American teacher unions are frequently seen as obstacles to reform, and rightly so.  Nowhere is that truer than in the seniority-based layoff system that has impacted Venice High hard in the past few weeks. It is outrageous that low-performing, ineffective teachers are allowed to keep their jobs based solely on seniority, while new, enthusiastic, highly effective teachers are left out in the cold when it comes time to cut the budget.  The United States is rapidly falling behind in education, and we cannot afford to protect low-achieving teachers. 

Unions argue that the seniority system is necessary to keep quality teachers in the school system.  But the research shows otherwise.  A December 2010 study by the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington found that low seniority did not equate with low scores in value-added rankings.  More significantly, it estimated that implementing a performance-based layoff system would increase student achievement by around 2.5-3.5 months of learning per student.  Dan Goldhaber, lead author of the study, described the current seniority-based system this way: “If your bottom line is student achievement, then this is not the best system.”

The current “last in, first out” system is only keeping talented people from wanting to become teachers in the first place. Instead of becoming teachers, talented people are becoming engineers and lawyers instead.  A September 2010 study by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that 47 percent of America’s K-12 teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes.  By contrast, in academic powerhouse countries like Finland, South Korea, and Singapore, teaching is considered a highly prestigious and competitive job.  In fact, teachers in South Korea and Singapore on average earn more than lawyers and engineers.  Here in the United States, we cannot improve our educational system by attracting mediocre students and hoping they’ll become excellent teachers.  If we want to start attracting talent, we need to start rewarding performance, not seniority.

It’s not as if we don’t have the tools to measure teacher performance.  I’ve previously written about how a combination of value-added rankings and student-provided evaluations would be a powerful tool in reforming our educational system.  UTLA has fought back against attempts to measure teacher effectiveness, claiming that value-added evaluations are unreliable. But research shows that value-added assessments largely correlate with student evaluations of teachers; in other words, students and statisticians both know good teaching when they see it. Our teachers unions need to get their heads out of the sand and trash the current seniority-based system. Venice High is about to lose some of its best and brightest teachers, while low-performing, ineffective teachers get to keep their jobs based solely on tenure. 

That needs to change.