Disparities lawsuit unfairly targets teachers

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ST. PAUL, Minn., April 13, 2016 – Education Minnesota President Denise Specht released the following statement Wednesday in response to the filing of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Minnesota's due-process laws for teachers.

“Minnesota's due process laws protect teachers from discrimination and arbitrary punishment, including for speaking out about the learning conditions in their schools,” Specht said. “These laws are our First Amendment. They explicitly do not protect ineffective teachers.”
 
“It doesn't matter to the out-of-state groups behind this suit that Minnesota is facing a teacher shortage, or that high-needs schools are trying to attract more senior teachers, or the growing body of research showing disparities in income, health and opportunity drive academic inequality – not employment practices,” Specht said. “This is a just another attack on working people.”

“If the Partnership for Educational Justice and its wealthy donors really want to help the children of Minnesota, I wish they would pour their millions of dollars into expanding full-service community schools, hiring more counselors, or recruiting and retaining more teachers of color,” Specht said. “Instead, they've decided to target the people who have dedicated their careers to Minnesota's kids – Minnesota's teachers.”

Attorneys for Education Minnesota have not seen the lawsuit, so the union cannot comment more specifically on of the case. Likewise, the union has not decided if it will formally intervene in the case on the side of the state.

The lawsuits apparently perpetrates the false notion that performance doesn't matter in employment decisions concerning teachers. Consider:

• The 2011 Teacher Development and Evaluation law requires annual reviews and includes termination procedures for teachers who won't, or can't, improve.
• Section 122A.40 of Minnesota statutes explicitly says teachers can be fired for “failure to teach” and “inefficiency in teaching.”
• Teachers are often shown the door for poor performance. Fairmont Superintendent Joseph Brown wrote a newspaper commentary in January 2015 that said, "The charge that it is almost impossible to terminate a tenured teacher is also a myth."
• Minnesota law for probationary teachers says they must go through a three-year period in which they can be fired for nearly anything, including poor performance.
• Probationary teachers must be evaluated within the first 90 days of their employment.
• Probationary teachers are only granted due process protections, often called "tenure," after the district makes a deliberate assessment of that teacher's ability following no less than three classroom observations in each probationary year. [1224.40, subd5 (a) and 1224.41, subd2]

About Education Minnesota
Education Minnesota is the voice for professional educators and students. Education Minnesota’s members include teachers and education support professionals in Minnesota’s public school districts, faculty members at Minnesota’s community and technical colleges and University of Minnesota campuses in Duluth and Crookston, retired educators and student teachers. Education Minnesota is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and AFL-CIO.