Poll in NY shows lack of support for "last in first out" rules

[FBaggins]

A whopping 78 percent of New York City voters said teacher layoffs should be based on performance, not the seniority-based "last-in, first out" law, a poll released today found. Even 63 percent of voters in union households agree that layoffs should be based on merit, not LIFO, according to the Quinnipiac College survey.

Meanwhile 73 percent of voters said layoffs of cops, firefighters and other government workers should be determined by performance, not seniority. And a majority of voters in union households agree.

The results mirror the findings of a statewide poll released last month, which found that 85 percent of voters backed the elimination of LIFO.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/majority_based_performance_york_mT8LRF5xbXjyRUY1EFyvSL

The article source is less-than-great, but the poll was done by Quinnipiac.

The union-household statistic surprised me.

[pipoman]

1. I have to say, I agree

in addition to keeping good people it may result in less layoffs. The last in are also the lowest paid usually meaning it takes more layoffs to make a reduced budget. That said, I also don't believe that the layoffs should be determined by salary.

[FBaggins]

3. Your second point hits on the most common concern

Do we trust administrations and/or school boards to get rid of the poorest performers, or are they just as likely to replace LIFO with HSFO ("Highest Salary First Out"). While I disagree with some here that there's a direct correlation between time on the job and performance... there certainly is SOME correlation. Many of our very best teachers ARE the most highly compensated.

[Enthusiast]

2. It is the purest bullshit.

Who in the fuck could ever possibly rank teachers, fire fighters, cops and government workers according to merit? It would require a massive bureaucratic mechanism to achieve this. Otherwise we would get an approval system based on a Machiavellian, familial and political affiliations. Take you right wing propaganda somewhere it will be appreciated.

The Quinnipiac poll was a scam push poll type misleading question.

[FBaggins]

4. You're at least half right.

I don't know about the structure of the poll, but the real problem is that sure... we would all like hiring/firing decisions to be based on teacher quality above all else - but we don't have a good way to measure that teacher quality.

A principal who is willing to use grade inflation to make the school look better (and/or play games with testing scores) is suddenly to be trusted not to score teachers' performance measures according to who she wants to keep?

So I don't know if it's "purest"... but it is BS.

[tortoise1956]

5. Why not?

The truth is that most professions have some sort of rational methodology to rank employees. This is done for many reasons, but two of them come to mind. First, the best workers should be rewarded accordingly, and held up as examples of how to succeed. Second, those who are not doing their job well need to be told what they are doing wrong so that they have a chance to improve their performance. Why should teachers be different?

Having said that, I agree that this is not a trivial task. I haven't actually seen it happen at companies where I've worked, but I know people that got screwed because they were making more than the average worker, or they pissed off their immediate supervisor through no fault of their own. That ain't right, and it needs to be punished by force of law. However, there are ways to see if decisions have been skewed. For example, if a principal submitted a list of supposedly bad teachers, and most of them were at the top of the pay scale, I would be looking deeper into the reasons why. Also, unless there is a totally egregious act, termination should never be based on a single incident, but a pattern of behavior. In addition, that pattern must be documented - not based on hearsay. Otherwise, the teacher would have grounds for suing the district for unfair labor practices. That is the way we do things at my company, as directed by HR and in accordance with federal labor law.

I don't have the answers on how to best do this, but then I'm not a teacher. Surely the professional educators here have ideas on how this can be done in a fair and rational manner. If you do, please respond with your thoughts.