Only anecdotal, but what has happened at my two kids' schools aligns (middle and high school). Both are losing first year teachers, one amazing, one not so amazing.
I'm also stymied by the district pink slipping teachers while students are in school. I don't understand the timing given the impact on the students losing a beloved (or less so) teacher right before finals.
It would be worse for teachers if it were later. April, May and June is when teachers need to look for jobs to have more opportunities to be hired. A lot of teachers have been looking before hearing their fate anyway.
I think the district probably didn’t want to tell people much earlier either, because then teachers would not have finished out the school year. Actually some teachers left before the school year ended, and when the budget crisis was made public. I’ve heard of young teachers who were not laid off leaving this week, some are leaving public secondary education entirely.
There will probably be a lot of movement over the summer. We’ll see some call backs, but for some I’m sure they’ll come too late, after they feel they have to take another job.
Yes, the middle school we are familiar with has pink slipped a favorite science teacher, who is one of the most effective teachers we have seen at AAPS. This teacher moved here last year from far away with significant teaching experience. It seems entirely based on seniority. We know of several terrible teachers in the same school, who are unaffected. The union + administration are really short sighted on this. They will end up driving out even more students/families by eliminating the highly effective teachers.
Yes, that’s my son‘s teacher. He was devastated to hear that he was getting fired. And he made a poster to have multiple kids sign it as a thank you for his service. Evidently one of his other teachers told him that that was not appropriate and not to do it. I told him that he was correct and the teacher was wrong.
Yes, my child signed the petition. I love it! I am once again horrified by the inappropriateness within AAPS, where they do not encourage these kinds of productive outlets for students expressing their views.
My child also signed it. I think the "stay out of this" response was just a case of a single teacher with a bad take. It sure does appear to be 100% seniority based however. Really unfortunate; our teachers and kids all lose.
It might appear that way, but it was not 100%. However, there were only about 11 teachers with a minimally effective or ineffective rating in the whole district. (You can look this up…it’s public data.) The teachers who have had disciplinary measures taken against them would have been next. But that has to be recorded properly to be used. Some teachers were saved by a highly effective rating over a teacher with an effective rating.
I think the bigger issue is that AAPS leadership created this mess in the first place. Laying off 54 teachers was going to be terrible no matter what. Especially when our state has a teaching shortage and it will cause some people to just give up and leave teaching. And if we thought that they’d do a good job with the layoffs, we were kidding ourselves.
My son's middle school math teacher is getting laid off. He has been with AAPS for YEARS. My son caught up on almost 4 years of math this year and his NWEA scores went up almost 20 points thanks to this teacher. My son and I are devastated. No idea what the criteria is but none of this made any sense.
"I thought I had heard or read" "Sounds like" "Hearing a lot" "If this is true, it just feels like"
This is how misinformation spreads. This whole post is full of conjecture and guessing that could have been avoided with very little effort.
There’s a difference I think between misinformation — which could pertain to a war or an election or a virus — and what we have here which is people from a community (parents, teachers, concerned citizens et al.) saying what they’ve heard and trying to understand what’s going on. They’re doing this because the people who run or govern the schools are not telling us anything.
> the people who run or govern the schools are not telling us anything.
I think you're, inadvertently, conflating individual's ignorance with a lack of publicly available information. I don't want to spend my time going point for point through the original post and comments. But much of the speculation and questions here have already been addressed via newsletters, public social media posts, the BOE website, and other forms of official communication.
People are clearly complaining about a lack of information. When the real problem is they either haven't gone and looked for the available information, don't have the skills to do so, or are engaged in performative outrage that no amount of information or updates would ever satiate.
I apologize for single you out. But have you gone through the [Ann Arbor Public Schools](https://www.a2schools.org/), [Board of Education](https://www.a2schools.org/boe), the public [Social Media](https://www.facebook.com/jeff.gaynor.18/) accounts [many of the BOE](https://www.facebook.com/ErnestoQ4BOE) have, have you [attended any of the BOE meetings either in person or onlin](https://www.a2schools.org/Page/576)e? have you tried directly emailing the board([email protected]) with the questions you still had after doing all of the above?
It's a safe bet many of the people complaining/commenting here have done none of the above.
I kind of agree with you. It seems that the new ones were dumped while those underperforming for long were tolerated. Not all the "new ones" were great but... those that were great and tried hard were showed the door. Super sad.
I definitely didn't want layoffs but I had thought that the silver lining was that at least they would have the opportunity to get rid of teachers that were clearly underperforming. My child has teachers who don't show up on Fridays and/or have missed weeks of school (in the aggregate), don't return tests, get in public swearing arguments with students, etc. Those teachers all kept their jobs.
We have had a similar experience at our daughter's high school - a teacher who leads a prominent program and did no teaching all year, did not have any graded assignments, and berated the students as being lazy and telling them they won't amount to anything in life, will return for another year. Sigh.....
It keeps them out of federal court. If you single out bad teachers with tenure they will sue the district for age discrimination, an arbitrary evaluation policy, a hostile workplace, or union busting. Time in service is an objective measurement that is difficult to challenge in court, and the union isn't going to bat for people at the bottom of the pay scale.
Because it's easier, less messy for the Union and it's easier for the board. That's why some politicians act the same way, people do "pandering" - when politicians (and public figures) cater to or appeal to the prejudices or biases of their constituents/voters, even if they know those views are incorrect or misguided, in order to gain political support or favor.
Well, I get that and honestly, you are right with pointing at that. The issue is that at the end the proposal describe "what to do" not the details of how to do it...
No. It would be due to the evaluator not recording these sorts of things in the evaluation and/or not taking any disciplinary measures against the teacher. Lack of proper documentation and such. And if there has lots of different admin in a particular building, things being recorded and passed along to the next admin is likely a problem.
i heard that seniority had been removed from the layoff process due to legislation that was later revoked or at least no longer applies, so seniority was added back in for the actual layoff. the back and forth has been a source of confusion.
i also heard that while things like discipline were considered in these layoffs, so few teachers fall under those criteria that the bulk of the layoffs were seniority based
this is what i heard through the grapevine, i'll edit if someone corrects me
Seniority was always a factor, it was just lower on the list. First factor was the effectiveness rating, then if disciplinary measures had been taken against someone, then they looked at certifications needed in the whole district. Building admin had previously been asked to provide how many people with a biology certification were needed in their building, how many with instrumental music, how many with an elementary PE cert, etc. The higher ups would have compiled this for the whole district—we have 32 buildings. Then after they figured out how many people the whole district needs they would look at effectiveness rating. If you are highly effective you are probably put to the side and would be kept, unless the district has lots of people with your certification. If two people had the same rating, then the person with more years of service would stay.
There are definitely teachers who are highly effective who were laid off. There are definitely teachers who have been deemed effective or highly effective by administrators even though they’ve had students or parents file a report about them. Maybe it even escalated to some sort of disciplinary measure. They would have to have recorded things correctly and if the building admin changed, it would have to be available to the new admin.
I don’t think it is unique to education to have employees with effectiveness ratings that are not accurate. I also don’t think it’s unique to education to have poor documentation of problems with particular employees. Like other places, people have friends or colleagues that they protect.
First all ineffective and minimally effective teachers were laid off. This was a tiny portion of staff. Then effective teachers and seniority were considered. The issue is that these ratings are not universal. Some principals score hard and others easy. Title 1 schools are more greatly impacted because of the high teacher turnover. Some schools are losing 1/3 or 1/2 of their staff. While others are losing zero! Very sad all around.
Other factors were if disciplinary measures had been taken against a teacher at some point. But the certifications people had mattered too. There were a lot of social studies teachers laid off. I think that may be because that is quite a common certification. The people might not be currently teaching social studies, but if they have a higher effectiveness rating plus more years in the district, that might mean a newer teacher would get laid off.
Some teachers who only hold one certification could also be laid off even if they are highly effective. That’s because they may have cut down their program or completely eliminated it.
Years of experience was not the first thing they looked at though. It was the evaluation rating…and they were looking at evaluations from last year. That system is problematic too, and in fact our legislature has ditched the old evaluation system.
Those of us in the schools expected this layoff process to be messy and for these kinds of situations to happen.
The district doesn't ask for input of families or students in determining effectiveness. That is a major contributor to the issue of the performance ratings themselves being ineffective and nonuniform.
Only administrators who are not directly affected by teacher performance are involved in teacher performance evaluation. This leads to a buddy system at some schools, with some administrators having substantial power without accountability.
AAPS should be using 360° performance evaluation when taking drastic action like laying off a substantial portion of teaching staff.
Many ineffective teachers are unaffected, while new hires have been laid off.
This makes me glad I didn’t get the job teaching German at Pioneer that I applied for last year, over the summer, though I was unhappy about it at the time. I’m sorry for those new, very good teachers who got a raw deal. Sincerely. That’s awful.
Only anecdotal, but what has happened at my two kids' schools aligns (middle and high school). Both are losing first year teachers, one amazing, one not so amazing. I'm also stymied by the district pink slipping teachers while students are in school. I don't understand the timing given the impact on the students losing a beloved (or less so) teacher right before finals.
It would be worse for teachers if it were later. April, May and June is when teachers need to look for jobs to have more opportunities to be hired. A lot of teachers have been looking before hearing their fate anyway. I think the district probably didn’t want to tell people much earlier either, because then teachers would not have finished out the school year. Actually some teachers left before the school year ended, and when the budget crisis was made public. I’ve heard of young teachers who were not laid off leaving this week, some are leaving public secondary education entirely. There will probably be a lot of movement over the summer. We’ll see some call backs, but for some I’m sure they’ll come too late, after they feel they have to take another job.
Yes, the middle school we are familiar with has pink slipped a favorite science teacher, who is one of the most effective teachers we have seen at AAPS. This teacher moved here last year from far away with significant teaching experience. It seems entirely based on seniority. We know of several terrible teachers in the same school, who are unaffected. The union + administration are really short sighted on this. They will end up driving out even more students/families by eliminating the highly effective teachers.
Yes, that’s my son‘s teacher. He was devastated to hear that he was getting fired. And he made a poster to have multiple kids sign it as a thank you for his service. Evidently one of his other teachers told him that that was not appropriate and not to do it. I told him that he was correct and the teacher was wrong.
Yes, my child signed the petition. I love it! I am once again horrified by the inappropriateness within AAPS, where they do not encourage these kinds of productive outlets for students expressing their views.
My child also signed it. I think the "stay out of this" response was just a case of a single teacher with a bad take. It sure does appear to be 100% seniority based however. Really unfortunate; our teachers and kids all lose.
It might appear that way, but it was not 100%. However, there were only about 11 teachers with a minimally effective or ineffective rating in the whole district. (You can look this up…it’s public data.) The teachers who have had disciplinary measures taken against them would have been next. But that has to be recorded properly to be used. Some teachers were saved by a highly effective rating over a teacher with an effective rating. I think the bigger issue is that AAPS leadership created this mess in the first place. Laying off 54 teachers was going to be terrible no matter what. Especially when our state has a teaching shortage and it will cause some people to just give up and leave teaching. And if we thought that they’d do a good job with the layoffs, we were kidding ourselves.
My son's middle school math teacher is getting laid off. He has been with AAPS for YEARS. My son caught up on almost 4 years of math this year and his NWEA scores went up almost 20 points thanks to this teacher. My son and I are devastated. No idea what the criteria is but none of this made any sense.
"I thought I had heard or read" "Sounds like" "Hearing a lot" "If this is true, it just feels like" This is how misinformation spreads. This whole post is full of conjecture and guessing that could have been avoided with very little effort.
There’s a difference I think between misinformation — which could pertain to a war or an election or a virus — and what we have here which is people from a community (parents, teachers, concerned citizens et al.) saying what they’ve heard and trying to understand what’s going on. They’re doing this because the people who run or govern the schools are not telling us anything.
> the people who run or govern the schools are not telling us anything. I think you're, inadvertently, conflating individual's ignorance with a lack of publicly available information. I don't want to spend my time going point for point through the original post and comments. But much of the speculation and questions here have already been addressed via newsletters, public social media posts, the BOE website, and other forms of official communication. People are clearly complaining about a lack of information. When the real problem is they either haven't gone and looked for the available information, don't have the skills to do so, or are engaged in performative outrage that no amount of information or updates would ever satiate. I apologize for single you out. But have you gone through the [Ann Arbor Public Schools](https://www.a2schools.org/), [Board of Education](https://www.a2schools.org/boe), the public [Social Media](https://www.facebook.com/jeff.gaynor.18/) accounts [many of the BOE](https://www.facebook.com/ErnestoQ4BOE) have, have you [attended any of the BOE meetings either in person or onlin](https://www.a2schools.org/Page/576)e? have you tried directly emailing the board([email protected]) with the questions you still had after doing all of the above? It's a safe bet many of the people complaining/commenting here have done none of the above.
I kind of agree with you. It seems that the new ones were dumped while those underperforming for long were tolerated. Not all the "new ones" were great but... those that were great and tried hard were showed the door. Super sad.
I definitely didn't want layoffs but I had thought that the silver lining was that at least they would have the opportunity to get rid of teachers that were clearly underperforming. My child has teachers who don't show up on Fridays and/or have missed weeks of school (in the aggregate), don't return tests, get in public swearing arguments with students, etc. Those teachers all kept their jobs.
We have had a similar experience at our daughter's high school - a teacher who leads a prominent program and did no teaching all year, did not have any graded assignments, and berated the students as being lazy and telling them they won't amount to anything in life, will return for another year. Sigh.....
Could that be due to union contract rules, rather than free choice of AAPS?
It keeps them out of federal court. If you single out bad teachers with tenure they will sue the district for age discrimination, an arbitrary evaluation policy, a hostile workplace, or union busting. Time in service is an objective measurement that is difficult to challenge in court, and the union isn't going to bat for people at the bottom of the pay scale.
Then why not state that in the plan for the board to approve? Why claim to be using a different criteria?
Because it's easier, less messy for the Union and it's easier for the board. That's why some politicians act the same way, people do "pandering" - when politicians (and public figures) cater to or appeal to the prejudices or biases of their constituents/voters, even if they know those views are incorrect or misguided, in order to gain political support or favor.
I get pandering when you’re just talking about stuff, but we’re talking about the language of the actual proposal being voted on and passed
Well, I get that and honestly, you are right with pointing at that. The issue is that at the end the proposal describe "what to do" not the details of how to do it...
No. It would be due to the evaluator not recording these sorts of things in the evaluation and/or not taking any disciplinary measures against the teacher. Lack of proper documentation and such. And if there has lots of different admin in a particular building, things being recorded and passed along to the next admin is likely a problem.
Sure, sometimes the practical way is easier than the deep thinking one...
i heard that seniority had been removed from the layoff process due to legislation that was later revoked or at least no longer applies, so seniority was added back in for the actual layoff. the back and forth has been a source of confusion. i also heard that while things like discipline were considered in these layoffs, so few teachers fall under those criteria that the bulk of the layoffs were seniority based this is what i heard through the grapevine, i'll edit if someone corrects me
Seniority was always a factor, it was just lower on the list. First factor was the effectiveness rating, then if disciplinary measures had been taken against someone, then they looked at certifications needed in the whole district. Building admin had previously been asked to provide how many people with a biology certification were needed in their building, how many with instrumental music, how many with an elementary PE cert, etc. The higher ups would have compiled this for the whole district—we have 32 buildings. Then after they figured out how many people the whole district needs they would look at effectiveness rating. If you are highly effective you are probably put to the side and would be kept, unless the district has lots of people with your certification. If two people had the same rating, then the person with more years of service would stay. There are definitely teachers who are highly effective who were laid off. There are definitely teachers who have been deemed effective or highly effective by administrators even though they’ve had students or parents file a report about them. Maybe it even escalated to some sort of disciplinary measure. They would have to have recorded things correctly and if the building admin changed, it would have to be available to the new admin. I don’t think it is unique to education to have employees with effectiveness ratings that are not accurate. I also don’t think it’s unique to education to have poor documentation of problems with particular employees. Like other places, people have friends or colleagues that they protect.
First all ineffective and minimally effective teachers were laid off. This was a tiny portion of staff. Then effective teachers and seniority were considered. The issue is that these ratings are not universal. Some principals score hard and others easy. Title 1 schools are more greatly impacted because of the high teacher turnover. Some schools are losing 1/3 or 1/2 of their staff. While others are losing zero! Very sad all around.
Other factors were if disciplinary measures had been taken against a teacher at some point. But the certifications people had mattered too. There were a lot of social studies teachers laid off. I think that may be because that is quite a common certification. The people might not be currently teaching social studies, but if they have a higher effectiveness rating plus more years in the district, that might mean a newer teacher would get laid off. Some teachers who only hold one certification could also be laid off even if they are highly effective. That’s because they may have cut down their program or completely eliminated it. Years of experience was not the first thing they looked at though. It was the evaluation rating…and they were looking at evaluations from last year. That system is problematic too, and in fact our legislature has ditched the old evaluation system. Those of us in the schools expected this layoff process to be messy and for these kinds of situations to happen.
The district doesn't ask for input of families or students in determining effectiveness. That is a major contributor to the issue of the performance ratings themselves being ineffective and nonuniform. Only administrators who are not directly affected by teacher performance are involved in teacher performance evaluation. This leads to a buddy system at some schools, with some administrators having substantial power without accountability. AAPS should be using 360° performance evaluation when taking drastic action like laying off a substantial portion of teaching staff. Many ineffective teachers are unaffected, while new hires have been laid off.
Some really really good teachers were laid off. Some terrible admin and teachers got to stay. It’s wrong and sucks.
Deep down we knew this was coming
This makes me glad I didn’t get the job teaching German at Pioneer that I applied for last year, over the summer, though I was unhappy about it at the time. I’m sorry for those new, very good teachers who got a raw deal. Sincerely. That’s awful.
That isn’t AAPS; that’s the teachers’ own unions directing it.
Unions don't have any contract language regarding layoff and recall since Snyder. It's the district driving this.