California Judge Rules in Favor of Seniority

The current wave of Ed Deform is breathtaking for the diversity and quantity of ill-conceived and destructive demands being made by its proponents. Despite the fact that these reforms contribute to the demoralization of teachers and potential flight from the profession at a time of teacher shortages, while also deteriorating safety and learning conditions for students, it seems like legislators and the courts are perfectly content to support and promote the madness.

However, in a breath of fresh air, administrative law judges recently ruled that San Francisco Unified and Sacramento City Unified did not have the authority to ignore state seniority laws in their attempts to keep veteran teachers at low-performing schools. While state law allows for few exceptions to seniority-based layoffs, administrative law judges recently ruled that San Francisco Unified had not made a compelling case for ignoring seniority, while Sacramento City had done so only partially, according to Thoughts on Public Education, (TOPED).

Unfortunately for veteran Sacramento teachers, the rulings of administrative law judges are not binding and the Sac City school board voted unanimously to ignore the judge and exempt all teachers at all seven of the district’s “Priority Schools.” The consequence will be that many inexperienced teachers will have jobs next year, while many experienced veterans will not. The SFUSD board decided not to contest Administrative Law Judge Melissa Crowell’s decision,   according to TOPED.

Fensterwald wrote that state law emphatically requires teacher layoffs to be based on seniority, but allows for two exceptions. The first is pretty obvious: a newer teacher with specific expertise cannot be bumped by a more senior colleague who lacks that expertise. For example, a 5-year veteran English teacher cannot replace a physics teacher with only 2 years of experience (unless that English teacher also has a physic credential).

The other exception, which allows districts to ignore seniority in order to protect students’ right to equal educational opportunity, is more open to interpretation and abuse. Districts like LAUSD have successfully argued (with the aid of the ACLU) that seniority causes low performing, low income schools to lose a disproportionate percentage of their teachers during layoffs.

There are numerous problems with this argument that have unfortunately been ignored or discounted by judges. First, layoffs hurt students at all schools, regardless of students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and their schools’ test scores. This is because layoffs lead to increases in class sizes and teacher workloads district-wide. This in turn decreases their ability to assign and grade meaningful assignments, monitor student safety, facilitate extracurricular activities and provide one-on-one attention. It also leads to declining course offerings.

It is also important to understand why low performing schools tend to have higher percentages of novice teachers in the first place and to critique the fairness of this for lower income students. The fact is that lower performing schools typically have a disproportionate percentage of lower income students. They also are among the most difficult schools to work in because of higher rates of absences and discipline problems and, more significantly, the burdensome punishments imposed by NCLB as a result of their lower test scores. In short, teachers at lower income schools are expected to work a lot harder and longer for the same pay as their colleagues at more affluent schools.

If we want to talk about equal educational opportunity and bias within the educational system, we need to end the Apartheid-like system that allows some schools to have as many as 80-90% of their students on free or reduced-cost lunch, while others in the same city or district may have fewer than 5%. Likewise, as long as we continue to allow a significantly more challenging workload for teachers at certain schools, those schools will continue to see an exodus of their more experienced teachers and a higher percentage of novice teachers.

Layoffs should also be recognized as an artifact of the class war being waged by the rich against the rest of us, in which the wealthy contribute less and less in taxes and rob the state of revenue for education. In other words, if the rich were paying more in taxes—possibly only what they were paying prior to the Reagan era—there would be no need for layoffs.

However, this dynamic hurts students’ educational opportunities in far deeper ways than increased class sizes and losses of popular teachers. The declining tax base also results in shrinking public health, nutritional and other services that benefit low income families, thus exacerbating many of the effects of poverty like higher rates of learning disabilities, cognitive impairment and absenteeism.

Illiterate Braggart to Take Over 15 Detroit Public Schools

Yes, I realize this is a rather bombastic headline, but it was hard to resist. Consider the following public statement by John Covington, Chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority, the agency that will be taking over 15 low performing Detroit Public Schools. In response to the agency’s plan to lengthen the school year he was quoted in the Detroit News saying:

"I don't know if people understand the magnitude of what just happened. . . This 210 days for students, it puts us at the highest in the nation, only second to Massachusetts."

Disregarding his inarticulate sentence structure and poor math skills, the fact remains that six DPS high schools and nine elementary-middle schools will be taken over by the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), created by Gov. Rick Snyder improve the state's failing schools.

The EAA was given the authority to lengthen the school year for students at its schools, from the current 170 days to 210 starting next fall. Students will have 52- to 54-day quarters and shorter breaks for the holidays.

The new rules will affect approximately 12,000 students at schools chosen because of their high percentages of at-risk children.

Covington reassured angry parents that they will be allowed to keep their kids at the affected schools or transfer to another DPS school, while students from other district schools will be permitted to enroll in the EAA schools. However, parents are unlikely to transfer their kids to a school branded as low performing unless they are already at a low performing school and want the extra days of taxpayer subsidized babysitting.

On the other hand, parents of children at the affected schools might have the right to transfer their children, but lack the means. For one, they will be expected to fill out additional paper work and jump through extra hoops, something that lower income parents are often unable to do because of their busy work schedules, difficulties communicating in English or because they lack the experience to navigate the bureaucracy confidently and effectively. Furthermore, their children could get placed at a school that is inconveniently located, preventing them from getting their children to and from school.

The Beatings Will Continue Until You Master the Content

In addition to taking away much of their vacation time and increasing the number of hours they are in the classroom, the EAA will no longer place students in classrooms with their peers. Instead, students will be placed in classrooms based on their instructional level. Thus, a child who is reading at the second grade level would be in a classroom with other students at this reading level, regardless of their age. 

The Teacher Beatings Will Continue, Too

It seems like the entire staffs at the affected schools will be fired, as Covington plans to hire roughly 600 new teachers, including 200 from Teach for America (TFA), a move that ought to make everyone suspicious of the true motives of this “reform.” If the goal is to help struggling students, then the solutions should be to hire experienced teachers with demonstrated skill and staying power. TFA teachers have virtually no training, poorer outcomes with their students, and a notoriously high attrition rates.

The plan to take over these schools and hire new teachers seems to actually be about union busting. TFA teachers, being young and inexperienced, tend to be more malleable and compliant than experienced unionized teachers, making them very appealing to administrators who want to push through unpopular reforms and squeeze more work from their employees. However, the new plan does not guarantee that EAA teachers will be covered by the collective bargaining agreement between DPS and the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), even though the schools were covered by the contract prior to the takeover.

San Francisco School Board Waives Seniority

The San Francisco School Board voted 5-1 this week to do away with seniority protections in order to save the jobs of 70 low-seniority teachers in 14 low-performing schools in the “Superintendent’s Zone.” They also voted 5-1 to issue 485 layoff notices, including 210 teacher and counselor layoffs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

An editorial in the Chron lamented that “low-performing schools won't improve if their most dedicated young teachers are the first to get pink slips.” This commonly believed and parroted delusion is based on the illogical premise that young and inexperienced teachers are somehow better than their more experienced peers. This is like arguing that an eager but inexperienced heart surgeon is better than an experienced veteran. In virtually all endeavors, experience improves one’s performance.

It also ignores the overwhelming causes of low achievement which are primarily socioeconomic in nature and have very little to do with their teachers. Even if we could staff low income schools entirely with the best teachers available and ensure that they were never laid off, low income students would still be coming to school sick, hungry, homeless, stressed and far behind their affluent peers in the requisite skills necessary for academic success.

Another argument that has been made in favor of protecting teachers at low income schools is that their schools tend to have the highest turnover rates and the largest numbers of layoffs during budget cuts. While this is true, it is important to look at the reasons for this tendency and find solutions that address the root causes, rather than slapping on ill-conceived bandages that do not really solve the problem.

SFUSD, like most urban districts, has high levels of low income students segregated in a portion of its schools. In San Francisco, the majority of these are located east of Twin Peaks in the Mission, Bay View-Hunters Point, Tenderloin, and OMI districts. And like most urban school districts, these low income schools tend to have the lowest test scores and highest dropout rates and the greatest pressure on teachers to work harder and longer to erase the achievement gap. Furthermore, the students at these schools tend to have greater emotional, intellectual and physical needs, placing further stress on the teachers. As a result, these schools tend to have higher attrition rates for teachers who burn out from all the extra demands or who transfer to less stressful teaching environments.

Consequently, the schools with the greatest need for quality teachers also tend to have the highest turnover of teachers, as well as a disproportionate number of young and inexperienced teachers who have low seniority. This is true even when budgets are healthy. However, during budget shortfalls, the lower income schools also generally lose more teachers to layoffs than their more affluent neighbors because they have higher percentages of novice teachers.

There is no question that this is unfair and a disservice to students. However, the solution is not to shred teachers’ contractual rights, nor to give younger teachers preferential treatment, as is being attempted in SFUSD (and as occurred in LAUSD this year). For one, there is no reason to believe that protecting those teachers’ jobs will solve the problem of high attrition at their schools. They will continue to face the same challenging students and be expected to raise test scores by impossible margins and implement a variety of new policies and curricula, without being provided the time or compensation to do it well.

Another reason why this strategy is wrongheaded is that it only protects teachers at 14 struggling schools, leaving open the possibility that teachers at other low performing, high turnover schools will still get the axe, including some highly effective veteran teachers. El Dorado, for example, which is not in the protected zone, will lose more than one-third of its teaching staff. The plan is ostensibly being done “in the name of social justice,” UESF President Dennis Kelly was quoted in the SF Chronicle. He went on to say, "You don't have justice for some," which is what will happen if the plan goes through. The union is considering filing a lawsuit to block the move.

One solution would be to reassign students more equitably, so that no schools are made up of mostly low income students. Unfortunately, the problem of Apartheid-like school systems segregated by social class seems to be intractable. It is one thing to offer lower income families the opportunity to bus their kids to a school far away from the gangs, drugs and poverty of their neighborhood, but quite another to tell affluent parents that their kids have been assigned to a ghetto school. Many of those with money will simply jump ship and invest in private school. Indeed, in San Francisco 29% of San Francisco kids were already in private schools in 2005, according to SF Magazine.

However, from the perspective of the teachers, a lot could be done to attract and retain the best and most experienced at challenging low performing schools, thus reducing the percentage of novice and low-seniority teachers. Perhaps the most important would be an abandonment of the accountability and testing mania that has been destroying public education for the past decade. This would take considerable pressure off of teachers to fix problems that are beyond their control and do wonders for the morale and climate at these schools. Simply “allowing teachers to teach,” combined with ample paid collaboration time and paid professional development, would also be strong incentives for retaining dedicated, high quality veteran teachers.

Teacher Seniority is a Labor Issue for All Working People

The final decision to deviate from seniority in the layoff procedure must be decided by an administrative law judge according to state law, which means the decision could stick, regardless of the unions’ position. Since seniority rights are collectively bargained between the union and SFUSD, such an outcome would be tantamount to the state ripping up the teachers’ contract. Keep in mind, teachers bargain with local districts, not the state. Allowing the state to trample on contractually agreed upon rights opens the floodgates for it to trample on other rights and protections.

It is also important to remember that seniority protections exist to prevent arbitrary and vindictive layoffs. Without seniority protections, higher paid veteran teachers can be laid off to save districts money. Teachers could also be fired for their union activities, being outspoken advocates for children or teachers, or for their extracurricular activities or lifestyles. Allowing the state to step in and override seniority could be used to balance continued budget cuts with a mass culling of the highest paid and most experienced teachers. It could also be used to weaken teachers unions by ridding districts of the most active and vocal union members.

24 Oakland Schools May Fire Half Their Teachers

More than two dozen Oakland schools may lose at least half their teachers if proposed budget cuts go through. Three of the schools could lose over 95% of their teachers, reports the Bay Citizen. The schools most affected are in East and West Oakland, the city’s poorest communities.

While the cuts are devastating, especially for the students at the affected schools, it is not the fault of the teachers’ union or seniority rules.

First, the poorest schools tend to be the toughest to work at, with higher rates of student absenteeism, lower test scores, and greater pressure on teachers to work harder and longer to raise the test scores. Furthermore, students are more likely to come to school hungry, depressed, anxious, or academically and socially unprepared for school. Teachers are paid the same, whether or not they choose to work at these tough schools and accept the longer hours. Consequently, many veteran teachers choose to work at other schools, while novice teachers, full of enthusiasm and optimism, are often willing to take on all the extra challenges, not really appreciating how much work is actually required. As a consequence, lower income schools tend to have high numbers of young teachers who lack seniority. However, they also tend to have high rates of turnover due to attrition, as these starry-eyed teachers burn out quickly.

A second problem is that several of the schools in question underwent “reforms” or charter conversions in which all teachers were fired and required to reapply for their jobs. Many of the veteran teachers chose not to reapply, either out of frustration with the process or because they knew that once they had their old jobs back they would be expected to work longer hours and do far more work as part of the “reform,” without any evidence that it will solve the schools’ problems. Furthermore, some of these schools used the process to get rid of veteran teachers, who earn higher salaries, and replace them with younger teachers in order to save money.

Overall, districts throughout the state are being destroyed by devastating budget cuts. Some districts will see cuts of up to $1,000 per pupil, bringing California’s per pupil spending down from its already abysmal level of $7,000 per student. If Gov. Brown can’t close the still gaping $12 billion hole in the state budget, another 19,000 teachers could get the axe state-wide, according to the CTA’s recent “State of Emergency” declaration. Getting rid of seniority rules will not solve this problem—schools will still be hit hard by cuts and have to lay off teachers. Rather than arguing about how to fairly divvy up the dwindling supply of qualified teachers, we should be demanding tax hikes for the richest members of society so that there is sufficient money to provide all children with qualified teachers, books, and decent classrooms.