David Boies plans to strip teachers of due process rights state by state.

[madfloridian]

I can't begin to fathom how harmful it is to say teachers' due process rights harm civil rights. It is amazing how Boies and Campbell Brown and others are simply getting away with it...the media never questions it.

David Boies, eyeing education through a civil rights lens

David Boies, the superlawyer who chairs a group that is trying to overturn teacher tenure laws in New York and elsewhere, said Monday that his organization is not looking to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court — at least not in the short run.

Well, thank goodness for that at least.

Last month, Boies became chairman of the Partnership for Educational Justice, a group founded by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown to challenge teacher tenure laws. The group says that tenure laws make it too costly and difficult to get rid of weak teachers and that poor students are saddled with the worst educators.

A similar group based in California — led by lawyers Ted Olson and Ted Boutrous, with whom Boies worked on the Supreme Court case regarding gay marriage — challenged and won a judgment in a Los Angeles court against that state’s tenure laws. The judge found that tenure laws violate students’ civil rights under the state constitution. The teachers union and Gov. Jerry Brown are appealing.

This is what he plans to do.

Boies said in an interview with The Washington Post that he is crafting a state-by-state strategy regarding teacher tenure because many state constitutions explicitly require the provision of an equal education to all public school students.

All these lawsuits against teachers' due process rights....a hearing before being fired...are putting the blame on teachers for ills that are not their fault at all.

I don't think I could have stood up for the rights of my students if I had not had a continuing contract behind me. That did not mean I could not be fired, but it meant that there had to be just cause.

I could give so many examples. This one stands out because of the child's suffering. A 2nd grader in my class years ago had serious kidney and bladder problems. Because of their religious views the parents would not take him to the doctor for treatment. We even worked out a way they could go now, pay later, but they instead had a violent reaction to our (guidance counselor and I) even talking to them about it.

They threatened to sue me, they were furious. I told them they would have to do what they had to do, but that their child was suffering. I told them of his daily embarrassments and tears. They were not even moved by it. I could take a firm stand because I had tenure (due process)...and even if the principal agreed with them there would have to be just cause. The principal in fact was running scared of a possible religious controversy, not sure how it would have gone.

We had to resolve it through child services.

So to Mr Boies, go ahead with your crusade against teachers' right to due process before being fired. You will probably win because the money, the power, and the media are all on your side.

But the children will have lost. Teachers will fear being advocates for children if they are in a tenuous position with an administration that wants no controversy.