To Help Neediest Students, Coalition Continues Push to Fix Senate Jobs Bill

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Two key changes to the $23 billion Keep Our Educators Working Act will ensure that the kids who most need the best teachers don't lose them. National organizations and other groups from such states as Connecticut, Kentucky, Oklahoma, New York, and Washington have signed a letter pressing for changes in the legislation, which is working its way to the Senate floor. These changes will save teachers' jobs and plug a loophole that could divert funds from schools.

    Although the bill would provide states with nearly double the funding they receive from Title I and as much as five times as much as any state could receive in Race to the Top funding, the bill has two devastating flaws:

  • It fails to help state and district leaders end mechanical “last-hired, first-fired” policies—policies that teachers themselves reject and cost more teacher jobs than do seniority-neutral layoff policies.
  • It contains a loophole that would allow 49 states to shift their share of funds to service debt or replenish rainy-day funds—even as thousands of teachers lose their jobs.

The following groups are urging senators and representatives to amend the bill to address these issues and maximize the number of teacher jobs it will protect.

  • 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)
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Make no mistake, the situation in school districts is dire, and thousands of educator jobs are at risk. Based on a new national study of school superintendents, the American Association of School Administrators projects that the national total for education job cuts will be 275,000 in 2010-11.

Yet without changes, the Keep Our Educators Working Act will do too little to protect these educators, their jobs, their schools, and our kids. The bill needs two key changes: First, as a condition of funding, the legislation should require states to end the costly last-hired, first-fired policies.

Under this approach to layoffs, new teachers are always the first to go, regardless of how well they may do their jobs. But according to a 2009 report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington (CRPE), such policies actually result in far more people losing jobs than otherwise might be necessary.

Here's why: Teachers’ salaries increase with longevity, so when school districts considering layoffs must fire teachers with the least experience—the ones who are paid the least—administrators have to eliminate more jobs to achieve the same dollar savings. In many districts, that can mean pushing out new teachers as well as energetic veterans who have worked for four, five, or even six years.

The CRPE report illustrates this point. Using the seniority-based layoff policies now in effect in most districts, roughly 875,000 public school jobs would be lost nationally if districts had to reduce their salary expenditures by 10 percent. Nearly a quarter-million of those lost jobs could be saved by using seniority-neutral policies that take employee effectiveness into account. Of those who could have remained employed, about 125,000 would be classroom teachers.

Not only do seniority-based layoff policies cost jobs, but teachers themselves reject them. Last spring, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) surveyed more than 9,000 teachers in two large urban districts about layoff policies. About three-quarters of teachers in both districts—including a majority of teachers at every experience level—said school districts should consider factors other than length of service in layoff decisions.

A New York City teachers group is circulating a petition opposing last-hired, first-fired policies. And increasing numbers of states and districts are rejecting them as well:

  • Four states have laws that either prohibit the use of seniority in laying off workers or require other factors to be used as well. Arizona law prohibits seniority from being used to decide layoffs; Missouri considers seniority only for nontenured teachers and uses a mix of seniority and performance for tenured teachers; and Maine, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C., use multiple criteria with no priority about which is the determining criterion.
  • Of the 100 representative districts in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s database, 25 use factors other than or in addition to seniority to determine layoffs.  In 16 of those districts, performance carries more weight than seniority.
  • A superior court judge in Los Angeles ordered a halt to layoffs in three middle schools because the district's last-hired, first-fired policies disproportionately affect schools serving low-income students.
  • Indianapolis recently amended its layoff policy to prohibit the use of seniority alone in making layoff decisions.

The U.S. Senate should support these forward-looking state and local efforts to achieve fairer layoff policies that protect more teacher jobs.

Second, the legislation should close the balanced-budget loophole. The bill requires states to use funds only to retain existing school employees and hire new ones. It prohibits them from using funds to restore, supplement, or establish a reserve or rainy-day fund or to service state debt. However, these prohibitions do not apply if state law requires a balanced budget. Every state but one has a balanced-budget law. Unless this loophole is closed, 49 states could divert some or all of their share of funds to activities other than saving teacher jobs—even as massive teacher layoffs take place.

With these two important changes, the Keep Our Educators Working Act could be a powerful tool to protect our schools and teachers. Without them, it is nothing more than a cruel and empty promise.