MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Alabama lawmakers are considering banning seniority-based school layoffs, and requiring teacher performance to be the primary factor in determining which teachers are retained when times get tough.

“Several systems around the state use nothing but seniority to determine which teachers go and which teachers stay,” state Rep. Ed Henry, sponsor of a no-seniority bill, told the Montgomery Advertiser. “They don’t weigh whether or not that teacher is an effective teacher or how that (layoff) is going to affect the education of those children in that system.”

Henry’s legislation would prohibit schools from using seniority as a major factor in teacher layoffs, and would instead require demonstrated experience, in the form of annual performance evaluations, to rule layoff decisions, the news site reports.

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A teacher’s level of college degree could be a consideration under the bill, but the union seniority system could only be used when teachers facing layoff are otherwise equal. At a state House Education Policy Committee hearing last week, supporters of the bill pointed to 2009-10 Alabama Teacher of the Year Yung Bui-Kincer.

The biology and environmental science teacher at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School nearly lost her job to the seniority system because she only had two years of experience when her district faced budget reductions, former Montgomery Public Schools board member Charlotte Meadows testified at the hearing.

“Everyone hired before her would have had a lawsuit against us (if the teacher had been retained),” Meadows said, according to the Advertiser.

Henry told the news site the majority of Alabama school districts he’s reviewed use some form of seniority to determine layoffs, and many people believe teacher performance assessments should carry more weight. State Superintendent Tommy Bice is working to determine if a new teacher evaluation system will be incorporated into the state’s school grading system that’s currently being developed.

Henry said that regardless of that decision, districts could use the state’s guidelines for teacher assessments, or develop their own to use for employment decisions, the Advertiser reports.

The Alabama Education Association, the statewide teacher’s organization, of course raised numerous objections to Henry’s legislation. The AEA is concerned because the evaluation system isn’t yet developed, some teachers instruct students in subjects not covered in standardized tests, and some teachers are assigned more difficult students than others.

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Those are issues that can be addressed through development of the evaluation system, but the Birmingham American Federation of Teachers highlighted another aspect of the bill that deserves consideration.

Richard Franklin, president of the Birmingham AFT, “said the bill doesn’t address evaluations or reductions-in-force polices for administrators, who should also be held accountable.”

“The bill was kind of shocking when they came up with it,” Franklin told the Advertiser. “The reason we’re against it is Dr. Bice has not even finished the evaluation system. It doesn’t touch administrators. Just teachers.”

Students deserve to have the best teachers available in the classroom every year, and the best way to accomplish that is to make school employment decisions based on teacher performance. But the same thing can certainly be said for school administrators, who perhaps have even more influence over the direction and quality of education in each school.