lifo

In 2013 PennCAN will headline a campaign in Pennsylvania to end LIFO, or “last in, first out, ” which bases teacher layoffs solely on who’s been in the classroom the longest, not who’s made the most difference. 

Despite the shocking number of teachers across Pennsylvania who have recently lost their jobs—more than 1,000 in Philadelphia in 2010, more than 200 in Pittsburgh and 100 in York in 2011—LIFO has not yet become a “mainstream” topic. So PennCAN is working to raise awareness about LIFO and its consequences not only on our teachers, but also on their students.

In hockey, players look to their coach to call the plays that position the team to win. In Minnesota, parents and students looked to Gov. Dayton to run a winning play to retain the state’s greatest teachers. But he let them down: last night Gov. Dayton vetoed H.F. 1870, a bill that would have used Minnesota’s teacher evaluation system to protect highly effective teaches from layoffs.

A while back I introduced you to David Upegui, a science teacher at Central Falls. David is one of many extraordinary teachers across the state whose hard work goes largely unacknowledged under Rhode Island’s outdated teacher staffing model.

Ah, campaign season. 

The media is abuzz with presidential campaign news, shadowing the candidates as they duke it out in battleground states and present their plans to reboot American prosperity.

Here at 50CAN, we too are in full-fledged campaign mode, and we too have a plan to reboot American prosperity. The one big difference is that we're not campaigning for a presidential nomination. We're campaigning to pass four sets of education reforms into state law.

Five months ago we announced the official launch of 50CAN: The 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now. 

Now leaders in our first four states of New York, Maryland, Rhode Island and Minnesota are off and running with policy campaigns that will change the way public education works in their states so that it works better for all kids.

NYCAN: The Empire State Strikes Back
(www.EmpireStateStrikesBack.org)

January is prime launch season here at 50CAN. Earlier this month we welcomed two new CANs into the fold (NYCAN and MarylandCAN), and today we celebrated as MinnCAN: The Minnesota Campaign for Achievement Now launched it's 2012 legislative campaign, The Playbook for Education in Minnesota.