A California judge’s Tuesday ruling that the state’s teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional is a landmark moment for the school reform movement. Students Matter, financier of the case (Vergara vs. State of California) with the funding of tech magnate David Welch, is preparing to bring similar suits to New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico, Idaho and Kansas. This state-by-state strategy follows a historical precedent by similarly motivated groups, such as turn-of-the-20th-century women suffragists and contemporary gay marriage activists, seeking to challenge regulations at the state level to build a groundswell for national upheaval. Unlike the other movements, however, this shortsighted educational crusade will have unintended and deleterious ripple effects. As states consider terminating teacher tenure, their constituents must recognize that such reforms will do little to improve the day-to-day lives of students and will drastically increase the unpopular grip of high-stakes testing.

The judge, in issuing the ruling (PDF), said allowing incompetent teachers to remain in the classroom harmed students. But the firing of a few poor teachers is something of a red herring. A pivotal statistic cited by the judge in justifying his decision claimed that “one to three percent” of California teachers — as many as 8,000 educators — were “grossly ineffective.” But this data point, it turns out, was completely fabricated by a speculating expert witness (who also says he never uttered the phrase “grossly ineffective”).

A look at the bigger picture shows that tenure has fallen out of popularity in large part because of shifting federal priorities. As Dana Goldstein writes in The Atlantic, “Tenure remains common in schools around the world, but since 2009, two-thirds of American states have weakened their teacher-tenure laws in response to President Obama’s Race to the Top program,” which allows states to vie for billions in education dollars by tying teacher evaluations to student performance. The mastermind of that program, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, issued a statement on June 10 contending that the Vergara case represents a debate that “every state, [and] every school district needs to have.” He added, “At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states.” Duncan’s allegiance to this vision of nationwide reorganization suggests that it will be only a matter of time before tenure is repealed state by state — and, more worryingly, fierce interstate competition for funds becomes widespread.

The Vergara ruling will likely be appealed. But if it is allowed to stand, the reverberations of the case will put more emphasis on standardized student testing, more emphasis on centralized state control and more emphasis on “me first” survivalist mentalities in teacher break rooms across the country. In order to receive funds, administrators will be forced to put increased pressure on teachers to produce results on high-stakes exams. Employment will depend more than ever on isolated test scores — and without tenure protections, educators will yield to these demands.