This article in today's WSJ about the heating-up fight in NY to remove last-hired-first-fired layoff policies highlights the important advocacy work that TFA alums are doing in this battle – and many others:

This week, a teacher group backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation unveiled its own proposal for how to lay off teachers. The group, Educators 4 Excellence, said teachers who are chronically absent, have received "unsatisfactory" ratings or can't find a permanent job within six months should be first in line to be let go.

Educators 4 Excellence's plan, which was developed by 11 teachers who have between one and 10 years of experience, says teachers absent more than 8% of the current and previous school year without a medical excuse should face greater peril in layoffs.

"Of course, we want no layoffs whatsoever," said Sydney Morris, a co-founder of Educators 4 Excellence, which has doubled its membership to 1,400 teachers in the past six months. But because layoffs appear to be inevitable, "we want to make sure that a plan is in place to keep the best teachers in the classroom," she said.

Ms. Morris said her policy team had a meeting with the mayor last week and has set up meetings with other politicians and policy makers over the next few weeks to share its proposal.

(E4E's Evan Stone (New York '07), spoke at the TFA Summit: http://vimeo.com/19908469.)

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