Campbell Brown, head of the new Partnership for Educational Justice, said Monday on Morning Joe that her challenge of New York teacher tenure laws stemmed from her desire to treat teachers like other professionals who are evaluated based on their performance.
The former CNN correspondent also appeared on The Colbert Report July 31 to promote her views, where she told the host that more than 90 percent of teachers in the state are deemed "effective" or "highly effective," yet only 31 percent of kids in New York are reading, writing, and doing math at grade level.
"I think it's about us beginning to treat teachers like professionals," Brown said. "We're by no means suggesting that tackling these laws or challenging the constitutionality of these laws is a silver bullet, is going to solve all the problems, but it is acknowledging that teachers aren't interchangeable and that they are individuals and they should be evaluated and rewarded for performance as any individual would in any other profession."
Host Joe Scarborough asked her what's next in the case, which was inspired by a similar lawsuit in California.
"You're going to see additional lawsuits being brought in other states too because parents are seeing this as an opportunity to express themselves, to voice their frustration with the system that they think is failing them, and with legislatures that haven't moved to address these problems for years," Brown said. "It's a way of them saying we're fed up and if you're not going to deal with the problem, we're going to the courts."