Mark Nassutti

The Nation’s Report Card arrived last week.  I felt disgusted.  Our K-12 education system, the most important industry in America, hasn’t improved despite 40 years of reform.

We need a game-changer.

And here it is: Our public schools will soon lay off thousands of teachers statewide.  The usual practice is to lay off the newest first, based on seniority.  Let’s try something different:  Lay off the worst.

Just because a teacher has more years under his belt doesn’t mean he’s more effective than a newer teacher.  What if one of your newest teachers is a superstar?  Or even just average?  Shouldn’t you lay off a poor performer before you lay off an average teacher?

If we keep doing layoffs the same way we’ve always done them, we’re going to keep getting the same results.  But if we gather up our guts, make our principals force-rank every school’s teachers from best to worst and lay off from the bottom ranks, we will quickly improve teacher morale, teaching skills and student achievement.

I’ve lived the impact of a principal’s inability to fire a poor performer.  When my son was in third grade, he fell victim to a teacher who wasn’t cutting it.  She hadn’t responded to coaching and remedial training.  She needed to be terminated.

The principal conceded the fact but refused to pull the plug.  The result?  My son was left behind.  He didn’t learn third grade math.  It took three years and outside tutoring to catch up.  There were 25 others like him.

What would have been so bad about firing that teacher?  She would have gone on unemployment, and to get a new teaching job, she could have taken classes to improve her math teaching skills.  Even an average teacher stepping in would have done a better job and kept the class on track.

Our principal’s refusal to act cost 26 children three years of catch-up and their parents thousands of dollars in tutoring.  The teacher still lost her job, at the end of the school year.

How does laying off poor performers improve morale? First, good teachers know who the poor teachers are. They’re a burden.  The fourth grade teacher who inherited my son’s class had to work twice as hard to make up for the third grade teacher’s failure.

Morale also improves because the worst performers complain the most and collaborate the least.  They’ll even denigrate star teachers because they’re making them look bad.

Finally, morale improves because no-one wants to be the worst next year, creating an incentive to work together to improve the whole team’s performance.  If the team improves, the school improves.

What about teaching skills? Research shows they’re more important than class size, funding, or curriculum.  And the most powerful way to improve teaching skills – more important than continuing education, higher degrees or board certification — is to give the principal the freedom to hire, train, evaluate and, where necessary, terminate teachers.

How do we know the principal will be fair?  If she hesitates to fire the worst performers for any reason – caprice, popularity, pity –  she will undermine morale and her team’s performance, making it more likely that she will be fired.

A principal’s biggest obstacle to terminating poor performers is a union contract.  There’s a process, usually so long and painful that most principals won’t even try.  Those union contracts also require seniority-based layoffs.  These restrictions on terminating poor performers reveal the union’s history of putting teachers first, students second.

The unions can change the game too. By allowing their worst performers to be removed, they can walk the talk of putting children first.

We have to act now.  Washington State layoff notices must be given by May 15.  You’re your superintendent. Demand he order every principal to force-rank his staff based on performance.  Let’s take advantage of the layoffs and remove the worst first.  Our children deserve the best, not those who’ve just been there the longest.

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.