Tag Archives: education reform

MN Teachers: 17% of Teachers Are “Ineffective.” MN Legislature: You’re Stuck With Them.

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As schools adjourn for the summer, I was struck by a survey of Minnesota teachers recently released by the education reform group MinnCAN.  There are a number of fascinating things about it, but I’m most interested in a number that is getting very little attention.

                                    Younger Teachers Oppose LIFO

The more heavily publicized aspect of the poll has been about young teachers’ opinions on layoff rules.  There has been quite a hullabaloo over efforts in the Minnesota Legislature to change teacher layoff rules.  Currently, when school districts are deciding which teachers get laid off during difficult times, they can only consider seniority.  They can’t consider teacher input, parental input, principal input, relative improvement on test scores, or what an individual school needs at the moment.  Minnesota is one of just 12 states in the nation where seniority alone — last in, first out (LIFO) — drives such decisions. Continue reading →

Teacher LIF0 Reform: Weirdest. Politics. Ever.

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Minnesota remains one of the few states in the nation that requires decisions about which public school teachers to hire, promote or  lay off to be made solely based on seniority, and not teacher performance measures, such as student progress or principal evaluations.  DFL Governor Dayton and the DFL-contolled Legislature want to keep it that way.

The DFL has faired well at the polls recently, but Minnesotans aren’t tracking with the DFL on this “last in, first out (LIFO)” issue.  The education reform group MinnCan commissioned a poll which put the following statement in front of a random sample of Minnesotans: “If teacher layoffs are required, seniority should be considered, but the primary factor in deciding which teachers to layoff should be based on teacher performance.”  An overwhelming 91% of Minnesotans support that notion (68% strongly support, 23% somewhat support), while just 9% oppose it (4% strongly oppose, 5% somewhat oppose). Continue reading →