Policy Brief - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

Policy Brief

Matthew A. Kraft

(corresponding author)

Department of Education

Brown University

Providence, RI 02906

mkraft@brown.edu

Joshua F. Bleiberg

Annenberg Institute

Brown University

Providence, RI 02906

joshua_bleiberg@brown.edu

THE INEQUITABLE EFFECTS OF TEACHER

LAYOFFS: WHAT WE KNOW AND CAN DO

Astratto
Economic downturns can cause major funding shortfalls for U.S.
public schools, often forcing districts to make diﬃcult budget
cuts, including teacher layoﬀs. In this brief, we synthesize the
empirical literature on the widespread teacher layoﬀs caused by
the Great Recession. Studies ﬁnd that teacher layoﬀs harmed
student achievement and were inequitably distributed across
schools, teachers, and students. Research suggests that speciﬁc
elements of the layoﬀ process can exacerbate these negative ef-
fects. Seniority-based policies disproportionately concentrate lay-
oﬀs among teachers of color, who are more likely to be early career
teachers. These “last-in ﬁrst-out” policies also disproportionately
aﬀect disadvantaged students because these students are more
likely to be taught by early career teachers. The common prac-
tice of widely distributing pink slips warning about a potential
job loss also appears to increase teacher churn and negatively im-
pact teacher performance. Drawing on this evidence, we outline a
set of policy recommendations to minimize the need for teacher
layoﬀs during economic downturns and ensure that the burden
of any unavoidable job cuts does not continue to be borne by stu-
dents of color and students from low-income backgrounds.

https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00369

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367

Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs

I N T RO D U C T I O N
Economic booms and busts are an unavoidable feature of the U.S. economy. When re-
cessions occur, the consequences for public school funding can be devastating. Spend-
ing on K–12 education makes up approximately one fourth of states’ total budgets,
with states providing, on average, 47 cents per dollar of total K–12 funding (Urban
Instiute 2021). Budget shortfalls invariably force districts to make diﬃcult decisions
about the necessity of teacher layoﬀs, given that instructional salaries and beneﬁts con-
stitute over 60 percent of total operational expenditures (Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong
2021).

Most recently, the immediate economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic led
school districts to lay oﬀ over 445,000 employees in a single month, with early job
losses largely concentrated among specialized instructional support personnel and ser-
vice workers (Gould 2020). Most districts were able to avoid what analysts projected to
be large-scale teacher layoﬀs (McNichol and Leachman 2020) thanks to unexpectedly
strong state tax receipts and the inﬂux of unprecedented federal aid from the Coron-
avirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan
(ARP) Act. Tuttavia, teacher layoﬀ policy remains as salient as ever given the budget
shortfalls that some districts still face today due to declining enrollment (Anderson
2021), the coming funding cliﬀ when federal aid is exhausted, and the ever-present
prospect of future economic downturns.

In this brief, we synthesize the empirical literature on teacher layoﬀs, with particular
attention to the consequences of layoﬀs for educational equity. We then outline policy
recommendations for minimizing layoﬀs and ensuring the burden of any unavoidable
job cuts is not born disproportionately by students of color and students from low-
income backgrounds.

L E S S O N S F RO M T H E G R E AT R E C E S S I O N
The Great Recession and its consequences for K–12 education provide a sobering case
study about the repercussions of teacher layoﬀs. The K–12 public education system lost
nearly 350,000 jobs between 2008 E 2012, including over 120,000 elementary and
secondary teachers (Evans, Schwab, and Wagner 2019; Griﬃth 2020). Several studies
now show that the education funding cuts caused by the Great Recession harmed stu-
dent achievement and increased educational inequality. Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong
(2021) leverage diﬀerences in states’ historical reliance on state-level funding to esti-
mate the causal eﬀect of recessionary funding cuts. They ﬁnd that for every $1,000 decrease in per-pupil spending induced by the Great Recession, student achievement declined by 0.04 standard deviation (SD) and college-going rates fell by 1.2 percentage points. These negative eﬀects were larger for black students, increasing the black–white test score gap by 0.06 SD per every $1,000 decrease. Shores and Steinberg (2019) ex-
ploit diﬀerences in the exposure and intensity of recessionary cuts and also ﬁnd a clear
relationship between larger cuts and decreased achievement. Their analyses illustrate
that more severe spending cuts caused by the Great Recession decreased math scores
0.06 SD more among districts with high concentrations of black students and 0.08 SD
more among high-poverty districts compared with districts that served more white and
aﬄuent student populations (4th versus 1st quartiles).

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Matthew A. Kraft and Joshua F. Bleiberg

Although it is diﬃcult to isolate the degree to which layoﬀs directly contributed to
recession-induced declines in achievement, there are strong reasons to suspect that
they played at least some role. Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong (2021) ﬁnd that for ev-
ery dollar in spending cuts during the Great Recession, districts reduced instructional
spending (cioè., teacher salaries and beneﬁts) by $0.45, on average. Substantial declines
in instructional expenditures are nearly impossible without reductions-in-force (RIFs).
Prior studies have also shown how teacher turnover across schools and churn within
schools, both consequences of layoﬀs, negatively aﬀect student achievement (Ronfeldt,
Loeb, and Wyckoﬀ 2013; Atteberry, Loeb, and Wyckoﬀ 2017). Layoﬀs can also result
in class size increases, which have negative consequences for student achievement
(Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005; Cho, Glewwe, and Whitler 2012). Districts often
concentrate teacher layoﬀs among specialists such as those that teach the arts. Several
randomized controlled trials suggest that cuts to arts education would erode the im-
portant role the arts play in promoting students’ social-emotional and critical thinking
skills (Bowen, Greene, and Kisida 2014; Kisida, Bowen, and Greene 2016; Greene et al.
2018; Bowen and Kisida 2019).

Research has further demonstrated how the layoﬀ process itself has detrimental ef-
fects on teachers and students. State statutes and local collective bargaining agreements
often require districts to notify in early spring any teacher who may be laid oﬀ. The un-
certainty of the budgeting process leads districts to send three to six times as many
teachers a “pink slip” (notice of potential dismissal) than is typically necessary. Gold-
haber, Strunk, and their colleagues draw on data from the Los Angeles Uniﬁed School
District and Washington state to show that RIF notices, most of which do not result in
an actual layoﬀ, can increase teacher mobility across schools and lower teacher perfor-
mance (Goldhaber et al. 2016; Strunk et al. 2018). The authors argue that the threat of
job loss induced substantial workplace stress, decreasing job commitment and shifting
teachers’ time toward alternative job searches.

S E N I O R I T Y – B A S E D L AYO F F S
At the time of the Great Recession, the vast majority of districts used seniority as
the sole determinant of teacher layoﬀs, often within certiﬁcation area (Cohen 2010).
District-wide “last-in ﬁrst-out” (LIFO) policies provide a simple, objective, and trans-
parent approach for conducting layoﬀs. Allo stesso tempo, seniority-based layoﬀs
exacerbate the negative consequences of the layoﬀ process through multiple chan-
nels. Primo, LIFO layoﬀs during the Great Recession resulted in substantial teacher
churn as early career teachers were laid oﬀ, even if their positions were not elimi-
nated, causing the district to reshuﬄe teachers across schools (Goldhaber et al. 2016).
Secondo, seniority-based layoﬀs increase the total number of layoﬀs (Roza 2009).
Kraft’s (2015) analyses of discretionary layoﬀs in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS)
show how the more holistic layoﬀ process used by CMS, which considered multiple
criteria (such as performance evaluations, license status, and experience), resulted in
fewer total teacher layoﬀs because it removed some more experienced, higher-paid
teachers.

A third negative consequence of the LIFO layoﬀ process is that it can result in the
removal of some high-performing early career teachers. Although teachers improve

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369

Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs

Tavolo 1. Racial Composition of U.S. K—12 Public School Teachers by Career Status

Teacher Race/Ethnicity

All Teachers

Experienced Teachers

Early Career Teachers

White

Black

Hispanic

Asian

Hawaiian/Pacific Islander

Native American/Alaskan

Multiple race/ethnicities

80.1%

80.8%

6.7%

8.5%

2.3%

0.2%

0.4%

1.8%

6.5%

8.2%

2.2%

0.2%

0.4%

1.6%

74.3%

8.3%

11.1%

2.3%

0.3%

0.6%

3.1%

Note: Early career teachers have three or fewer years of experience and experienced teachers
have four or more years of experience.
Fonte: National Teacher and Principal Survey 2015—16 (https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/
pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017156).

with experience, on average (Papay and Kraft 2015), there still exists considerable vari-
ation in performance among teachers with the same level of seniority (Gordon, Kane,
and Staiger 2006). Not surprisingly, several simulations document that fewer than
one in ﬁve teachers targeted for layoﬀs under district-wide inverse-seniority policies
would also be laid oﬀ under a performance-based policy (Boyd et al. 2011; Goldhaber
and Theobald 2013). Analyzing actual teacher layoﬀs in CMS, Kraft (2015) shows that
laying oﬀ an eﬀective teacher lowered student achievement by 0.05 A 0.11 SD more than
laying oﬀ an ineﬀective teacher. Further evidence from Washington, DC, public schools
ﬁnds large gains in achievement (0.14 A 0.21 SD) due to turnover by low-performing
teachers, coupled with negative eﬀects of turnover among high-performing teachers.
Together, these studies point to the importance of considering teacher eﬀectiveness in
layoﬀ decisions (Adnot et al. 2017).

Finalmente, LIFO policies can undercut eﬀorts by districts to improve teacher recruit-
ment and selection and to diversify the teacher workforce. Seniority-based layoﬀs result
in proportionally larger concentrations of layoﬀs among teachers of color because they
are more likely to be early career teachers relative to white teachers. We illustrate this
point using nationally representative data on the U.S. K–12 public teacher workforce
from the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey. As shown in table 1, black
teachers constitute 6.5 percent of the experienced teacher workforce (4 years or more)
Ma 8.3 percent of early career teachers (3 years or less). Allo stesso modo, Hispanic teachers
constitute 8.2 percent of the experienced teacher workforce, Ma 11.1 percent of early ca-
reer teachers. In contrasto, white teachers make up a larger share of experienced teachers
compared with early career teachers (80.8 percent versus 74.3 per cento). Comparing the
proportion of teachers of a given race who are early-career teachers also illustrates that
teachers of color are more likely to be in the early phase of their career. Using the same
dati, we ﬁnd that 7.2 percent of all Hispanic teachers and 7.0 percent of black teachers
are early career, while only 4.9 percent of white teachers are early career. The dispro-
portionate concentration of layoﬀs among teachers of color under LIFO is particularly
concerning given mounting evidence of the large and lasting beneﬁts students of color
experience as a result of being taught by a teacher with a common racial background
(Gershenson, Hansen, and Lindsay 2021).

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Matthew A. Kraft and Joshua F. Bleiberg

Tavolo 2. Percent of U.S. Eighth-Grade Students Taught by
Early Career Teachers in English Language Arts

Student Race/Ethnicity

Early Career Teachers

Overall

White

Black

Hispanic

FRPL eligible

FRPL ineligible

13.0%

12.1%

16.4%

18.0%

14.9%

11.4%

Note: Early career teachers have two or fewer years of expe-
rience. FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch. Students attend
traditional and charter public schools.

Fonte: 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress
restricted-use files for eighth-grade reading.

D I S P RO P O R T I O N AT E E X P O S U R E TO T E AC H E R L AYO F F S
Research shows that students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are
more likely than their white and more aﬄuent peers to lose teachers due to layoﬀs.
This pattern holds true across districts because: (1) districts that disproportionately serve
vulnerable students rely most on state aid, E (2) state revenues from sales and income
taxes are more sensitive to economic downturns than local revenues from property
taxes (Baker, Sciarra, and Farrie 2014; Evans, Schwab, and Wagner 2019). The result
is that districts in less aﬄuent communities must contend with comparatively larger
budget cuts and resulting layoﬀs (Knight 2017).

This diﬀerential exposure to layoﬀs is also a pattern that holds within districts,
particularly those that implement district-wide, seniority-based layoﬀs (Goldhaber and
Theobald 2013). Per esempio, in the ﬁrst two years of the Great Recession, black and
Hispanic elementary students in Los Angeles Uniﬁed School District had 72 per cento
E 25 percent greater odds, rispettivamente, of having their teacher laid oﬀ compared with
their white peers (Knight and Strunk 2016). The intuition for this is straightforward.
Schools that serve students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are, SU
average, staﬀed by less-experienced teachers (Clotfelter et al. 2006; Peske and Haycock
2006; Goldhaber, Quince, and Theobald 2018). This pattern of diﬀerential exposure
to early career teachers is clearly evident in table 2. Among a nationally representative
sample of eighth-grade students who took the 2017 National Assessment of Educational
Progress, 16.4 percent of black students and 18.0 percent of Hispanic students were
taught English language arts by early career teachers (two years or less) compared with
only 12.1 percent of white students. Allo stesso modo, 14.9 percent of students from low-income
backgrounds had early career English language arts teachers compared with 11.4 per-
cent of their more aﬄuent peers.

The unequal distribution of experienced teachers across schools is due to higher
rates of turnover in high-poverty schools serving students of color (Simon and Johnson
2015) as well as within-district transfer policies and patterns. Many collective bargaining
agreements provide tenured teachers rights or advantages during the internal transfer
process for securing open positions at other schools (Levin, Mulhern, and Schunck
2005). This further enables a pattern where experienced teachers systematically

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371

Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs

transfer away from schools with unsupportive working conditions, which also tend to
serve low-income students and students of color, to supportive schools often serving
more aﬄuent, white students (Boyd et al. 2011; Johnson, Kraft, and Papay 2012; Anzia
and Moe 2014). One consequence of these sorting patterns is that LIFO layoﬀ policies
end up removing less-experienced teachers, sometimes en masse, from a small hand-
ful of schools. Further compounding these inequities, high-poverty districts that serve
more students of color are more likely to have seniority-based layoﬀ policies (Ingle,
Willis, and Herd 2017).

T H E PAT H F O RW A R D
The Great Recession had profound and lasting negative consequences for K–12 pub-
lic education borne most by students of color and low-income students. K–12 employ-
ment was only just approaching pre-recession levels after ten years of economic growth.
The Great Recession caused the largest labor force decline in the history of U.S. public
schools until the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the immediate future looks brighter
than many analysts predicted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term
prospects of potential teacher layoﬀs remain. Below, we present a set of policy recom-
mendations to minimize the need for layoﬀs and their disproportional impact on vul-
nerable students.

Federal Level
Create a Federal Stabilization Fund for Districts
Given the negative consequences of teacher layoﬀs for both student achievement and
the economy as a whole, the federal government should create an education stabiliza-
tion fund to help states and districts minimize cuts during economic downturns (Coun-
cil of the Great City Schools 2020; Baker and Di Carlo 2020; Gordon and Reber 2020).
These stabilization funds should be allocated with appropriate local discretion over how
best to target funds toward core personnel and operating expenses rather than overly
speciﬁc prescriptions.

Require States to Collect Data on Teacher Layoffs
Policy makers lack detailed information about the scale and distribution of teacher lay-
oﬀs. The federal government should require states to collect and provide detailed data
on the gender, race/ethnicity, grade-level, subject, and school characteristics of teachers
who receive pink slips and are ultimately laid oﬀ. Such data are critical for understand-
ing whether groups of schools, teachers, or students are disproportionately aﬀected in
the layoﬀ process either because of LIFO policies or potential discriminatory practices
under a more ﬂexible approach.

State Level
Adopt a Maintenance-of-Equity Approach for Budget Cuts
Given the larger reliance on state funding among high-poverty districts, across-the-
board cuts to state education funding can further exacerbate existing funding gaps
(Corcoran and Evans 2012; de Brey et al. 2019). Any unavoidable reductions in state

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Matthew A. Kraft and Joshua F. Bleiberg

aid should be targeted toward more regressive state funding programs and distributed
in a way to maintain more equitable total funding levels across districts.

Move Away from Seniority-Based Layoff Policies
LIFO layoﬀ policies are inequitable, lead to more total job losses, and undercut eﬀorts
to recruit talented and diverse teachers. Since the Great Recession, twenty states have
enacted legislation that signiﬁcantly restricts the use of seniority as the primary factor in
determining teacher layoﬀs (Dabbs 2020). All states should pass laws barring districts
from using seniority as the sole criteria for layoﬀs, while also ensuring protections for
teachers from discriminatory employment practices that often disproportionately aﬀect
female teachers (Biasi and Sarsons 2020) and teachers of color (D’amico et al. 2017;
Drake, Auletto, and Cowen 2019).

District Level
Explore Alternative Ways to Reduce Personnel Expenditures
Districts can reduce the need for layoﬀs through early retirement incentives and col-
lective action, such as wage freezes, temporary wage reductions, and furloughs (dur-
ing noninstructional days) for all employees, including district leadership. These ap-
proaches are not without their own negative consequences but should be on the table
if core classroom teaching positions are at risk.

Communicate Early and Avoid Unnecessary Pink Slips
Districts should work to reduce uncertainty about the threat of layoﬀs by engaging in
early and transparent communication about the scope and process of potential layoﬀs.
Every eﬀort should be taken to accelerate the budgeting process to avoid distributing
more pink slips than is absolutely necessary.

Use Existing Flexibilities to Conduct Holistic Layoffs
Districts have more ﬂexibility now than ever to avoid concentrating layoﬀs in schools
that predominantly serve students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.
Only 30 percent of the largest districts in the country continue to use seniority as the
primary criterion to inform the layoﬀ process (Saenz-Armstrong 2020). These districts
should continue to work with teacher unions to develop more holistic layoﬀ procedures
that both protect teachers’ rights from unfair labor practices and provide ﬂexibility to
consider multiple criteria and school needs (Goldhaber and Theobald 2020).

Implement School-Based Rather than Districtwide Layoffs
Districts should explore and adopt layoﬀ processes that distribute RIFs more equitably
across schools, minimizing teacher churn. One such example is the school-based pro-
cess used by CMS during the Great Recession. CMS allocated layoﬀs across schools
based on enrollment projections, principals then identiﬁed position categories to be
reduced and, ﬁnally, district oﬃcials selected which teacher(S) within these categories
would be RIFed at a school based on multiple criteria (Kraft 2015).

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Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs

C O N C L U S I O N
The burden of budget cuts and teacher layoﬀs need not fall disproportionately on stu-
dents of color and students from low-income backgrounds. There is ample room for
districts to move toward more equitable layoﬀ practices when layoﬀs are unavoidable.
Let’s learn from the past so we do not repeat it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was generously funded by William T. Grant Foundation award #G1098. We are
grateful for the research support provided by Samuel Lynch and Anna Bogdanok, and feedback
from Bruce Baker, Nora Gordon, Constance Lindsay, and Allison Socol and her colleagues at The
Education Trust.

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