It's important to note the reason they were fired. As teacher Richard Larkin said, "You [the mayor] want to pick and choose teachers." If they were laid off, the district would be obligated to rehire them in order of seniority.
According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority.
Probably not. Ask them how they'll determine who the best teachers are? They have no metric today, at all. They'll likely simply use inverse seniority. Hire back the cheapest.
This is akin to a company firing people the day before their options vest, just because it saves a lot of money. Maybe good business practice in the short-term, bad in the long-term, as even good teachers will realize that they'll likely be fired if they climb up the salary scale.
It's not that its unmeasurable, but they won't take the time to measure it. The cheapest way is to get rid of teachers altogether. Just let the students go to class and randomly assign grades. The fact that they have no real metrics will mean that perceived quality won't change -- but I think we'd both agree that something would have changed.
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers
One would hope so, and that it will not end up being cherrypicking the ones who have most fervently sucked up to the superintendant and board, and firing the most fervent union members.
I wonder, are they going to perform the same triage on the principals and other administrative staff?
But rather than creating a true evaluation system that would be able to create better teachers and identify the strong teachers, they are just doing a blanket firing.
I wonder what they are going to use to rank the fired teachers. Personal preference? Who is cheaper? Less senior employees who don't have as good of pensions?
If they thought this process through and decided to create an evaluation system, I think a lot of people would understand. Just firing everyone to cherry pick who you want based on some criteria that isn't formalized seems... too politicized.
According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.