California Tenure Ruling Wins Dunce Cap

A couple of people have asked me what I thought of the ruling this week out of California, where a judge has decided that public school teacher tenure is unconstitutional. The argument is that K-12 tenure results in the retention of incompetent teachers, who then get disproportionately inflicted on poor and minority students in the lowest-performing schools. The disparate impact makes it an equal-protection violation.