By Eliza Shapiro | Capital New York

Campbell Brown’s lawsuit challenging teacher tenure and other union-backed protections is gaining a new plaintiff: a non-union public school teacher from Albany.

DeLaine Wilson, a 15-year veteran pre-school teacher at the North Albany Academy YMCA, said in an interview with Capital on Thursday that New York’s slate of teacher protections academically harmed students in upper grades at her school.

“We had honor roll students [at my school] and when it came to the Regents tests they weren’t able to pass them,” said Wilson, who has four children who attend public schools in Albany and was a member of the New York State United Teachers when previously she taught at a private school.

Adding a public school teacher—albeit a non-union one—to the lawsuit could prove to be a helpful move for Brown’s Partnership for Educational Justice, which is already engaged in a bitter battle with NYSUT and the city’s United Federation of Teachers, along with their affiliates, over tenure.

Wilson, who is joining the lawsuit along with her husband, Roderick Wilson, said she believes eliminating the current teacher tenure laws will “hold more teachers accountable.”

“Tenure makes them comfortable,” she said, addding she would try to convince unionized teachers that potentially eliminating tenure and other protections would help all teachers perform better.

Brown, a former CNN anchor, filed her suit challenging the constitutionality of teacher tenure, dismissal and seniority laws in July. The lawsuit is being handled pro bono by a team of lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis. The case was recently consolidated with a similar lawsuit and formal legal proceedings are unlikely to begin until at least December.

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Excerpt only. Read full article at: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/10/8553868/new-weapon-campbell-browns-anti-tenure-lawsuit?top-featured-3

By Allie Bidwell
US News & World Report
10/02/14

“Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor whose nonprofit is supporting a lawsuit targeting teacher tenure in New York, took on her critics during a discussion Thursday, saying she’s not out to get teachers or do away with tenure – she just wants to change how it operates.

Brown recently founded the Partnership for Educational Justice, a nonprofit that is supporting the lawsuit of eight New York families challenging the way teacher tenure, teacher dismissal and seniority laws play out in the state. Together, Brown argues, the laws keep ineffective teachers in the classroom, make it difficult to dismiss abusive or incompetent teachers and reward longevity over quality.”

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By Katharine B. Stevens
American Enterprise Institute
10/02/14

“The two recently-filed New York lawsuits claiming that teacher tenure laws violate children’s constitutional right to a “sound basic education” are finally dragging the long-obscure Section 3020-a of the state’s Education Law into the spotlight. This attention is badly overdue because for decades § 3020-a has impeded efforts to ensure a minimum competence level among New York’s teachers.

Section 3020-a is a 3,000-word section of New York’s Education Law, entitled “Disciplinary Procedures and Penalties,” which mandates that tenured teachers can be dismissed only after just cause has been established through statutorily-prescribed administrative hearings. Teachers are evaluated in their schools under the Annual Professional Performance Review, the state’s high-profile new evaluation system. But decisions on whether poorly-performing teachers stay or go are still made according to the decades-old § 3020-a law.”

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By Erika Sanzi
9/30/14

“I was given a job for life at the age of 26. Strange, huh? It’s not weird at all in the world of public education. I find myself thinking back to my tenure ceremony as I reflect on the Vergara case in California, in which a judge ruled California’s teacher tenure and dismissal laws unconstitutional and in violation of students’ rights. What if the negligent teachers described by the courageous student plaintiffs were granted tenure at 26 like me? How many children did they let down, how many families did they disappoint, how many futures did they stymie, how many lives did they hurt? What if they were my children’s teachers?

I am one of the lucky ones. My “what ifs” are another mother’s reality. Actually, they are the reality of millions of mothers.”

Full Story Here

By Holly Kragthorpe
9/29/14

“I am a 14-year veteran public school teacher, and every year I’ve spent in the classroom has only confirmed that I have one of the most important and rewarding jobs in the world. Each day, I have the honor to teach curious and bright seventh-graders, and to encourage them to believe that, with hard work, they can succeed at whatever they set their minds to.

I’m a 14-year veteran public school teacher and I love my job. And yet, I struggle with encouraging my students to pursue careers in teaching.

Not because teaching is hard (it is) or because teachers don’t get paid enough (we don’t), but because, unless we reform our antiquated tenure system–which values seniority above all else–teaching cannot give my students the careers and opportunities I know they deserve.”

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By Carrie Sheffield
Opportunity Lives
9/29/14

“NEW YORK CITY — Campbell Brown cultivated sheer doggedness during years of rough-and-tumble national television interviews with presidents and members of Congress. Now she’s applying her skills to a different playing field: education reform.

Enduring zingers by critics ranging from education policy expert Diane Ravitch to funnyman Stephen Colbert, Brown and supporters of her non-profit, Partnership for Educational Justice, are leading the charge to prevent byzantine, ironclad teacher tenure laws from removing inept teachers.

Campbell_Brown3Campbell Brown is leading the charge to bring real reform to New York’s outdated education laws
Encouraged by this year’s Vergara v. California ruling that teacher tenure violated the state constitution, Brown worked with parents to file a similar lawsuit against the state of New York, hoping the court would force the legislature to implement tenure policies that better protect students from ineffective, even dangerous, teachers.”

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By Susan Edelman
9/28/14

“The city Department of Education secretly settles with most teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence, letting them pay a fine and return to classrooms — but leaving students and parents in the dark.

Teachers yanked from schools for abuse of students, poor performance and many other offenses get charges dropped if they admit to some lapse, pay thousands of dollars in payroll deductions and take a class or workshop, documents obtained by The Post show.

“All they want is your money,” said paralegal Betsy Combier, who helps defend teachers. “It doesn’t matter what happened to the kid — it’s kind of frightening.””

Full Story Here

By Brendan Cheney
9/26/14

“Last month, the New York State Education Department released the results from this past school year’s Grades 3-8 Math and English Language Arts (ELA) assessments. The results showed very small improvement from last year, after a very large decrease from the year before that, as the state began implementing the Common Core-aligned curriculum.

The data released by the state includes the results for each school and, helpfully, the poverty rate. It also shows a strong relationship between those two measurements.

Here are two scatter charts, one comparing proficiency on the ELA assessment with the poverty rate at each school (as assessed by the education department) and the other comparing proficiency on the math assessments with the poverty rate. Poverty is the independent variable (the x value on the horizontal axis) and proficiency scores the dependent variable (the y variable on the vertical axis).

In the case of the ELA test, the relationship is such that a one point increase in the poverty rate is related to a 0.35 point decrease in percent of students proficient on the ELA. This relationship explains 43 percent of the variation in the proficiency rates, which means there are other factors that explain the remaining 57 percent of the variation in test scores.”

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By Soumaly King, Christine Memoli, Maria Kaufer, Sarah Payne and Tom Renna
September 22, 2014

“As parents, we worry about a lot of things. Are we too strict? Are we too involved? Are we pushing too hard? Are we not pushing hard enough? It is endless.
But for a group of us whose children attend PS 101Q in Forest Hills, these worries were replaced by fear and frustration in late August.
We got word that Richard Parlini would be teaching first grade this year.
Parlini was suspended not once but twice during the last school year after allegations that he’d engaged in corporal punishment, verbal abuse and bullying of these small children.”

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