A fascinating new study in Education Finance and Policy examines discretionary layoff policies in Charlotte Mecklenburg. In general, there are two non-discretionary, mechanical approaches to reducing the number of school employees. One is seniority-based layoffs: last in, first out (LIFO). There is also an approach known as “inverse student performance”: those with the worst value-added scores are the first to be fired. Neither of these is particularly desirable. In LIFO’s case, the reasons are obvious and legion. And using only value added might result in teachers focusing solely on test scores or in the loss of instructors who fill organizational needs (e.g., teaching specific grade levels or subjects) or otherwise contribute to a school’s educational priorities.
In contrast, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools use a discretionary policy. Candidates for layoffs are identified using a variety of factors, including the lack of formal job qualifications, length of service, and performance as determined by principal evaluations, plus the particular needs and goals of the school. Student test scores are not part of the process. Between 2008 and 2010, the district laid off over a thousand teachers because of the recession. The study’s author, Brown University’s Matthew Kraft, asked two questions: Which teachers actually got laid off? And how did this affect student achievement?
Laid-off teachers fell into two categories. In one were the obvious candidates: probationary teachers with year-to-year contracts, returning retired teachers, teachers hired after the start of the school year, and teachers with a temporary license or no license. In the other category were the lowest-performing teachers across all levels of seniority. And indeed, lower-performing tenured teachers were more likely to be laid off than higher performing non-tenured teachers—so there was clear evidence that discretion was actually used.
The effect on student achievement was, according to Kraft, “suggestive but inconsistent.” Laying off a more effective teacher, as measured by either principals or value added, was shown to lower student achievement. And the achievement of students who lost an effective math teacher went down compared to students who lost an ineffective one. (There was no similar finding for reading.) Interestingly, the achievement of students who lost a senior teacher as opposed to an early-career teacher was not statistically significant, which is in line with previous research.
Taken together, the results confirm that measures of effectiveness, not seniority, best predict how layoffs will affect achievement. The findings also reveal that discretionary layoff policies (if applied thoughtfully!) can surpass strict schemes like LIFO when it comes to influence on student achievement. And under Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools’ discretionary policy, effectiveness actually did determine layoff order. Using value-added scores might have helped identify effective teachers, but principal evaluations did a good job of informing layoffs on their own. The outcomes showed the importance of including non-rigid measures, rather than trading one inflexible policy for another.
SOURCE: Matthew A. Kraft, "Teacher Layoffs, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement: Evidence from a Discretionary Layoff Policy," Education Finance and Policy (November 2015).
