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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Is Seniority for Teachers Bad for Students? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Is Seniority for Teachers Bad for Students? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:


Is Seniority for Teachers Bad for Students?

Yesterday's post challenging the ability of some education reform "liberals" to shed core values such as support for unions, desegregation and the institution of public education apparently hit some sensitive nerves. In particular, Chris Arnold, whom we recently saw praising the "parent trigger" movie "Won't Back Down," took me on via Twitter. You may recall that Mr. Arnold caught some flak for initially failing to disclose his affiliation with The New Teacher Project, a Gates-funded non-profit that has pushed hard for "reforms" in teacher evaluation.
In an exchange that took place over the past 24 hours, he asked me:
How do students (or teachers) benefit from seniority-based, quality-blind layoffs and rigid, factory era pay systems?
It is tough to answer such a question in 140 characters or less, so I am going to offe