Today's Times has an article on efforts by NYC Schools Chancellor Klein's efforts to remove seniority protections for teachers, and end "last hired, first fired." I have a lot of sympathy for this effort. While there are a lot of great senior teachers (my dad for instance, who put in consistent effort over 30 years teaching elementary school), I'm not sure that seniority is a great predictor for excellence, or that it makes sense to do layoffs by seniority alone.
For example, my mother-in-law was by all accounts a phenomenal elementary school teacher, who took over a decade off in the middle of her career to raise her kids. When she came back, despite having a ton of experience (and caring more about her students than anyone I've ever met), she was perenially on the chopping block at her school because she didn't have any seniority.
During my time teaching in LA, there were some great senior teachers, and there were some who were just phoning it in to collect a paycheck. There were some amazing junior teachers, and some who were in over their heads. Again, it doesn't make sense to me that, if layoffs have to happen, the lousy senior teachers should be protected and the great junior teachers should be dumped.
In defense of seniority, the article states that:
Unions argue that administrators want to do away with seniority protections so they can get rid of older teachers, who are more expensive. They say that without seniority safeguards, principals could act on personal grudges, and that while keeping the best teachers is a laudable goal, no one has figured out an accurate way to determine who those teachers are.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Administrators want to keep good teachers, but probably also want to maximize their budgets. If senior teachers are good, I can't imagine administrators wanting to get rid of them just because they're expensive. On the other hand, if you have two equally lousy teachers - a junior teacher making $40,000 and a senior teacher making $65,000 - it seems like pretty good policy to toss the pricier bad teacher.
I also don't understand the argument that seniority safeguards are necessary to prevent principals from acting on personal grudges. This argument gets made all the time with regard to tenure, and I don't think it's any more applicable there. Most people work in jobs where there's no seniority protection or tenure. I don't have any tenure or seniority protection as a lawyer, neither do cashiers at Wal Mart, bankers at Goldman, or most other non-government employees. However, most people I know don't spend a lot of time worrying that we'll get fired because of a boss's personal grudge. Moreover, I don't understand how seniority protection protects anyone (other than senior teachers) from grudges - does that mean that it's ok to fire junior teachers over a grudge?
I have the same problem with the "we don't know how to evaluate good teachers" argument. If you walk into any job or office in this country, I can guarantee that the boss will be able to give you a general idea of who her good employees are and who the not-so-good ones are, and could tell you who the company should keep and who they should let go if there were layoffs. Heck, when I was a teacher I could have told you who the good teachers and bad teachers were at my school.
As a caveat, I'll note that the Times puts these arguments into the mouth of generic "unions," without quoting a person or even a specific union, so I'm a little skeptical. Readers who are currently teaching - do you think that these are legitimate reasons to keep seniority - or are they just more ways that the senior teachers (who run the unions) keep their jobs and perks at the expense of the new guys?
2 comments:
Any time a union represents non-revenue-generating employees, negotiating away seniority rights is a dangerous prospect. For many employees throughout the economy, age and seniority is accompanied by an increase in quantifiable productivity which justifies increased compensation. For example, a more senior lawyer can bill at a higher rate and/or have a larger book of business, so their increased compensation is offset by their pecuniary contributions as compared to a more junior attorney.
Teachers are the exception to this rule. While the experience of a teacher can be subjectively invaluable, the public school system receives little-to-no pecuniary benefit from their experience, ultimately exposing the more senior, higher-paid teachers to a greater chance of being laid off when the district is forced to make cuts in the absence of seniority protections.
The issue is further exacerbated by the Supreme Court's ruling in Gross v. FBL Financial last year, which effectively takes away a fired teacher's ability to claim age discrimination against the school district. In a nutshell, Gross states that in order to sustain a claim of age discrimination under federal law, a Plaintiff must prove that advanced age is the "but for" reason for the adverse employment action, not merely one of several motivating factors. This effectively takes away any senior teacher's age claim where the district can simply show that they had a compelling business necessity to cut labor costs while minimizing the effect on class sizes (i.e. cutting 1 senior teacher for the same price of 2 junior teachers).
In summary, I would strongly encourage the teacher's union to hold tight to their seniority provisions or face the prospect of all senior teachers - regardless of their skill - being on the chopping block every time budget cuts roll around.
I will note that the holding of Gross is limited to "disparate treatment" claims, not "disparate impact" claims, so there are still some avenues of protection for older, higher-paid teachers... But Gross took away a big one.
Post a Comment