Two on Teachers

Denver is moving to end forced assignments of teachers to high-poverty and low-performing schools. Because tenured teachers are guaranteed a job, those who can’t hold or find assignments on their own are assigned to schools where neither they nor the principals in that school necessarily want them to be. Often, these are high-poverty, high-minority schools. Requiring assignment by mutual consent in those schools should help them to attract and retain more effective teachers.

And the Wall Street Journal reports that the economic situation and budget pressures facing schools are provoking growing opposition to purely seniority-based “last in, first out” layoff policies in place in most school districts. UPDATE: And NCTQ has a policy brief on this!

–by Sara Mead