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GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS In an ideal world, Tuesday's decision by a Los Angeles judge finding the state's teacher tenure and discipline laws uncon- stitutional would be taken for what it is, a concise summation of the obvious. It would prompt interested parties to band together to fashion new, more fair laws that demand all kids get an equal public education. ButthisisCalifornia,and that's not how we roll. Here we protect teachers — all teachers, regardless of competence — as long as they have spent a whole 18 months on the job. We do this not be- cause they are somehow an oppressed class, but because of the mighty political cash their union slings around Sacramento. The truth is that it will take years to validate — or maybe not — Los Angeles Su- perior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu's decision. And, just like the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education cited by Treu as the basis for his rul- ing, we know this historic case — known as Vergara vs. California — will eventually be settled by nine people who also enjoy lifetime tenure — the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever the outcome, the decision's impact will be pro- found nationally. In the meantime, the ab- surd political theater has commenced. Both sides are in high dudgeon regarding the others' motives as they try to influence the court of pub- lic opinion. The arrows be- gan flying nearly as soon as the decision was announced. They won't stop soon. But the tragedy here is that while the adults bicker, the kids who have been denied equal education will continue to suffer. Before this case is settled, thousands and thou- sands of kids — largely in dis- advantaged schools through- out the state — will remain in classrooms with incompetent teachers. Sadly, that's the near term bottom line. Treu said the evidence of how poor teachers affect stu- dents "shocks the conscience" and that "there is also no dis- pute that there are a signifi- cant number of grossly inef- fective teachers currently ac- tive in California classrooms." He said current laws protect bad teachers, harm students and disproportionately affect poor and minority pupils. The plaintiffs where nine Southern California students who claim they are receiving inferior education because of the state's tenure and dis- cipline rules that make it in- feasible to dismiss incompe- tent tenured teachers. They claim the system is rigged so that poor-performing schools are the dumping ground for such teachers, The legal effort was funded by a Silicon Val- ley nonprofit called Students Matter that is largely funded by entrepreneur Dave Welch of Atherton. Tuesday's decision had to be bittersweet for them be- cause they must realize their victory is but the first bat- tle in a long war and that the conditions that so "shocked the conscience" of Judge Treu continue to exist and another generation of disadvantaged children is denied access to the equal education they de- serve. Editorial Rulingon tenure start of long battle Treu said the evidence of how poor teachers affect students "shocks the conscience" and that "there is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms." Cartoonist's take By Jason Stanford It's hard to tell what's a bigger joke: Common Core or Common Core critics. Right wing hysteria that Common Core will turn our children into gay socialists — not kidding about that one — is over- shadowing legitimate reasons to oppose it. The problem with Common Core isn't that Barack Obama is brainwashing our chil- dren. It's that the brand new cur- riculum is being ruined by the same old tests. The Common Core State Stan- dards Initiative began inno- cently enough under George W. Bush. Governors and state edu- cation officials convened to de- termine what to teach our chil- dren in math and English to get them ready for college. Then Barack Obama got elected and of- fered competitive grants to states through Race to the Top, where- upon Common Core became an insidious plot to destroy America. It's gotten a little out of hand. In March, a Florida state rep- resentative said the purpose of Common Core was to "attract ev- ery one of your children to be- come as homosexual as they pos- sibly can." The Oklahoma legisla- ture just voted to repeal Common Core standards because, as one state representative said, it was "indoctrinating" children into so- cialism. An Alabama Tea Party leader warned legislators that voting to adopt Common Core would damn them to Hell be- cause it promoted "acceptance of homosexuality, alternate life- styles, radical feminism, abor- tion, illegal immigration and the redistribution of wealth." I am neither kidding nor done. The American Family Associ- ation predicted that Common Core would make it impossible for children from right-thinking families to survive in secular so- ciety, forcing the creation of "a parallel society" with a "parallel economy, parallel job opportuni- ties." Not to be outdone, World- NetDaily warned that Common Core would turn America into Nazi Germany. Amid this cacophony of kooky, it can be easy to chalk up the op- position to a different strain of Obama Derangement Syndrome. But most of the opposition to Common Core deals with how standardized testing has turned schools into a "massive stressball" in the words of comedian and public-school parent Louis C.K. When Louis C.K. went on a Twitter rant to his 3.4 million fol- lowers about how the pressure had made his daughters misera- ble, people noticed. "My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!" he tweeted. Suddenly, the country's edu- cation policy was getting more press than Benghazi. He took criticism from Newsweek and Vox about how he didn't under- stand how Common Core was raising standards. That criticism misses the point that with Com- mon Core the testing tail is wag- ging the teaching dog just as it was under No Child Left Behind. As Louis C.K. explained during an appearance on David Letter- man's show, it's the testing, not the standards, that was stressing out his kids. "Well, the way I understand it, if a school's kids don't test well, they burn the school down. It's pretty high-pressure," he said. "And the tests are written by people nobody knows who they are. It's very secretive.... They [teachers and students] prepare for these tests for a long time. A lot of the year is about the test. Teaching to the test they call it." Actually, we do know who writes the tests: Pearson, the world's largest testing company. The testing giant has been work- ing hard behind the scenes to make sure it would cash in on Common Core, sometimes ille- gally. Last December, Pearson paid $7.7 million in New York State to settle accusations that it used its charitable foundation to help its for-profit parent com- pany develop course materials and software for Common Core. If you thought that would dis- qualify them from the Common Core bonanza, you filled in the wrong little oval. In May, Pear- son won the testing contract for Common Core states. We don't know how much money this is, but at $24 per student we could be looking at the largest testing contract in history. It's fun to mock the paranoid Tea Party rantings. There's no way Common Core will turn our children into gay socialists. Only ice-skating while singing "Let It Go" can do that. But because high-pressure standardized test- ing is still the stick we use to measure schools, Common Core could make your children hate learning. And that's no joke. JasonStanfordisaDemocratic consultant who writes columns for the Austin American-States- man and The Quorum Report. He can be reached at stanford@ oppresearch.com and on Twitter @JasStanford. Editorial Opposition to Common Core: It's more than a laughing matter Another view By George Will WASHINGTON The morning af- ter, at breakfast at the Republi- cans' Capitol Hill Club, Virginia Rep. Robert Goodlatte was, as be- fits one of Washington's grown- ups, measured in his reaction to what 36,120 Virginia voters did the day before. It would, he says, be wise "to take a step back and a deep breath until we find out how everyone" — meaning, especially, House Republicans — "reacts to this." By "this" he indicates, with a waveofahand,theone-wordhead- line on Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress: "Stunner." Roll Call's online article added these four words: "Can- tor Upset Changes Everything." Of course, nothing changes eve- rything, but the resounding and unprecedented defeat in a Re- publican primary of the soon- to-be former House majority leader will send ripples radiat- ing through the House and into the Republicans' 2016 presiden- tial nomination contest. It is often folly to try to tickle national portents from lo- cal events. But there are fewer purely local political events now that elections have become in- creasingly nationalized in this era of inter-party and intra- party ideological combat. So, consider how the unhorsing of Cantor may strike some other Republicans. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who embraces a more welcoming immigration pol- icy than does much of the Re- publican nominating electorate, may construe Cantor's defeat as a discouraging augury con- cerning any presidential aspira- tions Bush might have. Cantor was damaged by the accusation that he favors "amnesty" for the more than 11 million illegal im- migrants. Actually, he may have done more damage to himself by seeming to take multiple and contradictory positions on im- migration. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan may be weighing a probable as- cent in the House leadership against the uncertainties of seek- ing the Republican presidential nomination. The removal of Can- tor, a formidable rival for the of- fice of speaker once John Boeh- ner relinquishes it, may give Ryan reason to remain in Con- gress. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who hardly has an insufficiency of au- dacity, will be further embold- ened in his presidential ambi- tions because tea-party support helped to propel David Brat, a 49-year-old college professor, to victory over Cantor. Never mind that Brat, who speaks equably about making Washington work, seems to eschew Cruz's confron- tational style. Although the "amnesty" ac- cusation hurt Cantor, so did his membership in Congress' lead- ership, and the perception that he had neglected his district. Also, he foolishly used his cam- paign millions to barrage Brat with absurd ads implying that because Brat is a professor, he must be a liberal. Campaign reformers who be- lieve money is the sovereign de- terminative in elections should consider the contrary evidence of Brat's $231,000 war chest. Big ideas can have bigger con- sequences than cash does, and Brat resonated with tea-party types primarily because his campaign vocabulary was that of constitutionally limited gov- ernment — 10th Amendment conservatism. Goodlatte, who chairs the Ju- diciary Committee, which pro- cesses immigration legislation, may have set a 2014 record for understatement when he said Cantor's defeat will not improve the chances of immigration re- form this year. But the chances were, he says, slim anyway. Congress will be away most of August and expects to adjourn for campaigning in early Octo- ber, at the latest. Barack Obama, Goodlatte says, continues to poi- son the well by threatening to use his "pen and phone" — uni- lateral actions — to alter immi- gration policy without involving Congress. Goodlatte believes that piece- meal reforms — addressing bor- der security, high-qualification immigrants and other matters separately — would be possible if many people, including Obama, were not holding all progress hos- tage to the chimera of "compre- hensive" reform. Goodlatte has come to the conclusion that many people, including Obama, do not want reform but "only want the issue" of immigration for its polit- ical advantages. Goodlatte, how- ever, will continue the Sisyphean task of pushing the immigration boulder up Capitol Hill. The sub- ject is, for him, personal. Immi- gration cases were about half his practice as a lawyer before he came to Congress in 1993, and he strongly sympathizes with his former clients — persons who conscientiously tried to become legal immigrants while others, ig- noring legality, "would go right around them." He does not think "anybody" among House Republicans be- lieves we are going to deport 11 million people. And he thinks a large majority of illegal immi- grants would be largely satisfied with legislation providing a path- way to a legal status short of citi- zenship. If, however, Cantor's de- feat reinforces the perception that Republicans are simply hos- tile regarding immigration and immigrants, ripples from it might swamp attempts to align Repub- lican policy with the 51 percent of Republicans nationwide, who like 62 percent of Americans, favor for the 11 million a pathway to cit- izenship. George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com. For GOP, re-evaluation time OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Thursday, June 12, 2014 MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6