(From Choice Media, March 7th, 2013)
Louisiana’s Tenure Reform: Passed by the legislature, signed by the governor, and then this week, declared unconstitutional by a judge.
This is the Choice Media Ed Reform Minute for Thursday, March 7th.
The same week that a judge in Alabama stopped a school choice law in that state, a judge in Louisiana stops tenure reform.
The Louisiana tenure reform law was considered one of Governor Bobby Jindal’s signature accomplishments. It said that teachers who were deemed “ineffective” would lose their tenure and face the potential of being fired. Also, new teachers would have to be rated “highly effective” for five out of six consecutive years to earn tenure in the first place.
The lawsuit to stop it, filed by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, the teachers union, claimed it was unconstitutional for an unusual reason: the law was too complicated. That’s right, they argued that since the law included multiple subjects, it violated Louisiana’s constitutional requirement that statutes “shall be confined to one subject.”
And the judge agreed with the “too many subject crammed into one law” argument, declaring the whole thing unconstitutional.
But in case you think tenure reform was tacked on to a bill about environmental policy or state parks, think again. Rayne Martin is the Executive Director of Stand for Children Louisiana.
Read the full post and listen to the broadcast here.