SACRAMENTO, CA - Yesterday the California Assembly passed SB-1655 by a 59-12 margin, with eight members not voting. The measure, authored by Pasadena Democrat Jack Scott, makes it easier for principals to hire the best possible teachers. This will help low-performing schools improve, but the dynamic that made the bill necessary remains in place.

Matching students with teachers is a key factor in student achievement. Principals are strategically positioned to make such decisions but hamstrung by union rules that stress seniority over competence. A teacher with more seniority can transfer to another school and displace the teacher a principal may want.

Seniority is no guarantee of competence. Regardless of their particular needs, the students may wind up a desk sleeper, a breed more common that many Californians suppose. The senior teacher may also see herself as a mere facilitator, a glorified baby sitter backed by the notion, currently fashionable in education schools, that kids
find knowledge all by themselves. Or the senior candidate may just be generally incompetent. Senator Scott, former president of Pasadena City College, with a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate School, wanted to change that. Others favored the status quo.

Jackie Goldberg, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, voted against the measure, which has already passed her committee and the full Senate. Other liberal Democrats voted in favor of SB-1655, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Loni Hancock of Berkeley. These liberals bucked the powerful California Teachers Association (CTA), which opposed the bill on the grounds that it somehow violates collective bargaining agreements. It doesn't, but those too are a part of the problem.

PRI's Contract for Failure: The Impact of Teacher Union Contracts on the Quality of California's Schools, analyzed 460 union contracts and found that almost 75 percent yield the teacher unions too much power over school management, teacher assignment, teacher evaluation, and accountability. Beyond that, the whole collective bargaining system, an industrial model, is a problem in education.

A union can be established by a one-time vote, while board members and legislators must stand for election repeatedly. Once established, the union enjoys a closed shop, insulated from competition from other unions. Unions can run candidates for board positions but board members wield no similar clout in union elections. With their candidates in state office, unions control both sides of the negotiating table. They can even confiscate money from non-members and use it for political purposes.

Teacher unions use these huge advantages to fight reform and protect incompetence. In California, it is practically impossible to fire an incompetent teacher, as PRI showed in Unsatisfactory Performance: How
California's K-12 Education System Protects Mediocrity and How Teacher Quality Can Be Improved. Since it is impossible to fire teachers, officials shuffle them around in the famous "dance of the lemons." Many wind up in the very inner-city schools where competent, enthusiastic teachers are most needed, often bumping one of those with
less seniority.

Senator Scott's bill will help, and Governor Schwarzenegger should sign it, but deeper reforms are needed if student achievement is to be improved in California. The state should introduce performance incentives and replace the tenure system with performance contracts for teachers and principals. Change the dismissal of incompetent teachers from an impossibility to a practical reality. Give principals greater control in hiring and firing. Implement differential pay to compensate for uneven distribution of teachers across academic subjects.

Meanwhile, it is a good sign that some liberal Democrats stand up to the CTA. They can continue that defiance by pushing for full parental choice in education, for all Californians, as a matter of basic civil rights.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is Editorial Director at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at
lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.