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Teacher Layoffs Caused by Teacher Hiring

Sometimes the junk in my Inbox is enough to make me want to pull what’s left of my hair out. Such was the case with the article I just opened from my online subscription to Education Week. Check this out:

Teacher Layoffs May Be Linked to Hiring Spree
By Stephen Sawchuk

An increase in teacher hiring in recent years is leading some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips that districts are sending across the country.

So let me get this straight: the tens of thousands of teacher layoffs, which could well become hundreds of thousands shortly, are happening because more teachers were hired to improve our schools when the economy was in better shape before the Great Recession.

Teachers must be fired because they were hired. I would say ‘that’s rich’ if it weren’t so freaking stupid. Has the author entered some bizarre contest with the JPMorgan Chase economist whose report we exposed in Blaming Unemployment Insurance for Unemployment?

But back to the Education Week piece and the potential mass wave of teacher layoffs. Nowhere in the article is there even a hint that the gaping budget shortfalls faced by states, municipalities and local school districts are the direct result of the huge decline in revenues caused by the Great Recession.

And who are the “observers” mentioned in the opening sentence who are said to “posit a link” between teacher layoffs and previous hiring? There aren’t any! Or, if there are, the author seems to have forgotten to include them in the article. Several educators and others are quoted, but none “posit” the “link” that the author asserts.

Way down in the article, though, Andy Smarick — a former Bush White House adviser and education official — is quoted attacking the Recovery Act’s support for education and teachers’ jobs:

Some experts contend that the up-to $100 billion in education dollars in the federal economic-stimulus legislation, most of it pushed out through formula to states and districts, has only exacerbated the problem.

Andy Smarick, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied the economic-stimulus bill, contends that it absolved districts from having to make such decisions until now.

“They could have taken the last year to figure out how to resolve these long-term structural issues, to say, ‘Let’s look at all of our contracts, let’s consider online learning,’” Mr. Smarick said. “But instead, what they mostly did was preserve existing jobs and programs.”

So, let’s review:

Preserving teachers’ jobs in our schools is a bad thing.
Teacher layoffs are caused by teachers having been hired.
Teachers wouldn’t be losing their jobs if they didn’t have them in the first place.

And we wouldn’t have to lay teachers off if we didn’t have any schools.

Class dismissed!

Tags: Education