History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Real cost of teacher layoffs is our future
- 11-02-2011
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By Claudia Rowe/New America Media
By now, the pattern is impossible to ignore: More than 30,000 teachers in California received layoff warnings last spring; another 300 prepared for unemployment in Milwaukee; in Chicago, 1,000 more were looking for work, and by the time school started in September some 60,000 teachers across the country had lost their jobs. Certain ramifications are obvious: Fewer teachers equals larger classes and less attention devoted to each student, even as the demand for improved outcomes mounts. “No child left behind?” sighed Anselmo Feliciano, whose class list increased by more than 50 percent this year. “Kids are being literally left behind because there are so many of them. When we walk down the halls the lines are so, so long.” Feliciano teaches at Lafayette Elementary School in Long Beach, Calif., where 100 percent of the students – almost all of them Latino or African-American – are considered “socioeconomically disadvantaged” and, therefore, eligible for free or reduced price lunches. Yet the school lost a third of its teaching staff this year. (more...)
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