Exiting Ineffective Teachers Policy
In Hawaii, the factor used to determine which teachers are laid off during a reduction in force is a teacher's seniority. "Dismissals due to a decrease in the number of pupils or for causes over which the department has no control shall begin with those teachers with the least number of years of service."
Require that classroom performance is considered in determining which teachers are laid off during reductions in force.
Although it may be useful to consider seniority among other criteria, Hawaii's current policy puts adult interests before student needs by not considering teacher effectiveness.
Hawaii had no comment on this goal.
See National Council on Teacher Quality, "Teacher Layoffs: Rethinking 'Last Hired, First-Fired' Policies." (2010); The New Teacher Project, The Case Against Quality-Blind Teacher Layoffs (2011); Boyd, Donald; Lankford, Hamilton; Loeb, Susanna; and Wyckoff, James, "Teacher Layoffs: An Empirical Illustration of Seniority v. Measures of Effectiveness" The Urban Institute, CALDER (2010); Goldhaber, Dan and Theobold, Roddy, "Assessing the Determinants and Implications of Teacher Layoffs." Center for Education Data & Research, University of Washington-Bothell (2010); Sepe, Christina and Roza, Marguerite, "The Disproportionate Impact of Seniority-Based Layoffs on Poor, Minority Students." Center on Reinventing Public Education (2010).