May 10, 2016 3 min read

Laboring for years in a particular profession ideally gives its practitioners skills won through patience, repetition and, yes, mistakes. After a couple of decades of slogging away, they should be firing on all four cylinders, the masters of their craft.

But the emphasis must be placed on “ideally.” While there are certainly plenty of veteran workers out there who are confident in their abilities and still approach their jobs with energy and enthusiasm, there are others simply serving time, who haven’t kept up with developments in their field, who maybe weren’t even terribly well-suited to it in the first place.

Private-sector employers can edge these employees out the door when times get bad, but Pennsylvania’s public schools cannot. Because teacher layoffs are based on seniority in the commonwealth, a middling-to-poor veteran can hang on to his or her job, while a younger, more talented or effective teacher can be cut when the ax starts swinging. It is not fair to gifted, younger teachers with potential, and, above all, it’s not fair to students and taxpayers who would benefit by having those teachers in the classroom, not on the unemployment line.

A bill approved by legislators in Harrisburg would change this. Rather than seniority being the benchmark for layoffs, it would allow administrators to make layoff decisions based on performance ratings. Teachers who are ranked as failing would be the first to go, followed by teachers who receive the “needs improvement” designation. According to state Sen. Ryan Aument, a Lancaster Republican who sponsored the bill in the upper chamber, “It ensures that our schools will be staffed with the most effective, highly rated teachers, which we know makes all the difference for student performance and outcomes.”

The bill would also make economic downturns a valid rationale to furlough teachers. As it currently stands, teachers can only be laid off because programs are being trimmed or eliminated, districts are being consolidated or enrollment is declining.

What are the chances of it becoming law? Zero, since, as of Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf said he would veto the measure, arguing that the performance ratings lean too much on test scores, the overall evaluation system has not been fully tested and the state should be in the business of investing in its schools, not devising plans to lay off teachers. While we agree that Pennsylvania needs to put more resources into classrooms, and that standardized test scores should not weigh heavily on how a teacher is perceived – even the best teachers can only accomplish so much with students from disadvantaged backgrounds – we wish the governor would reconsider.

He should also listen to Linda Lane, the superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, who said a couple of years ago that layoff policies based on seniority “have taken highly effective educators away from students, and forced us to return ineffective teachers to the classroom.” Wolf should also heed a 2011 study by the New Teacher Project, an education reform group, which found that the students hurt the most by seniority-based layoffs are those that live in poor communities.

Let’s take on faith that the proponents of this measure and the governor both want the same thing – a high-quality education for every student in Pennsylvania’s public schools. When the going gets rough, it’s clear to us that keeping the best and brightest teachers in the classrooms, no matter how many years they’ve been punching the clock, is the best way to achieve this.