A key witness says he was misquoted in a tentative ruling this week that struck down California’s public teacher tenure protections and layoff rules.
The decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, which could have national implications on how teachers are hired and fired, concluded that the number of bad teachers in the state and their effect on students “shocks the conscience.”
“There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms,” Treu wrote. “Dr. Berliner, an expert called by State Defendants, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are grossly ineffective. Given that the evidence showed roughly 275,000 active teachers in this state, the extrapolated number of grossly ineffective teachers ranges from 2,750 to 8,250.”
But there is a dispute, from the expert witness himself, David Berliner,
“I never said that,” the Arizona State University professor emeritus said Friday. “I’m on record as saying I’ve visited hundreds of classrooms, and I’ve never seen a ‘grossly ineffective teacher.”‘
Berliner, a prominent educational psychologist and past president of the American Educational Research Association, testified about flaws in a model — known as value-added modeling — that aims to quantify a teacher’s effect on students by measuring how much the children have learned during the school year.
Asked to estimate the percentage of teachers who might fall into the low-performance category for four straight years, he said he guessed it was 1 to 3 percent.
Berliner said Friday he never characterized those teachers as grossly ineffective or bad.
He was alarmed, he said, when he read the ruling and saw how his “guesstimate” was used.
A spokesman for Students Matter, the Menlo Park-based nonprofit that brought the suit, said the organization was not concerned with the consequences of Berliner’s being misquoted, saying a number of other witnesses also testified about ineffective teachers.
“Nothing in the opinion hinges on that number,” said spokesman Manny Rivera.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that schools serving poor students tend to have teachers with less seniority and therefore are more likely to lose teachers during layoffs, which by California law must be based almost solely on seniority. As a result, they argue, those schools have higher turnover and more inexperienced and ineffective teachers.
Treu ordered the state to stop enforcing tenure, dismissal and layoff laws, but stayed those orders pending possible appeals.
The state’s two largest teachers unions do plan to appeal, said Jim Finberg, the lead trial counsel for the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers.
“I’m confident we’re going to prevail on appeal,” he said. “We can show the court of appeal how the order isn’t supported by the record.”
Staff writer Sharon Noguchi contributed to this story.