Steve Hilton’s campaign for governor revives divisive education issues among Democrats

Steve Hilton’s education reforms are a trip back to the future.

The Republican candidate for California governor has called for abolishing teacher tenure, reviving an issue that has been taboo for a decade in the state after bruising battles in court and the Legislature.

California has long been an outlier on teacher tenure, which is shorthand for the point at which teachers switch from at-will employment to permanent employees with job protections governing layoffs, dismissals and other due-process rights. It is one of four states, along with Mississippi, South Carolina and Vermont, to grant tenure in two years. Twenty-eight states grant tenure in three years, and 19 require four or more years, according to a 2020 National Center on Teacher Quality survey.  

The argument for a longer probationary period is that it’s difficult to evaluate a teacher’s long-term growth in the profession based on 1 1/2 years on the job. 

The argument against California’s tenure law gained momentum during the years of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that required all schools to reach proficiency in math and reading or face sanctions. Then, in 2014, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that tenure, dismissal and layoff laws violated the constitutional rights of low-income students to an equal opportunity for an education. An appeals court overturned the decision, saying the plaintiffs failed to connect students’ low performance to the labor laws. The lawsuit died when the California Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision with impassioned dissents, declined to take up the case.

Momentum appeared to build in 2017 to extend probation to three years for many teachers, with an optional fourth year for a few probationary teachers on the bubble.  A bill by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, to reform the state’s law easily passed the Assembly that year. But then Assemblymember Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, with the support of the California Teachers Association, introduced a surprise bill that weakened Weber’s. Frustrated after already having made compromises, Weber pulled her bill, and Thurmond did, as well.

That was the last effort at tenure reform. An emerging teacher shortage and the Covid pandemic discouraged further discussion on a divisive issue for Democrats. Weber is now the state’s current secretary of state, and Thurmond is ending his second term as state superintendent.

 A second life for the ‘parent trigger’?

Hearing Hilton propose his strong measures, including a “parent trigger,” for fixing low-performing schools may give reform whiplash to some veteran EdSource readers. It should, because Congress included several options for fixing schools that Hilton favors in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the controversial law in effect from 2002 to 2015.  

Schools whose test scores failed to make Annual Yearly Progress could replace the principal and key staff, convert to a charter school, take over the school, or make major fundamental changes in school staffing and governance — the least disruptive alternative.

Many Democratic legislators, districts and the CTA detested the law. Before he was elected governor in 2010, Jerry Brown blasted NCLB in a letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

But the 2007-09 Great Recession’s devastating impact on state revenues had a sobering effect: By 2011, California dropped to the nation’s bottom in per-student funding. That led California to twice pursue extra federal funding, futilely, it turned out, under President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top competition for states that adopted reforms. 

The Legislature’s passage in 2010 of the Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the first “parent trigger” law, empowering a majority of parents in the lowest-performing schools to petition for structural changes, was part of that effort. The law gave parents four options: replace the principal, replace more than half of the school’s staff, close and transfer students to higher-performing schools or convert to an independent charter school. 

Amid districts’ resistance and the California Teachers Association’s opposition, the parent trigger never gained traction among the 75 schools that qualified for restructuring. A parent effort failed in Compton Unified, and parents in some schools negotiated for smaller changes. The law died in 2016 when the state adopted new standardized tests and abandoned its Academic Performance Index for rating schools.

But the parent trigger can claim two big successes: hard-fought efforts to convert Desert Trails Elementary, the lowest-achieving school in the Adelanto School District, to a charter school in 2013, followed in 2015 by the conversion of Palm Lane Elementary in Anaheim into a charter school, Palm Lane Global Academy. 

Today, by most measures, the 400-student K-8 Desert Trails Preparatory Academy is excelling, with low chronic absenteeism, few suspensions and scores in math and English language arts that far exceed the district’s average. Palm Lane, now affiliated with Vista Charter Public Schools, received the maximum five-year charter renewal this year. 

The parent trigger’s author, former state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, is also back in the news. After clashing with CTA and state Democratic leaders for years over education reform, she switched political parties to Republican in 2024, and in June placed second, with 18% of the vote, to make the November runoff for lieutenant governor against State Treasurer Fiona Ma.

Hilton calls Romero his running mate and incorporated the parent trigger into his platform. “She’s going to be an important part of the story when it comes to education. I value her counsel on all this very much,” he told EdSource.

This story was originally published by EdSource.