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ERIC Number: ED516845
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2010-May-20
Pages: 9
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Schools in Crisis: Making Ends Meet. The Disproportionate Impact of Seniority-Based Layoffs on Poor, Minority Students
Sepe, Cristina; Roza, Marguerite
Center on Reinventing Public Education
As districts face another year of budget gaps, hundreds of thousands of teachers have been warned that, come the end of the school year, their jobs may be gone. In a policy now termed "LIFO" or "last in, first out," most districts make layoff decisions based on seniority and not on job performance or effectiveness. Using seniority as the basis of layoff decisions has become increasingly controversial this past school year, as K-12 layoffs jumped and the total number of education jobs fell for the first time in over two decades. To understand how seniority-based layoffs may play out across schools within districts using recent data, this analysis relied on teacher experience data from the 2008-2009 school year from California--a state hardest hit by budget cuts. The largest 15 districts, which encompass a quarter of the state's students, were broken down within each district by teacher experience and quartiles based on concentrations of poor and minority students. Across the 15 districts, the evidence shows that teachers at risk of layoffs are indeed concentrated in schools with more poor students. Appendices include: (1) Percentage of teachers with two years or less teaching experience by school district and poverty quartile; and (2) Percentage of teachers with two years or less teaching experience by school district and minority quartile. (Contains 3 figures and 19 footnotes.)
Center on Reinventing Public Education. University of Washington Bothell Box 358200, Seattle, WA 98195. Tel: 206-685-2214; Fax: 206-221-7402; e-mail: crpe@u.washington.edu; Web site: http://www.crpe.org
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Authoring Institution: University of Washington, Center on Reinventing Public Education
Identifiers - Location: California
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A