I am not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not an expert on California law, but yesterday’s state appeals court ruling in the much-discussed Vergara v. California teacher tenure case seems plausible. While Golden State statutes make it very hard to remove bad teachers, and may lead to the worst teachers being disproportionately assigned to schools serving low-income kids, district administrators could curb that if they really, really wanted to. It would just require very expensive, convoluted dismissal procedures be followed for each unsatisfactory educator. So technically, the law may not violate California’s constitution. But to defend it, in reality, is to defend a system heavily slanted against low-income students.

Vergara has spawned similar cases in other states, and I would guess there is a good chance similar rulings will come down the pike in those places. But there is probably also a good chance of tenure laws being overturned. It doesn’t strike me that, from a legal perspective, either side has a clearly superior case. But again, I am not a lawyer.

What this once again screams is that public policy needs to move away from an education system in which parents are dependent on politicians or courts to protect their children. They need money to be attached to kids and to have the ability to take their children out of schools they do not like and put them into other institutions. And there should be no blanket state seniority or teacher evaluation rules. Educators should be free to get together and set up schools with whatever policies they want, and whether or not those schools survive or those policies are maintained should depend on their ability to attract enough paying customers with the services they produce.

We need to stop making parents and children wards of the state, and instead give them real power.