Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
TEACHER LAYOFFS
Scrap the seniority system
What's wrong with this picture? Young, talented teachers, whose skill and enthusiasm represent our public schools' greatest hopes for the future, will be first on the chopping block as districts cut jobs because of the state budget shortfall.
They'll go in favor of more experienced teachers who may or may not be more competent. Seniority, and which subjects need the most teachers, are the criteria that will decide who stays and who goes, not performance. Our state, mostly because of the objections of its largest teachers union, doesn't weigh performance in such decisions.
That needs to change. Herald Writer Eric Stevick reported Monday on three young Arlington School District teachers who may face layoffs, including second-year Haller Middle School teacher Allison Sayre, who was in high demand two years ago as the state faced a shortage of math and science teachers. That need hasn't gone away, but Sayre soon may.
Everyone wishes no school layoffs were looming; most would like to see more teachers hired, which would yield smaller class sizes. But with the jobs of as many as 3,000 teachers across the state likely to be lost for now, leaders in Olympia should be contemplating whether using seniority as the leading factor in job security makes sense.
Our state needs a system that better ensures the best teachers aren't let go in times like these. It needs a reasonable way to measure how good a job individual teachers are doing, and to reward the best. It's not a radical idea -- it's one of the key education reforms supported by President Obama. And it was also recommended in December by a bipartisan state task force, but the teachers union used its considerable political power to kill it.
The Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force outlined a three-tiered salary structure that would combine experience, education and structured peer reviews, rewarding the top-ranked teachers with the highest salaries. You know, like most of the rest of the working world assigns pay. It's an idea that may not work to the benefit of every single teacher, but would for every single student. Shouldn't that be the goal?
Pay-for-performance should be brought back up again next year in Olympia. In the meantime, teachers who see the virtues of such a system need to speak up. We doubt that the union's membership is anywhere near unanimity on the subject.
They'll go in favor of more experienced teachers who may or may not be more competent. Seniority, and which subjects need the most teachers, are the criteria that will decide who stays and who goes, not performance. Our state, mostly because of the objections of its largest teachers union, doesn't weigh performance in such decisions.
That needs to change. Herald Writer Eric Stevick reported Monday on three young Arlington School District teachers who may face layoffs, including second-year Haller Middle School teacher Allison Sayre, who was in high demand two years ago as the state faced a shortage of math and science teachers. That need hasn't gone away, but Sayre soon may.
Everyone wishes no school layoffs were looming; most would like to see more teachers hired, which would yield smaller class sizes. But with the jobs of as many as 3,000 teachers across the state likely to be lost for now, leaders in Olympia should be contemplating whether using seniority as the leading factor in job security makes sense.
Our state needs a system that better ensures the best teachers aren't let go in times like these. It needs a reasonable way to measure how good a job individual teachers are doing, and to reward the best. It's not a radical idea -- it's one of the key education reforms supported by President Obama. And it was also recommended in December by a bipartisan state task force, but the teachers union used its considerable political power to kill it.
The Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force outlined a three-tiered salary structure that would combine experience, education and structured peer reviews, rewarding the top-ranked teachers with the highest salaries. You know, like most of the rest of the working world assigns pay. It's an idea that may not work to the benefit of every single teacher, but would for every single student. Shouldn't that be the goal?
Pay-for-performance should be brought back up again next year in Olympia. In the meantime, teachers who see the virtues of such a system need to speak up. We doubt that the union's membership is anywhere near unanimity on the subject.
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