Test scores are up across all the grades. Graduation rates are at record highs. How did New York City students make so much progress over the last eight years? In a word: teachers.
Seven years ago, the mayor and I committed to building a school system where every child would have a great teacher. We’re making that happen. A 2008 study found that the city’s effort to recruit great teachers has narrowed the gap in teacher quality between our wealthiest and poorest schools.
Now we face severe budget cuts that may force us to lay off 6,400 of the city’s 80,000 teachers. And state law mandates — and the union insists — that these layoffs be done entirely on the basis of seniority. The most recent teachers hired are the first to get fired. No consideration of an individual teacher’s merit or success with students, or the needs at that school.
It’s painful to consider how many outstanding teachers our kids might lose simply because of their hiring dates. For example, most of our elementary-school teachers hired since the fall of 2007 will be lost.
Schools in districts with the most new teachers stand to suffer the largest losses. These include poor districts, whose challenges tend to lead to high turnover, and also districts that have grown in recent years and hired new teachers to keep up with enrollment.
The result: A poor area like the South Bronx is projected to lose 14 percent of its teachers, and the rapidly growing Upper East Side will lose 9 percent.
It doesn’t have to be this way. State, city and union officials can together do two things to help us avoid the devastating impact of “last-in, first-out” layoffs.
First, the Legislature must pass reforms that will enable the state to win the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education grant competition, which would net New York City schools at least $200 million.
Some argue that these funds couldn’t help with the budget problem; not true. We can protect high-need communities and students by using Race to the Top money for financial incentives that keep great veteran teachers from leaving our schools — and attract great new ones when positions become available. A $5,000 bonus for teaching in the city’s most challenged neighborhoods could ensure the long-term commitment of 5,000 teachers to high-need schools.
What’s more, Race to the Top cash could go to fund an added 200 citywide “lead teachers” who have proven their effectiveness and would mentor younger teachers. We could also use the federal funds for incentives to attract top teachers to hard-to-staff areas like special education and bilingual instruction.
Such crucial steps would go a long way toward minimizing the damage layoffs will do to our schools and kids. Race to the Top dollars would go to the teachers and communities who need them the most — something the teachers union is inexplicably trying to stop by saying these dollars don’t matter. They matter now more than ever.
Second, the Legislature needs to truly prioritize the needs of our kids over any other consideration by mandating a system for teacher layoffs based on effectiveness, rather than time on the job.
As a first step, we would lay off the 1,600 teachers with “unsatisfactory” ratings and the 1,000 teachers who, by the time school starts again, will have been unable to find a job for a year. Beyond that, principals would make decisions based on three universally agreed-upon, clear criteria: teacher attendance, student progress and quality of teaching. Superintendents would review every decision to ensure they were supported by evidence. This is a common-sense approach that would end the absurdity of seniority-based layoff rules that spare no neighborhood in our city.
We are obligated to do everything in our power to protect our children from a budget crisis adults have created. Taking the necessary steps to win hundreds of millions of federal dollars and creating a rational process for layoffs are the very least we can do to maintain the progress that great teachers have made possible.
Joel Klein is the New York City schools chancellor.