Bill would end layoffs by seniority
Proposals that Gov. Schwarzenegger made during his budget speech in January to weaken teacher tenure and seniority rights have finally taken bill form.
Republican Sen. Bob Huff introduced SB 955 on the governor’s behalf last week. Its chief provisions would be to give local school boards, instead of the Commission on Professional Competence, final say over firing teachers, and to enable districts to lay off teachers based on a district’s subject needs and teacher effectiveness, instead of by seniority.
The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers will likely fight every piece of the bill. But a civil rights lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other public-interest attorneys against the state and Los Angeles Unified, challenging seniority-based layoffs, may improve chances of at least the seniority piece becoming law. That would be a major step forward.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this year on behalf of students at three low-performing middle schools, noted the constant churn of new teachers at these schools, where seniority rules make it next to impossible for principals to hire and keep teachers they want.
SB 955 would apply not only to layoffs; it would give principals more latitude in reassigning and transferring teachers. Passage of the bill would make it imperative that districts come up with more comprehensive and transparent teacher evaluations.
Several provisions would make it less costly and lengthy to fire subperforming teachers. Less than 1 percent of teachers are dismissed in the state because due-process rights are so cumbersome. Many principals don’t try; others persuade teachers to quietly transfer to another school, in a “dance of the lemons.” The bill would:
- Remove the final authority of the Commission on Professional Competence, a state appeals board that can drag out terminations for months or years. Local school boards’ decisions on dismissals would be final;
- Replace the commission with an administrative law judge, whose decisions would not be binding on a district;
- End a district’s requirement that it continue to put a teacher it is trying to fire on paid leave. Only if the teacher won the suit would a teacher be entitled to back pay, with interest.
Recognizing that the state budget tends to be set in June, if not later, SB 955 would move back the date for notifying teachers that they might get laid off from the current deadline of March 15 to the end of the school year. As it is now, districts tend to send out more pink slips than they need to, just to be safe. But the process is disruptive to schools and teachers.
A first hearing on the bill could occur as early as this week.
(For a look at the jarring effect layoff notices are having at one school near Sacramento, see here.)
Without a provision that school districts must refrain from over-noticing, I don’t think a change in dates will keep them from doing so. Despite the advice of the CSBA and other organizations, over-noticing is far too common.
Given that in bad budget years, school districts can already engage in RIF layoffs during the summer, I’m not sure why the date pushback is necessary.
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Good…..If teachers want to be considered as professionals instead of factory workers they should be “RIF’d” based on local requirements and abilities rather than on seniority. Of course their unions will scream bloody murder.
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It’s a current fad in education to revile teachers, as we see frequently on this very blog. Teachers are blamed, shamed, bashed and punished — by non-educators who would immediately repent (at least those who have a conscience and a shred of humanity) if they ever set a toe in a challenging classroom themselves. Given the massive disrespect heaped on teachers as a profession, if their job security is eliminated as well, isn’t it going to be even harder to attract the best people to the profession? And by the way, note again my research showing that achievement is lower on average in the right-to-work states (where teachers may be fired at will) than in states with strong union protection — which conclusively disproves the notion that firing “bad” teachers is the solution: http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/04/grannan-is-firing-bad-teachers-really.html
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Caroline, there needs to be a middle ground. Schools need to staff in order to deliver education to students. If seniority rules mean that all physics and spanish teachers receive pink slips because they were the most recently hired, then the system isn’t working. The same is true for classified employees. Districts that have to reduce maintenance departments should be allowed to trim by function, not last-in/first-out. Smart management has to prioritize student learning. It doesn’t have to manifest as “reviling” teachers.
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Fundamentally if we are going to empower Principals to this degree residents of the school district have to have a way of holding THEM accountable. In the current push to “blame the teachers” we seem to be forgetting that many principals have limited experience in the classroom, are not really trained as “managers” (i.e. with the skills to get high performance out supervising highly educated staffmembers), and have limited opportunities for true 360-style reviews. I am all for better mechanisms to ensure accountability but that means throughtout the system – not just classroom teachers who under many of the proposed reforms will rise or fall based upon the whims of a principal.
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There are some huge misconceptions about teacher layoffs that seem to never be pointed out. First, districts do have the ability to “skip” over teachers who are in hard to staff positions, science, math, special ed, etc. And they do! If those teachers were hired yesterday and the district were to send out Reduction in Force (RIF) notices tomorrow, those teachers could be spared under current education code guidelines. Second, there seems to be a huge myth that newer teachers are better than experienced teachers. If I had a choice for my child, I would want a teacher who had been around for awhile, instead of one straight out of college. That person may have more energy and enthusiasm, but may not have learned the “tricks of the trade.” As a teacher who taught for 30 years, I know I became a better teacher each year I taught. Finally, as far as letting school boards be the final say in an appeal of teacher’s firing, that makes no sense whatsoever. Let the very group that is trying to fire someone be the final say. If the process takes months or years to complete, the district has not done its job in providing the groundwork and evidence for unfitness of the teacher to teach. So letting the group that is supposed to provide that evidence be the executioner, judge and jury is ludicrous!
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Of course I agree that there needs to be a middle ground, and common sense. However, my point here is just to provide the information that the small but telling bit of research I did (how come nobody who’s paid to do this kind of thing has done it?) decisively shows that higher job security for teachers correlates with higher achievement for students, and the converse. It doesn’t show causation, but clearly shows correlation. So, clearly, if we want to improve student achievement, we should support unions and job security for teachers. To call for weaker unions and less job security for teachers is to endorse conditions that correlate with lower student achievement.
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The solution isn’t firing bad teachers, because that’s not only missing the forest for the trees, it’s missing the forest for the rare tree.
However, there is a real problem with layoffs right now. I don’t know that it’s just seniority – I think the real problem is that California is unwilling to pay for a teaching staff adequate to its needs. That said, it’s not just hard-to-fill credential types. Schools with lower-seniority teachers are nearly always Title I schools with populations of color. Research says that these students – who have been historically underserved – need trusting and long-term relationships with adults at their school.
How does laying off those teachers help close the opportunity gap? The turnover rate at such schools is already way too high: the morale-lowering of annual pink slips doesn’t help. Nor are higher-seniority teachers tempted to stay at schools whose staffs are transient.
Nor can we assume that higher-seniority teachers will “bump” into those jobs. LAUSD – not its union, the District, because DISTRICTS are responsible for layoffs and the budget decisions that underlie them – is being sued for this right now.
Caroline, those teachers you hope are attracted into the system aren’t going to survive it if we continue these kind of budgets. They will never have enough seniority to avoid a crisis – SFUSD is reaching back to the last big crisis to lay teachers off this year. So I think that point is off-base. I agree that a focus on funding to avoid layoffs would be better than a discussion of seniority, but the seniority system with this kind of funding is failing children and their teachers right now.
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I didn’t really advance an opinion, though I’m sure my opinion is clear. I just researched and cited achievement data showing conclusively that state by state, higher job security for teachers correlates with higher achievement by students. I agree that the turmoil caused by chronic underfunding of education is harmful all around! SFUSD Board of Education member Rachel Norton makes a radical statement about a solution with a cheery little blog post headlined “Thank taxes!”
http://rachelnorton.com/2010/04/15/thank-taxes/
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This is great news!
Caroline, I would like to see the data that you claim shows a correlation between student success and teacher job security. To those of us in the non-union sector, job security means working for a company that will not go out of business tomorrow, not that I will never be fired regardless of performance.
There are great teachers out there who will be great with or without tenure. There are good teachers who have become complacent and will become great when they must. Bad teachers will most likely always be bad. Our students deserve a system that distinguishes between those differences and rids the system of those who are incompetent.
It is so logical that it baffles me that anyone can really argue against this change.
Caroline, why do you think teachers are not treated as professionals?
Professionals do not incessantly complain about the how many minutes they work, how they should not be held accountable, how they should not have to attend an extra functions at their workplace, how they work outside normal business hours, how their customers are THE problem, how they are not paid enough, etc…
Sure we can say this does not apply across the board but there is no question that the culture of education is so steeped in a union mentality that until that changes you will always feel as if you are not treated as a professional.
It is that simple. I firmly believe if you rid your “profession” of it’s unions you will find the relationship between all stakeholders would improve, teaching quality would improve, collaboration would improve, innovation would thrive, and I would even venture to guess pay would improve.
I suspect we will never know.
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It was my own research, Linda — very simple and general. I explained it here on the Perimeter Primate blog. http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/04/grannan-is-firing-bad-teachers-really.html
… I would call upon those who are paid to do this kind of thing to do a more thorough version of the same research! I’m an amateur volunteer mommy, so really it shouldn’t be left to people like me.
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And Linda, I vigorously disagree with your characterization of teachers as a bunch of incessant, self-interested whiners. This is exactly the kind of blaming, bashing and shaming of teachers that does so much harm to public education. That attitude demonstrates deep contempt for education and knowledge. But that part is my opinion. The fact is that my actual statistical findings show that state by state, overall on average, teacher job security correlates with higher student achievement. So, those who call for less teacher job security are calling for a system that the facts show correlates with lower student achievement. If that’s what you want, you have the right to your opinion, but I personally support systems that promote higher student achievement.
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Caroline,
I do not think you can make generalized statement about student performance based on a single test that is optional and focuses on a particular type of student. It is a bit like saying all pot smokers drank milk as children therefore milk leads to pot smoking.
Your comment, “That attitude demonstrates deep contempt for education and knowledge” is also flawed. That attitude demonstrates a deep concern for education and the heavy weight I place on the value of knowledge.” It is complacency we have to fear, not discourse.
The blaming, bashing, and shaming is simply the reaction to one of many issues wrong with public education. It is not the cause of what is wrong.
How do you address the $60,000,000 per year that NY has wasted on rubber rooms, how do you address the very very low incident of teacher dismissal (no one professional sector can have that high a competency level), how do you justify the continual blockage of school reform and innovation, such as distance learning, by the unions?
How do you explain teachers who are absent 48 days in one school year? I can provide you information about student learning and the effects of habitual teacher absenteeism. How do justify the fact that my son comes home from high school everyday and tells me about the movies he watched in class. Today is the third day in a row that he has watched a cooking show in geography.
This brings us right back to accountability.
The rationalization you make for not having to be accountable is simply wrong. If a teacher does a good job reward them. If a teacher does a habitually bad job fire them.
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Why is it that when the subject of ‘tenure’ is brought up the knee jerk reaction by many is that teachers collectively are being “blamed, bashed and punished”? Rather, getting rid of tenure as it stands now would create an environment for so many outstanding educators to have an opportunity to be rewarded and celebrated and give them an opportunity to compete in the profession of teaching. I see that as a positive.
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Too much to respond to at once. It’s true that the PSAT is optional, but almost every college-bound student takes it. The variation in 99th-percentile levels state by state clearly correlates with relative educational attainment levels. It’s inconsistent for an advocate of “education reform” philosophy to claim that test scores don’t matter, when that entire position is built around the view that test scores are the ONLY thing that matter. It’s a shame that you’re so unhappy with your own child’s school — I hope you’re participating on the School Site Council, the PTA and other avenues for parents to advocate and work to improve schools.
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School Districts are currently up against tremendous budget pressures. Should this bill become law, they will be able to solve their budget shortages by simply removing their highest paid teachers, many of whom may still be 10-15 years from retirement. They can get a “2 teachers for the price of 1″ deal out of something like this.
These removals of the highest paid teachers will happen regardless of a teacher’s professional qualifications, competence, or effectiveness, because they will be done to save money, pure and simple. If public education truly wants to adopt a corporate model of management, then the bottom line will call the shots. Teaching will further become a permanently low-paid occupation, not a high-status profession. In many districts, it takes a teacher over 10 years to reach a level on the pay scale that slightly resembles a respectable living. One of my colleagues, an exemplary teacher by anyone’s standards, and a single mom, was finally able to buy herself a home, after 20 years in my district. She now owns her own trailer on the edge of town. It’s a very nice trailer park, but it’s still a trailer park.
This bill also assumes that site administrators are honest, ethical, upstanding and professional. I’ve worked for no less than nine principals. Two were highly ethical people, several were unremarkable, and a few were highly unethical and would just as easily fired teachers over their lack of cleavage, rather than their lack of effectiveness.
And don’t forget, California already funds education at one of the lowest per-pupil spending limits. In my district we fund at about $5000. per child per year, one of the lowest in San Mateo County. In an effort to save money, the district offered an enticing buyout to all senior staff who had 11 years or more in. This offer had nothing to do with improving effectiveness and everything to do with cost-cutting. Though about 6 teachers near retirement accepted the offer, it was not enough by the district’s calculations, so they rescinded the offer. Several of those who accepted decided to remain in their positions for at least another year instead.
This evening, the Mercury News published an opinion piece stating the “neediest schools should be able to keep their best teachers”. This subsequent piece is not subtle in its suggestion that new, young teachers are good, and older, veteran teachers are bad. This is a smokescreen for the myth that struggling schools will lose an abundance of young, energetic teachers due to lay-offs by seniority. The most struggling schools are already staffed by the least experienced teachers and substitutes, and undergo chronic tides of teacher turnover year after year.
This bill is about reducing costs, reducing gov’t spending, agism, sexism, and privatization. It is not about what is best for schools, school communities, families or the education of young people.
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Caroline: Criticism of tenure (excessive due-process protections), a pay-scale that doesn’t reward outstanding teaching, bumping rights that bounce teachers without regard to effectiveness and other regressive aspects of contracts is not bashing and reviling teachers. I trust that readers and teachers, most of whom are working too hard to get involved in union politics, understand the distinction.
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John, much of Linda’s commentary absolutely constitutes teacher-bashing — such as characterizing teachers as people who “… incessantly complain about the how many minutes they work, how they should not be held accountable, how they should not have to attend an extra functions at their workplace, how they work outside normal business hours, how their customers are THE problem, how they are not paid enough, etc…” I too understand the distinction between the discussion of teachers’ contractual provisions and bashing, but any reasonable person not blinded by disdain would see bashing in these comments. What WOULD you view as teacher-bashing — calls for lynchings? Sometimes it seems like we’re almost there. Meanwhile, please note my simple but telling research linking states with no union protection to lower achievement.
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Caroline,
“Are you involved” is always the question I get asked once I engage in a discussion like this. Yes, I am an active member of site council, I am also part of the WASC team, I was my children’s school site captain for the last parcel tax effort,I act in an advisory capacity for our local foundation,I am on a first name basis with all five school board members, I have a good relationship with the school site administrators and I have held various parent leadership positions throughout the years. The have chosen very specific opportunities to get involved because I want to help raise the bar in providing our children with excellence in education.
Monica,
For 15 years I have owned a company that employs 85 people. I have NEVER fired or laid off someone because they were making more money. That is a concept that could not be further away in the minds of greedy corporate America. Believe it or not we can not run our businesses without quality and competent employees. This concept of unfair layoffs is just the typical rhetoric by those who want protectionism. My assertion that teachers be held accountable for their job performance does not end there, I also believe administrators should be accountable. One other protection that teachers have, if tenure were to be abolished, is that if a good teacher was let go unfairly you would have the parents calling for the Principal to lose his job. Everyone knows who the good teachers are and everyone knows who the bad teachers are. The administrators know, teachers know, parents know, and students know. This is not difficult. In California we have extensive laws that go out of their way to protect employees. These laws are good enough for the rest of us why are they not good enough for teachers?
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Well, I have to say it must be interesting to have someone so aggressively, angrily hostile to and contemptuous of educators working so closely with them. Ouch. I assume this is not in my community or I’d have been aware of the sparks flying.
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Wow, my teacher said that this was an interesting site, hotly debated about both sides of the topic. I would submit that there is another side…..We, the students!
My civics class is taught, competently, by a very good teacher. He was just transferred from a middle school science/math class this year because of budget problems. He will, no doubt, be an excellent civics teacher in a couple of more years.
Mr. B always has work for us, discusses interesting topics, and expects us to behave and pay attention in class. Most of us appreciate that, however, there are some lame students who try to upset him and disrupt class. They don’t take class seriously and are trying to get other students to bomb the STAR tests. This would be totally unfair to Mr. B.
He is concerned that he will be evaluated (judged) by a 1st year principal, based on our preformance this year. Our principal has a tight group of teachers that brown-nose her. Mr. B doesn’t. He spends lunch periods teaching and opening our minds. He is worried that he is not “connecting” with our Hispanic kids, or the Special Ed. kids.
In my opinion, Mr. B. is a hero, and the principal is just here to look good and “climb the ladder”. She doesn’t even live in town, and I have never seen her at a single dance, play or game. Why does she have any say about the quality of the teachers. She has only taught for 2 years at an elementary school.
Yes, there are some lame teachers, but there seem to be more lame principals. Who gets to judge them?
Mrs. T teaches world history. She has been given the “dorks” (sorry, our term for kids who don’t try in anything). I loved her 2 years ago and learned a lot. This year she has 2 periods of dorks in a row. She is worried that she will be evaluated by the principal based on these classes. She deserves a raise for putting up with them!
Please make sure that you are doing this for the right reasons – promoting good education and teachers…..and good principals. Thank you.
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So first you say: “I hope you’re participating on the School Site Council, the PTA and other avenues for parents to advocate and work to improve schools.”
You didn’t really mean that did you?
When I confirm my involvement you respond with:
“Well, I have to say it must be interesting to have someone so aggressively, angrily hostile to and contemptuous of educators working so closely with them. Ouch.”
Wow Caroline is that how you label me because I support good, engaging, hardworking teachers and believe we should have a system to remove those who are failing to teach our children?
There are many teachers that my children have had over the years that I have thanked for their hard work and their dedication. I have good relationships at my children’s school because I am willing to invest the time to make it better and those teachers and administrators who feel the same way respect my efforts.
You see there are many good teacher who believe what I believe. I do suspect that if we worked together you would not like me. My interest is simple… I want a better education for our children.
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I asked Diane Ravitch if she had written a commentary just on the current attitude toward teachers, and she sent me some comments, pasted here. If she has done 15 radio interviews just today, I’d say the backlash is really gaining momentum — hurray!
Diane Ravitch to me:
I have addressed this in many interviews (I did 15 radio interviews today!). **
1. It makes no sense to hold teachers solely accountable for test scores, when there are so many other factors that affect scores, including student effort and motivation, family support, our distracting popular culture, and poverty.
**
2. Those who say that poverty is “an excuse” are wrong; decades of social science show that the most consistent predictor of test scores is the family’s socioeconomic status (shorthand: income). This does not mean that demography is destiny, but that the odds favor the affluent and are stacked against kids from poverty.
**
3. States and districts that incentivize teachers by tying their salary to student test scores will actually harm education.
a. They will encourage teaching-to-the-test, which produces the reproduction of minimum skills. Often students prepared for s specific tests do poorly on tests of the same subject for which they were not prepared, meaning that they didn’t even learn the skills for which they were prepped.
b. They will encourage curriculum narrowing because teachers will have no incentive to teach non-tested subjects like history, civics, geography, science, the arts, foreign languages, etc.
c. They will encourage cheating and gaming the system by states, districts, principals, and teachers because of the high stakes attached to test scores, including not only teacher salaries but potential closing of the school.
**
4. Psychometricians will say that a test should be used for the purpose for which it was intended. A fourth grade reading test is a test of fourth grade reading skills. It is not a test of teacher effectiveness.
**
5. Judgments about teacher effectiveness must ultimately be human judgments, informed by data about student scores but not based heavily on them, for all the reasons above.
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Caroline,
We agree!!!
I do not think teachers should be evaluated based solely on test scores I think their evaluations should come primarily from their boss, the principal. They should have annual reviews.
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Welcome, Rick. You have a ringside seat to an interesting and often formative discussion on what’s happening in schools like yours. You’re the first student to comment on the site, and I appreciate your thoughts. Keep an open mind as you sound out your favorite teachers. Try to get the administrators’ perspective as well. It’s a tough business at a tense time, with everyone feeling crabby over sacrifices they’re being asked to make.
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Someone needs to define what is a bad teacher and then right it in stone. What all of you do not understand is the federal and state gov make this determination by how many students score a proficient on the state exam. My friend, who has been a teacher for over 10 years, was well known for taking in all the troubled kids. Last year her high school classes were packed with freshman students who had all failed math the previous year. Know kidding out of 141 students (thats right 141 class size 35,35,36,36 in a math class) 12 had not passed a math class since 6th grade, many had crimminal records. She advocated for her students in the principals office many times. Her principal hated her yes hated. She never ate lunch in the breakroom because she tutored during lunch. Under no child left behind her school was red flagged a few times this allowed for the staff to be replaced with no tenure protection. Guess who got to choose thats right you guessed it and your right the principal fired her saying that not enough students in her class scored proficient (B or better) on the state exam. In the investigation they found out that most of the students scores improved from the previous years but this did not matter the law is the law admin had the power no protection for the teachers and it was upheld. She now works for a company that has ten time more employee protection and at a 40% higher salary. I found out that this has happened to many good teachers. Go ahead take away senority and tenure and the hard to teach kids will have no advocates to fight for them. Would you get on the principals first to go list and risk your income maybe you would but in reality how many will.
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