House Education Jobs Bill Blind to Teacher Quality, Needs of Low-Income Students

Share this

As budget cuts ripple through the nation's school districts, teachers who once won awards are now getting pink slips. These casualties of “last-hired, first-fired” layoff policies highlight the stakes in a legislative battle now in the House of Representatives, where lawmakers are considering $23 billion in emergency aid for schools.

As Congress debates the dollars and sense of the aid proposal, the issue of reforming seniority-based layoff policies will not go away. Without an amendment to bar states from "last hired, first fired" layoffs, the education jobs the legislation saves may be those of the wrong teachers. In the schools whose students need the best teachers, we must find ways to keep the best teachers.

Indeed, a new study shows the disproportionate impact of seniority-based layoffs on low-income and minority students. The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington documents that in California’s 15 largest districts, teachers at risk of layoffs are concentrated in the schools with the greatest numbers of poor students. If layoffs were applied to teachers with up to two years' experience, the study finds, high-poverty schools would lose 30 percent more teachers than their low-poverty counterparts and high-minority schools would lose 60 percent more teachers than low-minority ones.

Yet the education jobs measure before the House does nothing to protect our most vulnerable kids and their schools from wrong-headed "last-hired, first-fired" layoff policies.

National organizations and other groups from such states as Connecticut, Kentucky, Oklahoma, New York, and Washington have signed a letter urging Congress to fix the education jobs measure to keep more of our best teachers in the classrooms that most need them. The groups follow:

  • The Education Trust
  • Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education (New York)
  • Children’s Defense Fund
  • Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights
  • ConnCAN (Connecticut)
  • Democrats for Education Reform
  • Education Equality Project
  • Education Reform Now
  • Educators 4 Excellence
  • League of Education Voters (Washington)
  • The Mind Trust
  • National Council on Teacher Quality
  • The New Teacher Project
  • New Schools Venture Fund
  • Oklahoma Business & Education Coalition
  • Partnership for Learning (Washington)
  • Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence (Kentucky)