Ken Futernick

An expert on the the role that teachers play in academic performance today became the latest defense witness in Vergara v California to testify that students in high-poverty area schools face higher challenges to learning.

Ken Futernick, Director of the WestEd School Turnaround Center, a research organization, and a former professor of education at California State University, Sacramento, told the court that such factors as ill-prepared teachers, poor working conditions in the school and high turnover among teachers and administrators make it difficult to attract and retain effective teachers, thus adversely affecting academic achievement.

The testimony supports a major contention of the defendants, that it’s not exclusively the caliber of teachers that affects learning; it is also external conditions that bear on a student’s ability to learn.

Defendants in the case, the state and teacher unions, are trying to prove that these other factors make it difficult for the nine-student plaintiffs to show that state laws governing teacher dismissal, seniority and tenure should be struck down as impediments to a quality education.

Futernick provided several statistics to support his opinions. He testified that 22 percent of new teachers in California leave the profession after four years and that the percentage of teachers who transfer out of high-poverty schools is twice that from low-poverty schools, He said 20 percent of new principals in urban school districts leave after just two years and pointed to the Oakland Unified School District as an extreme: There, he said, 44 percent of new principals leave the field after just two-years.

The effects of this high turnaround, he said, impact both student learning and teacher development and damages a school’s ability to provide a stable learning environment.

Futernick further testified that high-poverty schools have a harder time filling vacant positions, leading to a greater number of teacher mis-assignments — a math teacher assigned to an English class, for example — and these mis-assignments, he told the court, have a negative impact on student learning.

The assistance Futernick provided the defense might have been undercut to a degree during cross examination by Kyle Withers, who solicited an acknowledgement from him that none of his research or opinions related directly to the statutes at issue in the case.

Earlier, the plaintiffs’ wrapped up their cross examination of Lynda Nichols, program consultant with the California Department of Education.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Marcellus McRae attempted to show that a teacher considered by the state as “highly qualified” for having a teaching credential does not always equate with being effective.

Judge Rolf Treu intervened and asked Nichols, “Are all teachers who are credentialed effective?”

“Unlikely,” she said.

Another witness today was James Webb, an English teacher from the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita and a consulting teacher for the district’s performance review program for first-year teachers.

He told the court he could decide within three months whether a new teacher would meet program standards — testimony the defense used in support of its claim there is sufficient time to make decision on tenure within the two-year statutory framework.

On cross examination, plaintiffs’ attorney Josh Lipshutz, tried to minimize Webb’s testimony by pointing out his experience is limited to one school district among hundreds in California.

The day ended with the start of testimony by Vivian Ekchian, who was recently named Chief Human Resources Officer for LA Unified.

While the district withdrew as a defendant in the case before the trial started, she was called by the defense in an effort to impeach the testimony of a plaintiffs’ witness, Nicholas Melvoin, a former LA Unified teacher at Markham Middle School in Watts, who had testified last month that teacher layoffs in 2009 resulted in effective teachers being dismissed and morale at the school eroded.

“It was a toxic environment,” he said.

During a rather contentious examination, defense lawyer Jonathan Weissglass tried to show that problems at Markham were created by ineffective school administrators, not the challenged statutes.

Ekchian is scheduled to return to the stand on Friday, so the defense’s final witness, Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor and expert on education policy, can start and complete her testimony tomorrow.

Previous Posts: Vergara witness says streets more than teachers shape academics; A witness in Vergara v California urges seniority over ‘effectiveness’; Ex-district chief tells Vergara court teacher laws don’t interfere.

David Berliner

An expert in educational psychology testified today that violence in the neighborhood, family income, food insecurity and other out-of-school factors are three times more likely to impact a student’s classroom performance than the effectiveness of the teacher.

The expert, David Berliner, also discounted the reliability of student test scores to judge a teacher’s ability to enhance student achievement. Such models, he said, are “notoriously unreliable and therefore invalid.”

As a widely-published expert and now emeritus professor at Arizona State University, Berliner offered helpful testimony for the defense in the Vergara v. California trial, which is focused on how to minimize the impact and number of ineffective teachers in California public schools — at least until his cross-examination.

One of the major issues in the case is the role teachers play in student achievement, as the plaintiffs contend that the inferior ones block access to a quality education. These teachers, the plaintiffs say, are protected by the current laws governing tenure, seniority and dismissal.

Along with the witness who followed Berliner to the stand, Lynda Nichols, a consultant to the California Department of Education, the defense has now called 24 people to testify in the case, two more than the plaintiffs called.

The defense is expected to call a few more witnesses through the middle of next week, after which the plaintiffs will take a few days to put on a rebuttal case. After that, the case belongs to Judge Rolf Treu for his ruling.

Berliner seemed to shield teachers from much of the responsibility for poor academic performance by students as he testified that conditions beyond the classroom — he mentioned about nine of them — account for 60 percent of what influences a student’s scholastic achievement whereas in-school factors such as class size, curriculum, the quality of the principal and the teacher account for only 20 percent. He further testified that of the teacher impact only accounts for 10 percent.

When asked by Deputy State Attorney Jennifer Bunshoft whether standardized test scores were ever intended to assess teacher effectiveness, he said they were not.

He further testified that standardized test scores don’t provide enough information about what goes on in a classroom and should therefore not be used to assess a teacher’s effectiveness.

During a contentious cross-examination, in which the lawyers talked over each other to make points, Judge Treu appeared more like a referee, asking all the lawyers to be patient and wait their turn.

In an effort to undercut Berliner’s testimony, plaintiffs’ lawyer Josh Lipshutz asked whether regardless of in-school or out-of-school factors, ineffective teachers can have an adverse impact on teachers, and Berliner said, “Of course.”

Plaintiffs then attempted to show that the professor’s statistics could have a significant margin of error, pointing out that teacher impact be higher than 10 percent. He agreed.

Throughout the cross examination, Berliner appeared to agree with a number of other plaintiffs’ points, admitting that “there should be greater accountability of teachers in schools” and that union protections shouldn’t be an obstacle to dismissing ineffective teachers. He further testified that test scores are, indeed, one way to measure student achievement and that value-added models should be able to identify good and bad teachers.

As for the tenure period, another major issue in the case, he said that principals should have more time to make decisions, as long as three-to-five years, which runs counter to a steadfast defense position that the current standard, two years, is sufficient.

Back in front of a defense layer, Berliner qualified his answer, saying principals can make such decisions within the two years, as well.

Nichols, a former teacher, told the court that she believed the dismissal and tenure statutes protected her rights as a teacher.

The defense contends that such statutes serve important governmental interests shielding teachers from being unfairly dismissed or pressured by parents and school boards.

She explained how teaching sensitive subjects like Islam, which she taught in her seventh grade history class, created difficulties for some parents.

Ms. Nichols stated that knowing “that very solid protections were in place allowed me to move comfortably forward.”

Previous Posts: Teachers refute ‘ineffective’ charges by Vergara witnesses; Witnesses in Vergara v. California hail collaboration despite API gaps; Vergara witness says state laws governing teachers work.