Report calls for school districts to end seniority-based layoffs
School districts should abandon lay-off policies that require principals to dismiss the newest teachers first and instead incorporate measures of teacher quality into firing decisions, a new report out today from The New Teacher Project argues.
The report proposes a scorecard that would rank teachers, weighing their classroom management skills, attendance, performance evaluations and length of service to the district to determine who should be laid off. Under the group’s proposal, a teacher’s performance rating would be given the most weight, while his or her number of years served would count for only a tenth of their score.By doing so, the report argues, school districts can avoid laying off their best teachers who may not have worked in the system the longest.
“Layoffs are not good for anyone, but they are worse when they result in the loss of top teachers,” the report states. “With so many jobs — and so many children’s futures — potentially at stake, districts and teachers unions must act now to reform these outdated rules so that schools will be able to hold on to their most effective teachers if layoffs become necessary.”
The report is based in part on a survey of 9,000 teachers in two large Midwestern city school districts (though the report does not name the districts, its description of the two districts seems to match Minneapolis and Detroit).
The survey asked teachers if they believed other factors besides seniority should be considered in layoff decisions. Around three-quarters of the teachers surveyed in both districts answered “yes.” Even among teachers with more than 30 years of experience in their district, more than half agreed that “additional factors should be considered” in excessing or firing criteria.
Eliminating the “last hired, first fired” requirement for excessing city teachers is one of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s major political priorities in education, and a change to the system is on the city’s teachers contract negotiations wish list.