A great Op Ed in the NY Post by one of the founders of Educators4Excellence (www.Educators4Excellence.org) on the insanity of layoffs driven purely be seniority (and kudos to Jonathan Bing for introducing a bill in Albany to change this):

The proposed $1.4 billion cut in the state education budget could mean 8,500 teachers would be laid off and taken out of their classrooms in New York City, punishing 1.1 million students.

As a third grade teacher at a Bronx public school, those numbers terrify me. How will this impact the academic futures of the 31 students in my class?

State law now forces teacher layoffs to be made strictly in order of reverse seniority -- last hired, first fired -- with absolutely no consideration of a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. It's hard to believe that this policy was created with my 9-year-olds in mind.

However, a new bill in the Legislature would change the law to give schools the power to take into account factors besides seniority, such as a teacher's performance, when making layoff decisions. The bill was introduced by Sen. Ruben Diaz and Assemblyman Jonathan Bing -- who represent two of the districts that would be hardest hit by teacher layoffs.

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