By John Thompson.

I do not question the sincerity of most former Obama administration officials and other liberals who support Vergara v California and its spawn. Some have long and loudly blamed teachers for education underperformance, saying that it is our “low expectations” and not the legacies of generational poverty, trauma, and discrimination that produced the achievement gap.

The standard reform position is that the way to help poor children of color is to destroy the education “status quo.” Defeat the power of unions, university education departments, and local school governance, and “disruptive innovation” will produce great schools for all.

Many (or most?) Vergara advocates blame teachers and unions for opposing their theories on school improvement. Refusing to consider the idea that ducation professionals are sincere in (successfully) opposing test-driven, competition-driven reforms, vengeance is theirs. Fearing that their entire test, sort, reward, and punish regime is collapsing, the contemporary reform movement is doubling down on a last gasp campaign to divide the Democratic Party against itself. True believers in test-driven accountability seem to understand that their movement is on the ropes, and that they need to either throw a knockout punch or throw in the towel.

Other former Obama officials and liberals who recently joined the litigation campaign, and who know little or nothing about schools, seem to merely trust the corporate reformers who are briefing them. Not having personal contacts with working people, in general, or teachers, unions, and poor families, in particular, they might be amenable to trusting the “papers” published by “astroturf” education reform think tanks. Not knowing that market-driven reformers have a long history of truth-challenged public relations campaigns, non-educators who support anti-union, anti-teacher lawsuits may not know about the situational ethics of reformers like Michelle Rhee and her TNTP.  The new novices may be honestly unaware that their allies (the old novice reformers ) are so convinced in the righteousness of their positions, and the cravenness of those who disagree with them (“adult interests,” they call us), that they will say and do anything to defeat their opponents.

Sincere newcomers to the edu-wars need to read the TNTP’s “Rebalancing Teacher Tenure.”  If they do so, they will see that Vergara and subsequent anti-teachers’ rights lawsuits, at their best, are fullblown assaults on unions and collective bargaining and, perhaps the teaching profession and public education.

First, the TNTP would require teachers to work for five years without due process rights before they earn a minimal amount of legal protections. To gain the basic legal rights that most American workers once took for granted, new teachers would have to document their ability to raise standardized test scores. Educators would have to think twice before resisting pressure to do nonstop test prep, drill and kill malpractice.

Second, even teachers who eventually win tenure would still lose their right to confront their accusers. There is no more sacred right of American Constitutional Democracy than the right of the individual to challenge charges leveled by the authorities.  Without the right to defend ourselves against the word of those who have complete power, any person is guilty until proven innocent. TNTP says that the way to improve teacher quality is to deny us the right that all Americans should be guaranteed – to be able to present evidence that the charges that are filed against us are false.

The TNTP spins their position, claiming that it is only “good faith” judgments of administration that should be all-powerful. In theory, an administrative judge, in a one-day hearing, could reject bad-faith and false judgments of administrators. But, if teachers are not allowed to cross examine those judgments, how could a judge make such a determination?

And, what is the value of collective bargaining if the resulting contract denies teachers the right to challenge the accuracy of their boss’s judgments? Why would educators join and remain in unions if their representatives are prohibited from cross examining the judgments of those who oversee our work?

I’m not saying that all administrators would be corrupted by their new power to rid themselves of teachers who have the temerity to disagree with them on policy or who have earned a high salary and expensive benefits. I’m not saying that all administrators would be corrupted by unprecedented power. But, how many teachers could anticipate an entire career where they didn’t run afoul of a boss who says it’s my judgment’s way or the highway? How many talented people would commit to teaching, buy a house, and start a family, when they know that they would be defenseless in the face of the “judgments” of those who control their fate?

What do you think? If teachers could not challenge the judgments of their accusers, how many evaluators would abuse that unchallengeable power? How many teachers could expect a full career without being victimized sooner or later, perhaps losing their job? How many teachers would see colleagues being unfairly driven from the profession? Why would talented teachers remain in a profession after they lost the right to present evidence in their own defense when judgments clashed?