The Providence, R.I. school board voted Thursday to send termination letters to all its 1,926 teachers.
Sounds drastic, doesn’t it? And why might the school board have done this? According to the Providence Journal:
Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.
The mandated last-in first-out layoff system is rightfully under siege. The Providence school board’s action is sure to escalate matters, and probably beyond Rhode Island.
For some perspective, read The New Teacher Project’s new policy brief on the issue. The crux:
Quality-blind layoff policies threaten to make this year’s layoffs catastrophic. Talented new teachers will lose their jobs while less effective teachers remain. More job losses will be necessary to meet budget reduction goals, because the least senior teachers are also the lowest-paid. And, as is all too common, the most disadvantaged students will be hit hardest, because they tend to have the newest teachers. These outcomes are intolerable.
The policy brief singles out Colorado because under Senate Bill 10-191, districts must consider teacher effectiveness before seniority in making layoff decisions. Rhode Island, by contrast, is one of 14 states that require “quality-blind” layoffs. When economic times get tough and policymakers feel painted into a corner, actions like the one in Providence are what result.
Popularity: 29% [?]
I remember a blog post not long ago that asked why policing is more attractive than teaching? This may provide some of the answers…
I do not disagree with the idea that holding one’s position in public schooling should be about performance, not longevity. Perhaps, though, this is not the sort of message that we want gathering attention, if not praise, when we are trying to attract “best and brightest” to our profession.
If districts can keep firing teachers before they reach retirement (and then not re-hire those older teachers) the states can save a ton on pension fund payouts! This could be a new boon for the states – the unspent pension funds could go back into the general fund and bail them out. Heck, those millions of dollars could pay for corporate tax breaks as well as more tax breaks for the rich. After all, those rich people will definitely need their money to send their children to private schools. With all of the experienced teachers out, their will only be first/second year teachers around the public domain. Also, if people realize that job security and the pension program are out of reach, no one with a lick of sense would go into public education. Good bye science and math teachers! Accountants and scientists make a lot more money than a high school teacher!
My main question is: does “experienced” equal “lazy” and “greedy” in every profession, or is it unique just to teaching? And when did this opinion not only come about, but become ok to say in gerneralization about every teacher? I’ve known many very good older teachers. Older teachers spend a lot of time at their job because their kids are gone and they have the time, as well as because they love it. Almost half of teachers leave the job before they’ve taught 5 years. The majority of the ones who stay longer do not do it for the vast sums of money (in fact, low pay is the reason those people leave!). They do it because they enjoy it, feel that they are good at it, and feel they are making a difference.
We’ve all had bad teachers in our lives, and I’ve worked with those who do nothing but complain. However, maybe if a principal had done their job earlier in that person’s career, they would have been gotten rid of before they put in 20 years. This trick pretends to just hire back the good teachers, but you wait – they will rehire the cheap ones. This kind of stunt punishes all teachers, good or bad.
How many readers of this commentary would prefer to have surgery performed by an inexperienced, underpaid surgeon? The adage that “you get what you pay for” is true, believe it or not. Students who are taught only by young, inexperienced teachers and only to score well on tests will grow to be mediocre test takers not critical thinkers. But, then, isn’t that the essence of the modern “reform” movement? We’re producing trained, not necessarily educated, workers, who can follow directions rather than conceptualize.
I want the best surgeon not the most experienced.
Van, can you give me a single example in which the best (or even just a competent) surgeon is one with no prior surgical experience, or one who has had a 3 week surgical intensive prior to operating for the first time?
In fact, can you give me an example of the best at anything who has not been doing what s/he does for years? (10,000 hours, right?)
Note that I did not say that anyone who has been doing something for years is the best, or even good. For example, I’ve poked around on the guitar for 30 years and still can’t really play it.
If the union narrative favors the idea that longevity = job security, then the reform narrative favors the idea that experience isn’t all that important and that smart, young people with a willingness to work themselves into the ground (or more accurately, into burnout within 2 – 5 years) are generally preferable to to older, more experienced teachers.
Ironically, this same reform narrative includes the notion of teaching as a profession. I can’t think of another profession (outside of entertainment and sports) in which seasoned veterans have come to be so widely regarded as old and in the way.
I’m frankly tired of both stories and I hope we can come up with a better one to tell ourselves very soon.
Jeff, You are correct about experience but I do not want a system that rewards and retains teachers entirely upon experience and graduate level credits. Hardly a system for real professionals! And yes that time thing of 10,000 hrs may be necessary to be the best in your field but it will only matter in the context of the development of your craft and impact on student learning. I’ve not seen a single study that shows “on average” that teacher effectiveness improves much after 5-8 years. Imagine if we paid sports stars or musicians on how much they played and age….nuts! Obviously, this is not to say that some of the best teachers are 30 year vets (I’ve known quite a few over the years). Also I don’t get why you are so sensitive about folks like me raising these questions. If I were you, I’d be totally pissed (as I was when I taught) that I worked in a profession that treated me exactly the same as all of the teachers with the same levels of experience regardless of what impact they had on kids. The PE teacher that literally put in a 32 hr work week was being paid exactly the same as the math teacher that gets most of his kids to pass the AP calculus….come on.
Van, I am not sensitive about folks like you (whatever you mean by that) raising questions. You made a statement in which you appear to decouple expertise from experience and I think that’s a real mistake, at least as serious a mistake as insisting that they are tightly coupled, as the single salary schedule implies.
And I responded because reform discourse in general seem dangerously close to shifting from new teachers need a fair shake at becoming great to new teachers are generally preferable to veteran ones.
On the surface level of this thread, we agree. I think last in, first out systems of hiring/firing (which DPS does not have) and layoffs (which DPS does have) create real problems in terms of the best interests of kids.
I think it also creates real problems in terms of the best interests of adults, a taboo subject in reform circles stemming from a failure to grasp them as substantially the same as the best interests of kids. Individual teachers benefit from seniority based practices in the short term but over the long term, Teachers as a group, as members of a sustainable and effective profession, do not.
One of the sources of my sensitivity about “that time thing” is in the text of the article above. When we lay off the newest teachers first, then “more job losses will be necessary to meet budget reduction goals, because the least senior teachers are also the lowest-paid.”
Forgive me my cynicism but corporate interests play a large roll in education reform these days so it seems rational to worry that particular corporate practices might show up – specifically, laying off higher paid teachers, not because they have less to offer the organization, but because it makes slashing budgets easier.
This possibility seems all the more likely when you remind us that teachers don’t show much improvement in test scores after year 8. Since we’re not getting any better (this ignores the fact that maintaining a level of performance in a changing context does demand continuing development), the district can let us go without upsetting the public too much. This kind of budget driven decision making is just as destructive to student outcomes as last in-first out practices. If fact, I see it as the flip side of the very same coin. We could call it first in-first out.
Think about a novice teacher who is not bad and in 5 years s/he develops into a very good teacher. Now think about a 6th year teacher who has already developed to very good and who works for the same 5 years as the developing teacher. What’s the total number of students exposed to a very good teacher in each case? Both last-in and first-in, first-out systems will destroy the balance necessary to keep the number of kids with very good teachers as high as possible over time.
Point me to a study showing that on average anyone improves much after 5 – 8 years of doing the same thing. In most professions, people take on new responsibilities, develop new skills and get raises for it. Like the sports stars and musicians you mentioned, a teacher does substantially the same thing at the end of a career as s/he did at the beginning. For the most part, there is no promotion without leaving the classroom (not what we want for our best teachers).
I guess we could increase teacher pay for the first 5-8 years and then tell them to hang up their aspirations of a middle class life style like other professionals have or leave the classroom to get a higher paying job. Or we could increase pay for more years of service and graduate credits. Neither one of those solutions works for me.
I think Chad Hauser nailed it.