Teacher Layoffs: An Empirical Illustration of Seniority versus Measures of Effectiveness

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Boyd ◽  
Hamilton Lankford ◽  
Susanna Loeb ◽  
James Wyckoff
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Teacher Effectiveness ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
School District Leaders ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Teacher Layoffs ◽  
Measures Of Effectiveness

School districts are confronting difficult choices in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Today, the financial imbalance in many school districts is so large that there may be few alternatives to teacher layoffs. In nearly all school districts, layoffs are currently determined by some version of teacher seniority. Yet, alternative approaches to personnel reductions may substantially reduce the harm to students from staff reductions relative to layoffs based on seniority. As a result, many school district leaders and other policy makers are raising important questions about whether~other criteria, such as measures of teacher effectiveness, should inform layoffs. This policy brief, a quick look at some aspects of the debate, illustrates the differences in New York City public schools that would result if layoffs were determined by seniority in comparison to a measure of teacher effectiveness.

scholarly journals Some pennies are more equal than others: Inequitable school facilities investment in San Antonio, Texas

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marialena D. Rivera ◽  
Sonia Rey Lopez
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Finance ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Educational Facilities ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
School District Leaders ◽  
Property Wealth ◽  
State And Local

In Texas, local taxpayers fund the majority of educational facilities construction and maintenance costs, with local wealth influencing facilities outcomes. The traditional school districts that comprise the predominantly Latino and segregated San Antonio area vary considerably in property wealth as well as district capacity and expertise. We conducted an analysis of 12 San Antonio area school districts to address the questions: 1) To what extent do state and local investments vary by district? 2) How do district actions and constraints affect facilities quality and equitable investment? Methods include descriptive quantitative analysis of facilities investment data and qualitative interviews with school district leaders, staff, and school finance experts. Examining Texas school finance data demonstrated the variance in school district investments in educational facilities. Despite some districts with lower property wealth exerting higher levels of tax effort, they were able to raise less money per student for educational facilities through interest and sinking taxes. Interview findings revealed that several districts acknowledge lacking the capacity to maintain high-quality facilities for all students. Respondents frequently criticized current state policies and funding for educational facilities as inadequate, inequitable, and inefficient and expressed a need for policy improvements in an era of increasing state disinvestment.

Performance-Based Staff Layoffs in the Public Schools: Implementation and Outcomes

1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Moore Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Performance Criteria ◽  
Local School ◽  
The Public ◽  
Teacher Layoffs

In response to declining school enrollments, some local school districts are using performance criteria to determine the order of teacher layoffs. In this article, Susan Moore Johnson reviews efforts to implement such practices in four local school districts. The findings of the study indicate that performance-based layoff policies are not easily translated into practice. Furthermore, interviews with principals in these districts suggest that the unintended consequences of performance-based layoff practices may limit their educational worth.

scholarly journals Invisible inequality leads to punishing the poor and rewarding the rich

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLIVER P. HAUSER ◽  
GORDON T. KRAFT-TODD ◽  
DAVID G. RAND ◽  
MARTIN A. NOWAK ◽  
MICHAEL I. NORTON
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Districts ◽  
New York School ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractFour experiments examine how lack of awareness of inequality affect behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to rewarding the poor. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants who played a public goods game – and were assigned incomes reflective of the US income distribution either at random or on merit – punished the poor (for small absolute contributions) and rewarded the rich (for large absolute contributions) when incomes were unknown; when incomes were revealed, participants punished the rich (for their low percentage of income contributed) and rewarded the poor (for their high percentage of income contributed). In Experiment 4, participants provided with public education contributions for five New York school districts levied additional taxes on mostly poorer school districts when incomes were unknown, but targeted wealthier districts when incomes were revealed. These results shed light on how income transparency shapes preferences for equity and redistribution. We discuss implications for policy-makers.

Fiscal Impacts of Charter Schools: Lessons from New York

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bifulco ◽  
Randall Reback
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Financing Policies ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Excess Costs ◽  
Fiscal Impacts ◽  
School Financing

This brief argues that charter school programs can have direct fiscal impacts on school districts for two reasons. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, we demonstrate how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated. We find that charter schools have had fiscal impacts on these two school districts. Finally, we argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives.

scholarly journals Searching for Effective Teachers with Imperfect Information

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas O Staiger ◽  
Jonah E Rockoff
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Student Achievement ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Teacher Effectiveness ◽  
Effective Teachers ◽  
Imperfect Information ◽  
Achievement Data ◽  
Noisy Signals ◽  
Hiring And Firing

Over the past four decades, empirical researchers—many of them economists—have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers. In this paper, we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit, evaluate, and retain teachers. We begin by summarizing the evidence on five key points, referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation's two largest school districts: Los Angeles and New York City. First, teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains. Second, estimates of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement data are noisy measures. Third, teachers' effectiveness rises rapidly in the first year or two of their teaching careers but then quickly levels out. Fourth, the primary cost of teacher turnover is not the direct cost of hiring and firing, but rather is the loss to students who will be taught by a novice teacher rather than one with several years of experience. Fifth, it is difficult to identify at the time of hire those teachers who will prove more effective. As a result, better teachers can only be identified after some evidence on their actual job performance has accumulated. We then explore what these facts imply for how principals and school districts should act, using a simple model in which schools must search for teachers using noisy signals of teacher effectiveness. The implications of our analysis are strikingly different from current practice. Rather than screening at the time of hire, the evidence on heterogeneity of teacher performance suggests a better strategy would be identifying large differences between teachers by observing the first few years of teaching performance and retaining only the highest-performing teachers.

scholarly journals Does Greater Autonomy Improve School Performance? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Analysis in Chicago

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Performance ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Reading Proficiency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Charter School Principals ◽  
School Based ◽  
And Performance

School districts throughout the United States are increasingly providing greater autonomy to local public (non-charter) school principals. In 2005–06, Chicago Public Schools initiated the Autonomous Management and Performance Schools program, granting academic, programmatic, and operational freedoms to select principals. This paper provides evidence on how school leaders used their new autonomy and its impact on school performance. Findings suggest that principals were more likely to exercise autonomy over the school budget and curricular/instructional strategies than over professional development and the school's calendar/schedule. Utilizing regression discontinuity methods, I find that receipt of greater autonomy had no statistically significant impact on a school's average math or reading achievement after two years of autonomy. I do find evidence that autonomy positively affected reading proficiency rates at the end of the second year of autonomy. These findings are particularly relevant for policy makers considering the provision of greater school-based autonomy in their local school districts.

Bringing formative classroom assessment to schools and making it count

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund W. Gordon ◽  
Michael V. McGill ◽  
Deanna Iceman Sands ◽  
Kelley M. Kalinich ◽  
James W. Pellegrino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Classroom Assessment ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
School District Leaders ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Current Assessment

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present alternative views on the theory and practice of formative assessment (FA), or assessment to support teaching and learning in classrooms, with the purpose of highlighting its value in education and informing discussions on educational assessment policy. Methodology/approach – The method used is a “moderated policy discussion”. The six invited commentaries on the theme represent perspectives of leading scholars and measurement experts juxtaposed against voices of prominent school district leaders from two education systems in the USA. The discussion is moderated with introductory and concluding remarks from the guest editor and is excerpted from a recent blog published by Education Week. References and author biographies are presented at the end of the article. Findings – While current assessment policies in the USA push for greater accountability in schools by increasing large scale testing of students, the authors underscore the importance of FA integrated with classroom teaching and learning. They define what formative classroom assessment means in theory and in practice, consider barriers to more widespread use of FA practices and address what educational policy makers could do to facilitate a FA “work culture” in schools. Originality/value – The commentators, representing scholar and practitioner perspectives, examine the problem in a multi-faceted manner and offer research-based, practical and policy solutions to the observed issues in FA. Dialogue among stakeholders, as presented here, is a key first step in enacting assessment reforms in the directions discussed.

Who Receives Federal Title I Assistance? Examination of Program Funding by School Poverty Rate in New York State

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H. Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Title I ◽  
New York State ◽  
Poverty Rate ◽  
Distributional Pattern ◽  
York State ◽  
Elementary And Secondary Education ◽  
School Poverty

The distributional pattern of federal funding allocated through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title I program was examined for all public schools in New York State. Although Title I is a major vehicle for serving the needs of poor children and redressing educational inequity, the present findings suggest that poorer school districts may be ill-served by the present law in several ways: (1) The federal Title I program is widely distributed across New York State to 98% of school districts and to nearly 80% of all public schools; (2) regardless of the poverty rate for any given school district (including the most affluent districts), a clear majority of schools receive Title 1 funding; (3) some of the poorest districts may be unable to use Title I to serve many of their educationally disadvantaged children when an individual school’s poverty rate falls below the intradistrict average. Implications for children in poverty are discussed with reference to the most recent reauthorization of Title I (Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994).

Technology Integration and Urban Schools

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry T. Kidd ◽  
Jared Keengwe
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Urban Schools ◽  
Instructional Practices ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Quality Education ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Educational Stakeholders ◽  
Social Economic Status

With the call for educational reform in American public schools, various school districts have embarked on the process of reforming classroom instructional practices through technology to enhance quality education and student learning. This article explores the implications for educational technology practices within the context of urban schools. Additionally, this article highlights the need for administrators, policy makers and other educational stakeholders to reflect on effective ways to eliminate inequities and the gaps that exist between high and low Social Economic Status (SES) schools and teachers related to practices, resources, training, and professional development.

Devil in the Details: Making Sensible Modifications to No Child Left Behind

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W. Ritter ◽  
Christopher J. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Full Compliance ◽  
Respective State

Achieving full compliance with the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation poses major challenges for most of the nation's states. Structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with ranking representatives from a number of so-called high-readiness states: California, Florida, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. (Collectively, these states enroll over 16 million children, or approximately 35 percent of the nation's total school-attending population.) Most policy makers are reportedly confident their respective state school systems are able to meet NCLB standards. Yet while each state's situation is unique, limited resources coupled with dramatically increased expectations for public schools may spell trouble ahead. Lessons learned so far by several states as they engage the NCLB mandate are discussed and analyzed. Ultimately, patience and flexibility on the part of federal officials, it is argued, will be critical to the long-term success of the No Child Left Behind reform initiative.

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