Nov 12, 2017 3 min read

Anyone who has ever passed through a public school – well, probably any school, whether public or private – has been in classrooms with inspired teachers.

Whether fresh to the profession, or still vigorous and engaged even after years in front of a chalkboard, these instructors still have a passion for what they teach, make it come alive for their students, and take a genuine interest in their progress.

These are the sorts of teachers who are still remembered fondly decades later, even after the names of other students and teachers become much harder to recall.

By the same token, anyone who has ever passed through any kind of school has been in classrooms with grimly uninspired teachers. Whether young or old, they seem to be going through the motions, watching the clock, using notes that are so ancient they are as dry and yellow as parchment, and giving every impression they wish they could have gone into accounting, animal husbandry, or anything that didn’t involve teaching.

In Pennsylvania, teachers in the latter category have been allowed to keep plodding forward even in dire economic times due to rules that based teacher layoffs solely on seniority. This meant that a superlative newcomer would be shown the door before a lackluster time-server.

However, the layoff protections for teachers based on seniority ended earlier this month as a result of Gov. Tom Wolf allowing an education bill to become law without his signature.

Wolf vetoed a standalone bill in 2016 that would have made the change, but allowed the education bill to become law without his signature because it contains other popular provisions, such as expanding efforts to educate students about opioids, helping distressed school districts with additional funds and stopping “lunch shaming.”

But Wolf shouldn’t have been reluctant to add his signature to the bill – keeping better teachers in the classroom when layoffs have to happen is good news for students and taxpayers in Pennsylvania.

The provision has the support of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which says that it would establish a fairer system of who stays and who goes when the economy heads south, and they are correct.

Rather than basing decisions on seniority, the new rules would determine teacher layoffs based on annual evaluations, and the results of those evaluations will also determine who is reinstated when conditions improve. The new law also requires that teacher salaries cannot be a factor in furloughs, and that a corresponding percentage of administrative staff must be laid off, unless a waiver is granted by Harrisburg.

Also, economic reasons can now be used to lay off teachers; before, declining enrollment, the closing of schools and the elimination of academic programs were the only reasons staff could be furloughed.

State Rep. Steve Bloom, a Republican from Cumberland, told the Philadelphia radio station WHYY, “The vast majority of our teachers are doing a good job.

They’re either rated distinguished or proficient under the existing evaluation system. There is a very small percentage of teachers, under 2 percent, that are in the ‘needs improvement’ or ‘failing’ categories.

And there would be no reason in the world we would want to keep a ‘failing’ teacher in the classroom rather than a ‘proficient’ or ‘distinguished’ teacher.”

Opponents have argued that experience and longevity are important in deciding which teachers are laid off.

Yes, they are important, but they shouldn’t be paramount.

Lawmakers in Harrisburg take their share of brickbats, and many of them are deserved. For this, however, they deserve commendation.