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One approach would be to change how schools conduct layoffs: Some want to see schools remove "last in, first out" layoff policies to avoid pushing out teachers of color who are newly hired when funds disappear.
This is like a dream come true for school districts. Yeah, they might demand the laws change under the guise of keeping minority teachers, but you better believe what it will really be used for is to get rid of older more expensive teachers to trim the budget. This will ultimately lead to flat pay scales for teachers.
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This is like a dream come true for school districts. Yeah, they might demand the laws change under the guise of keeping minority teachers, but you better believe what it will really be used for is to get rid of older more expensive teachers to trim the budget. This will ultimately lead to flat pay scales for teachers.
Under Financial Concerns that kept people from becoming teachers the "difficult exams" comment. I wonder if there was a hidden message there, intentional or not.
Meanwhile people are demanding teacher training become more stringent.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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unintended consequences.... - USA is very short sighted (whatever keeps someone elected for 4 more years) - edu, healthcare, trade wars, finances, infrastructure, public policy....
Before the Brown v. Board ruling, Black teachers made up 35 to 50 percent of the workforce in the 17 states with segregated school systems
The precipitous drop in the number of Black educators in the workforce was an unintended consequence of the ruling, said Tequilla Brownie, CEO of the nonprofit organization The New Teacher Project.
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My wife recently retired after 15 years at our local elementary school, and it's easy to tell why they don't have a single Black teacher. . .the city of 65,000 is only 1% Black, nearby larger cities are 2.2% and 1.9% Black, respectively. Unlike much of the country, our schools are continuing to grow with more young families moving in as the empty nesters flee to less expensive areas. Currently, rather than layoffs, our district is hiring with 5 elementary teacher openings, 25 secondary.
Under Financial Concerns that kept people from becoming teachers the "difficult exams" comment. I wonder if there was a hidden message there, intentional or not.
Meanwhile people are demanding teacher training become more stringent.
Yeah….. the exams are not that difficult and research has repeatedly shown there is a correlation between student growth and teacher content and pedagogical competency. I, too, worry about the hidden message being sent.
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My wife recently retired after 15 years at our local elementary school, and it's easy to tell why they don't have a single Black teacher. . .the city of 65,000 is only 1% Black, nearby larger cities are 2.2% and 1.9% Black, respectively. Unlike much of the country, our schools are continuing to grow with more young families moving in as the empty nesters flee to less expensive areas. Currently, rather than layoffs, our district is hiring with 5 elementary teacher openings, 25 secondary.
As long as they are not finding excuses to avoid hiring black teachers who apply to the district, it is not a real issue that your community with lower than 1-2.2% black population has no black teachers. All I’ve got to say to black parents that might complain that the teaching staff doesn’t look like their child in a situation like this is that they chose to live in an area/neighborhood/school district (and in your case, state) where almost no one looked like their child, so clearly they didn’t see this as a burning need when it came to weighing major life decisions that impacted just their family. Ditto to white parents who say they want their child exposed to diversity so the school needs to get a token black teacher. It is, however, a whole different story when a school with an over 25% black student body, especially in an area with a large black population in reasonable commuting distance, doesn’t have black teachers. Those schools needs to engage in whatever vigorous recruiting and retention programs they can to get and retain at least a 15-20% black teaching staff. And, unpopular opinion here, but while that does not mean they should keep incompetent teachers of color for the sake of meeting that goal, they may have to consider the merits of keeping a slightly more mediocre black teacher over a slightly less mediocre white peer.
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It is a very real historical fact that desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s was used to purge tens of thousands of Black teachers from the teaching profession. Essentially what happened is the following:
1. Segregated districts that had separate Black and White schools chose to close their Black schools and enroll Black students in their formerly White schools. No White students were ever sent to "Black" schools.
2. Lots of affluent White families fled the newly desegregated schools, either to distant White suburbs or to private segregation academies. Which opened up room in those previously White-only schools. In other words the public school population in formerly segregated districts shrank due to "white flight"
3. Administrators in newly integrated districts kept all their White staff at what were formerly all-White schools but refused to rehire or allow Black teachers from closed segregated schools to transfer or get hired at these newly desegregated schools. Or just didn't need them due to shrinkage in district enrollment. All kinds of excuses were used from inferior credentials (degrees from HBCUs) to outright racism. But the effect was that a whole generation of Black teachers were purged from the profession both deliberately and as a consequence of desegregation.
As for the discriminatory effects of layoffs, I'll address that in a separate post.
Regarding layoffs. Most of the problem here is that most districts treat seniority as a district-wide thing rather than a school-by-school thing and this is not a good thing in my opinion.
In any big district there are dozens of schools that range from high-performing wealthy schools to struggling schools in difficult neighborhoods. What happens is that the veteran teachers tend to cluster in the most desirable and easiest to work at schools in the nice neighborhoods. Understandably so. The job is easier and the working conditions are more pleasant.
Meanwhile the most difficult schools to teach at get a constant stream of new teachers since veteran teachers who start at those schools transfer off to easier schools when they get the chance. And those schools often never get to develop a core cadre of veteran teachers.
Fast forward to when layoffs come. What happens is that each school district wide might have to lose one teacher. But since the the most senior teachers are clustered at the preferred schools they can all stay and those who might see their positions gone can then "bump" less veteran teachers at poorer schools. So after layoffs the top schools might only lose one teacher off their staff whereas a poor inner city school might lose 20 or 30 of their existing (younger) staff as old veteran teachers from elsewhere in the district bump them all out of jobs.
The unions are most at fault for this because these work rules are drawn up by unions. But frankly, the district should have a bigger backbone and insist on seniority rules by campus not district. I think they just don't really care about it enough to do this.
What would happen if seniority rules were by campus not district? Then young ( often minority) teachers could take jobs in difficult schools with the security that if they commit to the job the district will commit to them and they don't risk being bumped by some senior teacher from across town. And when layoffs occur, each school only loses the same number of teachers so that they can better keep consistent teams together. And that would also discourage veteran teachers from transferring out of difficult schools at the first opportunity. Which would also be a good thing. Those schools are the ones that most need experienced teachers.
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