Great video: Student First

There's a great two-minute video that really gets to the heart of how our current hiring/firing policies for teachers disadvantage our students:

The video explains three main issues:

1. How budget cuts means firing more teachers

2. How we fire teachers by an "outdated last in, first out" policy that always fires the newest teachers, no matter how good they are. Through "seniority based layoffs," we fire some of the best teachers, we have to fire more teachers to meet the budget requirements since the newest teachers are paid the least, and low performing schools "get hit the hardest" since they have the highest number of new teachers.

3. Teachers matter. Having a bad teacher for one or two years is enough to put a student at a substantial disadvantage for the rest of his/her education.

The video is short and interesting. I recommend taking the two minutes to really understand the research behind our current policies and their effects on students.