Dive Brief:
- A new study, slated to be published in the journal Education Finance and Policy this fall, finds that principals are more likely to lay off less-experienced and less-effective teachers.
- The study looked at Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina, where budget cuts in 2009 and 2010 led the district to cut teaching positions. District officials placed much of the decision-making in the hands of principals.
- More than 80% of the teachers laid off did not have tenure, but those with more than 30 years of experience were also more likely to be laid off.
Dive Insight:
Once the prevailing model, seniority-based layoffs have been under fire since widespread cuts following the 2008 economic downturn. Many union contracts stipulate that the teachers hired most recently must be the first ones fired. That doesn’t apply to North Carolina, which is one of five states where public sector collective bargaining is illegal. Still, the state gives tenured teachers who are laid off top priority when positions reopen. Critics of seniority-based policies say they don't give districts or school leaders enough say over layoffs and take a narrow view of what makes a good teacher by basing it solely on years of experience.
The results from Charlotte seem to turn both viewpoints on their head. Principals largely let go of inexperienced teachers as well as those deemed less effective. Overall, they did not seem to target higher-paid teachers, as had been predicted. Even so, their collective decisions resulted in fewer teachers being let go overall, in part by laying off teachers who were also already receiving a pension. And cuts were not significantly more severe in low-income schools, as they have been in other districts like Los Angeles where students in economically disadvantaged schools bore the brunt of budget cuts.
