The Vergara ruling is a victory for California public school students, but further reforms are still needed to protect students’ rights to a high quality education

Earlier this month, a judge in California ruled that the state’s protections for teachers, including tenure after two years and ‘last in first out’ layoff provisions, violated the state’s constitutional clause guaranteeing a right to equality of education for students. Katharine O. Strunk argues that the state’s policies force districts to retain lower-quality teachers and that the decision is a victory for students and parents in California’s public school system. She writes that if the ruling is upheld, and California’s state legislature is tasked with writing new laws on teacher’s conditions, then they should take lessons from cities such as New York and Washington D.C which have introduced effective reforms to the way that teachers are evaluated and gain tenure.