Exiting Ineffective Teachers Policy
In New Hampshire, new legislation ensures that seniority is not the sole factor used by districts to determine which teachers are laid off during a reduction in force. However, the state does not require that teacher performance be among the considered factors.
Require that districts consider classroom performance as a factor in determining which teachers are laid off during reductions in force.
New Hampshire can still leave districts flexibility in determining layoff policies, but it should do so within a framework that ensures that classroom performance is considered.
New Hampshire was helpful in providing NCTQ with facts that enhanced this analysis.
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).