The 50-State Comparison on teacher employment contract policies provides a national comparison of teacher employment contract policies in all states. All of the information was gathered from and focused on state statutes and regulations. State case law was also utilized for metrics related to collective bargaining. Data collection focused…

The 50-State Comparison on teacher employment contract policies provides a national comparison of teacher employment contract policies in all states. All of the information was gathered from and focused on state statutes and regulations. State case law was also utilized for metrics related to collective bargaining. Data collection focused…

As part of the promotion and tenure process, colleges and universities have primarily evaluated faculty members on three key functional areas: research, teaching, and service. In this article, we examine how the use of collegiality as a possible fourth criterion for faculty evaluation affects faculty power dynamics, how U.S. courts have addressed…

Research has shown that "last hired, first fired" policies maximize the number of teachers subject to reductions in force by eliminating those teachers that are lowest on the pay scale first. Until now, advocates of effectiveness-based reduction-in-force (RIF) policies could only point to simulated policy exercises as evidence of the…

Using a reduced form version of a theoretical expansion of Hoxby's (1996) education production model, we investigate whether bargaining teachers unions are a boon or a bust to the economy of the state. We anticipate teachers, being in the public sector veiled from competition, are less likely to be efficient. Yet, their product, education,…

This policy brief, a quick look at some aspects of the debate, illustrates the differences in New York City public schools that would result when layoffs are determined by seniority in comparison to a measure of teacher effectiveness. Due to data limitations and an interest in simplicity, this analysis employs the value added of teachers using the…

Education reformers routinely call on school districts to stop hiring teachers based on seniority, which they argue interferes with effective staffing, especially in disadvantaged schools. The few researchers who have empirically studied the issue, however, disagree about whether seniority-based hiring is systematically associated with staffing…

In April 2009, a high school principal in a large Arizona school district met individually with 18 of his most senior teachers to inform them that they would not have a job the following year. Why didn't tenure protect them from wholesale dismissal? The answer is they all had one thing in common: they were retirees who had been leased or hired…

This article outlines some actions available to education associations concerning staff layoff and specific attempts which have been made to minimize the impact of reductions in force. (RC)

Boston University (Massachusetts) has devised an alternative form of faculty-tenure appointment offering a six-year probationary period, traditional performance and peer-review standards, salary premium from the first day of employment, ten-year renewable contract with one-year notice, same privileges and voting status as traditionally tenured…

Professors and the Florida State Board of Regents have agreed to experiment with an alternative to tenure at Florida Gulf Coast University, scheduled to open in 1997. Administrators will have the option of whether to offer new professors tenure or multi-year contracts. The arrangement is a compromise between elimination of tenure and the contract…

The 1978 Amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act establishes the mandatory retirement age at 70. The implications for higher education are discussed, a steady-state model is examined, and an alternative is offered. (Author/MLW)

The most common grounds for dismissing tenured faculty have been incompetence, immorality, neglect of duty, and insubordination. Judicial evaluations of substantive grounds for dismissing tenured postsecondary faculty for cause are discussed. (MLW)

Harvard University (Massachusetts) scholar Richard P. Chait has become a leading and controversial voice on tenure reform. Chait claims he is not opposed to faculty tenure, but challenges deeply-rooted beliefs when he suggests tenure is not the only way to protect academic freedom and may not be essential in any circumstances. (MSE)

The Committee on Retirement of the American Association of University Professors initiated its first retirement policies survey in 2000 to address a lack of reliable and systematically collected information on retirement policies and practices across U.S. institutions of higher education. At the end of the 1990s, there was a sense that…