This article focuses on an important lawsuit in California, seeking to compel the state to comply with a four-decade-old state law which says that "each school district shall evaluate teachers, at least in part, as reasonably measured by their student's performance on the state's standards-based tests." Of course the state and the unions have been ignoring this law ever since…

On Tuesday, Nov. 1, a group of parents and taxpayers sued the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to make the district follow the law, by evaluating teachers based on how much their students have learned. The judge said in effect that, since this suit was a long time in coming, he would allow the district some time to prepare its response. Therefore, the judge decided not to grant a temporary restraining order. At the same time, he re-stated the contentions of the plaintiffs (technically, petitioners) in a way that shows he has a solid grasp of what is at stake in the suit, and he decided that the case would receive expedited consideration.

LAUSD is being sued by a group that includes Alice Callaghan, a member of the Episcopalian clergy and the manager of Las Familias del Pueblo, a community center for the poor and homeless in downtown Los Angeles. Back in 1996, Callaghan organized 70 Spanish-speaking immigrant parents, who boycotted the Ninth Street Elementary School -- calling for an end to failed bilingual-education methods and instead demanding that the school system teach the children of immigrant garment workers academic English as soon as possible.

Callaghan and this different group of parents are suing to enforce the Stull Act. The law goes back four decades and says that the board of trustees of each school district shall evaluate teachers, at least in part, as reasonably measured by their student's performance on the state's standards-based tests. The law says "shall," not "may." It is mandatory that each district do this.

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