Fri 9 Jul, 2010
Teachers, layoffs
Comments (2) Filed under: Uncategorized, blogging, education, family, politics, technology, writingTags: blogspot, digg, technorati
School districts across the United States are struggling to keep up with the budgetary realities of the day. It is difficult to maintain a level of educational excellence in the face of a budget that forces more children into each classroom, and cuts more programs that have been good for children, K-12. In California, and across the nation, the task is disheartening in many ways. Laying off over 20,000 teachers in California is not an easy thing to do, nor is it likely to be ignored by anyone with an agenda regarding unions, seniority, and the educational establishment in general.
In an article in the Sacramento, California, Bee newspaper, July 6, co-written by Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese, it is pointed out that, in general, schools with the most troubles, economically, behaviorally, academically, have suffered the most from teacher layoffs. The reason is relatively simple: the staff at these schools tend to be younger, less experienced teachers. The general rule is last hired is first fired. This may or may not be true in all districts across the United States.
The article points out that a newer teacher, with a PhD in education (doesn’t say from where the PhD is from), who has written about education, and was teacher of the year for his district, was given a pink slip, which has since been rescinded. His take on the layoff business is that it should be based on performance. Perhaps it was, and that is why he still has a job. To assume that it wasn’t is simply naive.
School districts, at least in California, are paid based on the actual attendance of the students enrolled in the district. Absences equal a loss of money to the district. There are no excused absences anymore. If a child is absent, it costs the district. Every district has to make a guess about how many children will be attending school the next school year, and about what the attendance percentage will be, in order to figure out a budget. March 15, in California, is a day when districts have to notify teachers of potential layoffs. Chief financial officers generally give the superintendents a conservative number regarding the number of potential students for the next year. The incoming Kindergarten class, subtracted from the outgoing 8th grade class, or 12th grade class in a unified district, equals the number of students lost, or, perhaps gained. Based on this number and the number of children each class will carry, teachers will be laid off, or more will be hired. It’s pretty simple. The Phd teacher of the year might want to look into this prior to making assumptions about the process.
The younger, less experience teachers are the ones who take the biggest hit in this scenario, no matter where in the district they are teaching. Teachers with tenure, those who have made it through 3 probationary years, are less like to actually lose their jobs. They do get pink slips. Teachers who have been teaching for 8 or more years have been getting pink slips. Most have been rescinded, but for a large number of teachers, the pink slips have turned out to be real. Tenure is not, as is commonly misquoted and believed, equal to lifetime employment. It means that a teacher cannot be fired, or laid off, without due cause. The reason for this is pretty straightforward.
This writer has written about this, in this blog, before. Prior to the tenure laws, teachers were fired at will for any number of reasons: having different political views from someone on the board, not financially supporting a pet project of a principal or board member, not working for free, having the termidity to argue with a principal, the principals wife, or board member, getting married or pregnant if a woman, not buying the correct clothing at the correct store, being old, not putting up with sexual harassment or assault, even thinking about joining a union, being of a different nationality, color, and the list just keeps going on and on. Tenure laws exist to protect the civil rights of teachers. It is not, and never has been, a ticket to lifetime employment.
The newspaper article, and others like it, point out that a disproportionate number of teachers at difficult schools in difficult areas are laid off at a higher rate than teachers at better schools, because the teachers in these schools tend to be the newest, least senior. Nowhere in the articles that this teacher has read has anyone taken the time to figure out that the older teachers in the districts paid their dues a long time ago. They have already been at the difficult schools with the difficult students in the difficult areas of town. They have been through the grinder and have transferred to less stressful situations. There are not many teachers who can sustain the daily assault on civility, the lack of community support, the mind numbing stress of teaching in such situations, over the long haul. Some can, and do. After a few years though, most teachers in these positions, when offered the opportunity to go to a different location, and preserve what is left of their sanity and health, do so. Not very surprising, really.
The newer teachers are also the ones who are most likely to teach anywhere they are sent, without question, who are most likely to do the involuntary “volunteer” work that principals and other administrators come up with, who won’t speak up too freely about conditions, or 3 hour staff meetings, simply because they fear for their jobs. A colleague of this writer gave up a Saturday to “volunteer” at school for what was called an ADA make-up day. The reasoning? Fear of being laid off.
Nowhere in the press, with all of the focus on the under performing schools having such high numbers of layoffs has anyone pointed out that other teachers filled those slots. The districts put more children in the classrooms, and transferred other teachers into those low performing schools to teach. These transferred teachers are the more experienced teachers. The articles and opinions on the op-ed pages would have the general public believe that the children in these difficult schools are just cast afloat, which is a patently ridiculous position.
The teachers, young and old, are not to blame for the financial mess that the schools and states find themselves in. There is no rejoicing in the teacher ranks when the young and talented are told their services are not needed for the next school year. The more experienced teachers know full well that there is a great need for young, enthusiastic, and energetic teachers to enter into, and stay in, the teaching ranks, and it is they who most profoundly feel the loss of these good young teachers. A good mix of the experienced with the inexperienced in the teaching ranks is what is needed.
No crisis will ever be left untouched for political gain by politicians. What seems to have floated to the top of the pool in this mess is a thinly veiled assault on unions, mounted by politicians who think now is the time to point to the teachers and their civil rights as a cause for the layoffs of good, young teachers. Instead of figuring out how to get the schools back on a stable financial footing, they begin to blame the unions, and all senior teachers. It is, of course, much easier to do this than to actually fix anything. It also does nothing to help children and schools do anything at all.
David says:
As a former teacher at a low performing school in a high poverty area, I agree with the suggestion that some teachers are more likely to be laid off than others.
Look at it from the district perspective. If you have a low performing school that has repeatedly failed to meet AYP, who are you going to blame? Will you blame the parents for failing to support education? Will you blame years of neglect which, prior to the advent of standardized testing, allowed students to be “socially promoted” even though the children in question lacked the academic prerequisites to succeed at the next grade level? Will you blame the school or district leadership that failed to provide pull out programs for tutorial assistance and remediation? Will you blame the building administration for failing to follow through on students with chronic absenteeism?
Who will you blame?
The answer is simple. Blame the teacher.
Never mind the fact that the students at this school had chronic attendance problems. Ignore the fact that when parents were called because of their child’s disruptive behavior, the parent said things like, “Well what do you expect me to do about the problem? You’re the teacher!” Ignore also the fact that it’s practically impossible for students who are 2-3 years deficient in all subject areas to pass a grade level test for reading, writing, and math.
If a district suffers a budgetary shortfall because of state deficits, no problem. Districts can trim their budgets by cutting jobs. They can also tell the state education department that “drastic changes” were made at schools that failed to meet AYP. This will effectively buy the district more time even though nothing substantive has really changed.
This policy is a win-win for everyone except the poor unfortunate students who have to attend this school and their equally unfortunate teachers who are nothing more than fall guys in the district’s annual blame game with the state department of education.
If we truly want to make a difference at low performing schools in high poverty areas, we need to give these schools more resources. We need to address truancy, student behavior, hunger, and neglect. We need to provide tutorial assistance. We also need to staff these schools with the most experienced teachers we can find.
Novice educators are well intentioned but novice teachers also need 2-3 years of actual hands-on teaching experience before they should be placed in challenging environments like those found at low performing schools.
eduskeptic says:
David,
Thanks for taking the time to read and reply to my Eduskeptic efforts. Much appreciated. A very lucid response as well.
Charlie, Eduskeptic