tenure Lawsuit

Thursday, 19 June 2014 00:00
By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout | News Analysis

On the surface, the ruling in the Vergara v. California lawsuit which effectively abolished tenure and fair hearings for misconduct in California on June 10 pitted nine mostly low-income, public school students, trying to use the power of the courts to patch up an education system they argued is failing them, against the state of California and two of its largest teachers unions.

The lawsuit, filed in May 2012 by a nonprofit called Students Matter, argued that five statutes of California's education code detailing legal protections for teachers, including tenure, made it difficult to fire incompetent teachers. According to the lawsuit, these educators were primarily concentrated in low-income schools. Two years after the suit was filed, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled that the statutes setting forth a two-year review process for teachers to receive tenure and due process procedures prior to dismissal - among others - were unconstitutional.

But dig a little deeper, and a bevy of venture capitalists, charter investors and Obama administration officials invested in the education reform agenda materialize as part of the swirling, multimillion-dollar brew of the Vergara lawsuit.