Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about last in/first out policies for layoffs. And you know, when you really stop to think about it and listen to the reasonable voices it does make a lot of sense for organizations that are fundamentally about quality teaching to make personnel decisions with no attention to how good someone is at teaching. So please disregard all earlier posts on last in/first out.
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LIFO policies are hardly unsupportable.
In many states they were adopted as a means
of avoiding law suits (racial discrimination, etc.)
and a lot of minority teachers worry about
their elimination
this comment actually comes from AR's eduwonk --
http://www.eduwonk.com/2011/04/lifo.html
Attorney DC Says:
April 1st, 2011 at 9:43 am
In all seriousness, I am wary of dismantling LIFO policies because I believe they will be replaced with the following bases for retention (in no particular order): (1) Teachers the principal likes (maybe they belong to the same church or have kids who are friends); (2) Teachers who never criticize the principal or any of his policies publicly (see #1); (3) Teachers who are inexperienced and, hence, cheapest; and (4) Teachers who actually are good teachers.
As a former teacher (who has worked for several different principals), I am pretty confident that #4 (teaching effectiveness) will NOT be the only criteria used for retention decisions, although some policy makers seem to believe it will be — perhaps they never had the experience of working for a capricious principal?