3.10 Tenure and Seniority
For their first two years, new teachers in California can be dismissed “at will” by their employer – usually a school district. After two years of employment, however, teachers in most districts enjoy strong dismissal process protections commonly referred to as “tenure.” A decline in student enrollment or funding can create a flurry of springtime “pink slips,” but seniority is usually the key element for determining the pecking order, at minimum as a tie-breaker.
Reforms that affect “tenure” usually seek to delay the onset of strong dismissal process requirements, or to streamline the steps involved in selectively dismissing an underperforming teacher. Dismissals for cause are quite rare in California due to the complexity and expense of the required process.
Rather than pursue a lengthy dismissal process, it is common for principals to use a more expedient solution to rid themselves of unwanted staff: they make a deal. If a poorly performing teacher agrees to move to another school, the principal agrees to give her or him a satisfactory rating. This practice, known as the dance of the lemons, is colorfully derided in Davis Guggenheim’s 2010 film Waiting for Superman.
In 2011, former Washington, DC Secretary of Education Michelle Rhee established Students First, an advocacy organization that made reform of tenure and seniority policies among its top priorities, with particular emphasis on the practice of seniority-based layoffs, also known as last-hired-first-fired or last-in-first-out (LIFO) policies.
The use of seniority as a factor in teacher dismissal came sharply into question in the lean budgets of 2010. The ACLU challenged the constitutionality of seniority-based provisions on the basis that such policies have a disparate impact on students in poverty. In 2011, California schools sent layoff notices to about 20,000 teachers on a seniority basis, and generally did not renew first- and second-year teachers.
In 2012, Students Matter sponsored a set of lawsuits against the state of California, seeking to strike down state laws that codify tenure and seniority practices. The basis of the suit is that these practices thwart students’ right to an education, which is guaranteed in the state constitution. The complaint makes for interesting reading.
Seniority and tenure policies, normally a dull hum in the background noise of education reform priorities, rose to importance in 2010 because economic changes drove teacher layoffs in relatively large numbers.
Education Trust West explained the impact of seniority-based employment rules coherently in its report Victims of the Churn. The report criticizes “bumping” rights with particular vigor (see graphic).
The next primer will turn to one of the least understood elements of teacher compensation: pensions.
I think you’ve managed to put the key issues out there pretty concisely. A couple things I’d add:
1. While we all use the word “tenure” it must be clarified that K-12 teachers do not have the same academic liberties that university professors enjoy with their “tenure.” The main benefit of “permanent status” is the due process – that administrators must show cause for firing a teacher with that status.
2. There’s no denying that a system strictly based on seniority in a district has flaws. I’m quite sympathetic to the view that the needs of a school should be considered, so that you don’t keep destabilizing the same campuses over and over. However, I do not trust most of the people who talk about reforming the system because they seem more interested in firing teachers than fighting for adequate funding to avoid layoffs, or robust evaluation systems needed to measure quality (because test scores don’t work).
3. Though it’s not the stated focus of your post, I hope people recognize that you’re pointing out systemic problems; it’s not possible to lay the blame at any one doorstep, be it the union, administration, or district. The fixes for this problem will not come from “either/or” decisions, but rather a broad set of solutions aimed at every part of the problem: teacher training and professional development, union willingness to negotiate, improved training and ongoing support for principals, reformed governance and procedures especially for large districts, and most importantly, adequate funding for schools.
Research suggests that among school factors having an effective teacher is the most critical element. A poor teacher might only get a half years gain in student achievement from one year of instruction, whereas a good teacher can get a year and half worth of gain in achievement. So getting effective teachers in front of the kids that need them, ideally year after year, is absolutely crucial. We need a system that has this goal as a priority and aligns recruitment, assignment, professional development and retention strategies around this goal – with the interests of the students being paramount. The current system clearly does not serve the needs of students who need those effective teachers.
The reality is that employment protections for any employee even in the private sector are now quite substantial (much more so than when the current system for teachers was developed) and similarly our knowledge of how to fairly evaluate employees (and train their supervisors to evaluate them) is also substantially improved. Modest changes to the current structure including a much longer probationary period for new teachers (we know from research that teachers improve in the first several years but not much after about year 10), multiple measures of effectiveness (including peer assessments, observations and video, student achievement gains, and supervisor ratings), individualized targeted professional development to help areas that need improvement, rigorous training for principals etc, combined with student need-based assignment (rather than teacher convenience) would make a huge difference.
For interested readers, the research referenced above can be found in several academic sources or more generally an on line search will uncover documents that refer to the findings.
A comprehensive review of research on teacher characteristics maybe be found in a chapter I coauthored with Icela Pelayo (“Teacher Quality in Education Production”) in Economics of Education (edited by Dominic J. Brewer and Patrick J. McEwan; Elsevier, 2010). Multiple references to both the findings mentioned above (i.e. that teachers are the most important school related factor in student achievement, and teacher experience is important up to around 10 years) are cited in this piece).
I have two points to coutnibrte to the conversation.1) Last in first out may be a de facto policy, but it’s not an official policy. This piece of StudentsFirst propaganda provides the impression that it’s a simple policy that could be easily replaced, rather than an effect that’s a result of multiple aspects of policy and politics that are intertwined with other aspects of schools as environments.2) If you’re interested in data and education, you might want to do a piece on value added. Value added measurements are the tools being championed within the ed. policy world. However, it’s worth noting that most of the researchers who work with those tools don’t consider them to be adequate for making policy decisions. The bottom line with both of these things is that we’re talking about a complex phenomenon that cannot be easily reduced or even completely measured.