This was not a compromise. Stand for Children is an educational terrorist group from outside Massachusetts that is bankrolled by venture capitalists like Bain Capitol and multinational corporations like Walmart. Their interest is not in helping children but in paving the way for a less expensive teaching force to staff their for-profit charter schools. Eliminating seniority in MA, the highest performing state in the union, was a major victory for them as they continue to take over our nation's educational system. Senator Jehlen was right about one thing--this was a hostage situation. I think she was wrong about it being the best possible outcome, however. The best possible outcome would have been to preserve our dignity, fight, and beat the ballot question.

Joseph, I'm not arguing that teachers should be able to keep jobs if they are unqualified. And there has never been a policy of promoting teachers based on seniority--in education, promotions almost always occur based on advanced credentials and degrees, along with interviews by higher ups. And contrary to myth, seniority and tenure have never guaranteed anyone a lifetime job in education, either. There are already processes in place to remove ineffective teachers, and this is what should be done by administrators, who are paid to manage the teachers and remove them if need be. If teachers are truly ineffective, why are we going to wait around until layoffs to remove them?

This law is primarily about changing how we lay off teachers. Up to now, layoffs in many, but not all, systems in MA have been done by reverse seniority. The law will change that to making evaluations the most important factor in layoffs. This all sounds logical from the outside but as you probably know from the business world (I assume you are from it yourself), sometimes the higher paid employee is let go in a layoff situation to save the bottom line.

As to blaming private equity, Bain Capital, for instance, has a department and employees devoted to for-profit education. I did not learn about this from Obama--his administration is right on board with all the reform being put into place now. He is no friend of public educators.

Joseph, I want to thank you for your tone. Sometimes people can be very nasty when discussing these issues online.

As to for-profit education, there is a huge ongoing push to open up the K-12 public schools for private profit. This industry is funding groups like Stand for Children to push for changes to state and national policies around teacher evaluations, seniority, etc. Corporations like Pearson Publishing stand to profit from these policy changes by creating teacher evaluation tools as well as national tests on the new Common Core curriculum, which most states have adopted. Because I work in education and not private equity, I don't understand exactly how private equity plays in at every level, but from what I do understand, there are many different ways for corporations to profit from public education, from tax breaks to charter school networks to online schools.

Is making a profit in education necessarily wrong? No, there have always been textbook publishers, professional development programs, etc. But now the entire educational system is being hijacked by people who are not educators and who don't really care about kids at all.

This link has a very good overview of the corporate reform (for-profit) education agenda, much better than I can explain here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-primer-on-corporate-school-reform/2011/10/26/gIQAyWrUKM_blog.html

I ran out of characters in the last post, so I wanted to add here that teachers' unions do protect all members regardless of seniority once they have tenure. They will even help administration to "counsel out" underperforming teachers. This happens quietly.

As to evaluations being used in layoff situations, it does sound logical to do this, but there is a whole new teacher evaluation system now that isn't even in place yet. This evaluation system was pushed by the Obama administration--one of the strings that came with the competitive federal Race to the Top grants. We don't know yet if this evaluation system will be fair. It's not as simple in schools as it might be in a business by looking at sales figures, for instance. Seniority has long been considered the fairest way to lay off teachers. I would have no problem with speeding up the dismissal process for ineffective teachers, but layoffs are not firings. In what other field are we passing special laws about how to lay off employees?

Joseph, in case you are still reading this somewhere, here's a conference all about private equity opportunities in education, including K-12. Quote: "Education is now the second largest market in the U.S., valued at $1.3 trillion. So while an industry of this size will always be scrutinized by regulators, the most onerous recent changes are likely over, and investors should face an easier climate down the road. And while eventual passage is not guaranteed, several pieces of legislation favoring the for-profit industry have been proposed in Congress.

In the K-12 space, the federal “Race To The Top” initiative has enabled a growing level of privatization in the K-12 segment, and rewarding districts for embracing alternative models, technological advances, and locally-based criteria."

http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html