By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

PHILADELPHIA – As Philadelphia school officials negotiate a new contract with the district’s teachers union, parents and education advocates are pushing to remove seniority as the determining factor for employment decisions.

This school year the Philadelphia school district laid off 676 teachers and many in the community are upset the terminations didn’t take into account teacher performance, only seniority.

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The seniority system exists due to the state’s school code and the district’s contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Education News reports.

Mark Gleason, executive director of the Philadelphia School Partnership, believes the seniority-based system is costing the district quality teachers, and removes accountability from administrators, Newsworks.org reports.

“You often hear teachers say that test scores and students’ performance on standardized tests shouldn’t be the only metric in evaluating a teacher’s performance. I would argue that seniority shouldn’t be the only metric in evaluating a teacher’s performance either,” Gleason told the news site.

“It actually takes accountability away from management,” he said, “and then you end up with principals and leaders who can’t be held accountable for their results and the whole organizational culture starts to break down at that point.”

The district’s data illustrates the problem with the current system.  Principals are supposed to conduct classroom evaluations of teachers every year, and label them either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.”

Newsworks.org reports that in the 2011-12 school year principals labeled  99.5 percent of teachers “satisfactory,” and over the last three years have only moved to fire an average of 20 per year, out of 7,533 tenured teachers in the district.

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“In total, the district has 9,100 teachers and fires an average of 39 teachers per year – marking a .4 percent firing rate,” according to the news site.

Next school year, Pennsylvania law requires that teacher evaluations tie in student performance on the state’s standardized test. The performance data will account for 50 percent of evaluations, and principals’ observations will comprise the other 50 percent, Newsworks.org reports.

In other words, next year administrators will have a better picture of how well individual teachers are helping students learn.

That’s why removing seniority-based decisions is at the center of current union contract negotiations between the PFT and Philly school officials, and PFT President Jerry Jordan has tried to steer the public focus from seniority to money issues.

“The entire issue of layoffs should not be what we’re talking about,” Jordan told Newsworks.org. “We need all of those employees that have been laid off restored.”

Like many parents and education reformers in Philadelphia, we believe the quality of the city’s teachers is more critical than the quantity. While Jordan’s working to increase the number of dues-paying union members, parents want to increase the number of excellent teachers.

Good for the parents.

It’s a matter of priorities, and we hope state and city officials working to help bail out the Philly district from its current budget deficit will require a move away from the seniority system in exchange for their generosity.