Let's hope this is the beginning of the end for tenure in public schools

Hope for New York kids from California ruling

Score one for the kids!

In a ruling Tuesday on a lawsuit brought by nine students, a California judge struck down tenure laws that make it difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of lousy teachers.

The aftershocks are being felt all the way to New York. As Jenny Sedlis of StudentsFirstNY puts it, this ruling “pushes the reset button on a twisted reality that protected adults at the expense of kids.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu held that union protections such as tenure and seniority are depriving children, especially blacks and Latinos, of the California constitution’s promise of equal education for all.

The evidence that kids with poor teachers suffer, wrote Treu, “shocks the conscience.” One study he cited found kids taught by a teacher in the bottom 5 percent lose 9.5 months of learning in a year.

What might Judge Treu have said about New York’s public-school system? Last year, just 31 percent of our third- to eighth-graders tested proficient. Yet teachers are so protected that 91.5 percent of them were rated “effective” or “highly effective.”

Tellingly, the last major lawsuit that cited the constitutional rights of New York’s children to a sound education wholly ignored teacher quality. Rather, it sought more money for the crummy status quo.

Judge Treu didn’t say anything we didn’t know. But he’s now put on public record that job protections the teachers unions consider routine keep bad teachers in the classroom — and mean an inferior education for kids who need a good one most.