ABC’s The View 8/4/14

On heels of big lawsuits, teacher tenure looms as a likely 2016 presidential issue.

http://http://abc.go.com/shows/the-view/video/PL5554876/_m_VDKA0_argfks56

By Megan Coleman

CNY Central

“ROCHESTER — Two parents with children in New York public schools are suing the state because they say their children have been damaged by bad teachers.

The parents wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News, explaining why they are suing to overhaul the tenure system for teachers. One of them lives in Rochester, the other lives in Brooklyn.”

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By Washington Free Beacon Staff

“Former CNN correspondent Campbell Brown and David Boies, the trial lawyer who helped defeat California’s ban on same-sex marriage, appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss their lawsuit against teacher tenure laws in New York.”

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By Tracy Wholf

PBS

“Two separate education advocacy groups have filed suits in New York challenging the state’s teacher tenure laws.

The suits claim that current laws, which protect teacher employment, violate the constitutional rights of children and make it difficult to dismiss ineffective teachers.”

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By Carla & John Williams and Mona Pradia & Anthony Vieux

Rochester D&C

“It’s not typical for Rochester families to be on the front lines of a national movement, but that’s exactly where we are today.

None of us has a famous name, and that’s fine, because attention is not our goal. Our only mission is to get our state to deliver on the promise it put in its constitution — a sound education for all children.”

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“David Boies, the star trial lawyer who helped lead the legal charge that overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban, is becoming chairman of the Partnership for Educational Justice, a group that former CNN anchor Campbell Brown founded in part to pursue lawsuits challenging teacher tenure.

Mr. Boies, the son of two public schoolteachers, is a lifelong liberal who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and prosecuted Microsoft in the Clinton Administration’s antitrust suit. In aligning himself with a cause that is bitterly opposed by teachers’ unions, he is emblematic of an increasingly fractured relationship between the Democrats and the teachers’ unions.

As chairman of the new group, Mr. Boies, 73, will join Ms. Brown as the public face of a legal strategy in which the group organizes parents and students to bring lawsuits against states with strong tenure and seniority protections.

In a suit filed in New York last month, plaintiffs supported by Ms. Brown’s group argued that tenure laws make it too difficult to fire ineffective teachers and force principals to make personnel decisions based on seniority rather than performance. The suit argues that such laws disproportionately harm low-income and minority students.

A California judge recently ruled in a similar case that teacher tenure laws violate students’ civil rights under the state’s constitution. The group that brought that case, known as Vergara v. California, said it would be pursuing similar litigation elsewhere as well. In a sign of the legal firepower attracted to the cause, Theodore B. Olson, Mr. Boies’ partner in the California same-sex marriage case, has been advising the Vergara plaintiffs.

In an interview in his firm’s offices in Manhattan, Mr. Boies said he viewed the cause of tenure overhaul as “pro-teacher.”

“I think teaching is one of the most important professions that we have in this country,” he said. But, he added, “there can be a tension” between union efforts to protect workers and “what society needs to do, which is to make sure that the social function — in this case teaching — is being fulfilled.” Mr. Boies, who said he viewed education as a civil rights issue, is offering his services pro bono.”

By Motoko Rich, The New York Times

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FULL LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/us/celebrated-trial-lawyer-david-boies-to-head-group-challenging-teacher-tenure.html