A Discussion of the Effect of Teacher Lay off on Students, Essay Example

School districts have come under increasing pressure to massively slash down their expenditure budgets thanks to the general economic crisis that has affected every facet of the national economy. The most painful part of some of the proposed budgetary cuts has to do with the unpopular policy of lay off to affect teachers across the various school districts. It is against this background that this essay will fundamentally be dedicated to addressing the teacher lay off aspect of the educational budget reduction policy.

Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that the teacher lay off is in no way in the best interest of the educational system, yet it is still regarded as a necessary measure required to keep the educational system running if not for even optimum capacity just to avoid sliding into complete abyss. For instance, some school districts notably in the state of Ohio, in their bid to find a compromising striking balance in their budgetary balance sheets opted for spending money allocated or disbursed from the federal economic stimulus package. This has still proven to be very unsustainable in the long term given the fact that the cash from the stimulus package were basically part of an austerity measure but not a permanent policy intervention. Consequently, ultimately the budgets remained threatened under the crumbling weight of deficits.

For this reason, we are confronted with the challenge of reducing budget spending and this means teacher lay offs an inevitable part of the whole. This essay will therefore be looking at the internal dynamics of the policy of teacher lay offs within the context of how this policy affects students in their academic experience. Another source of contention for the lay off policy has to do with the absurdity surrounding the implementation process stemming from obsolete contractual and regulatory regimes. A case in point is that the regulations and legislations in most states in the United States governing the process of laying off teachers makes no provision for the appraisal of the quality of the affected personnel before carrying out the implementation act.

It is the common practice based on existing collective bargaining agreements to lay off younger teachers whilst maintaining the services of veteran teachers during a lay off exercise. The result is that youthful and exuberant personnel will be hit very hard needlessly. The danger with such a practice is that schools stand the risk of loosing some of their most excellent young teachers and chances are also that such affected teachers will never have any motivation to return to the classroom again.

Being the case, research has also proven that educational attainment provides answers to several life course achievements on the basis of such indicators such as access to employment, social status and a host of others (Fischer & Hout, 2006). Durkheim (1973) is among the pioneering scholar to establish that the school system serves as a viable social institution outside of the traditional family confine to provide relevant grooming support mechanisms for children from infancy through the formative years into adulthood.

Granted this has been established by research, it therefore goes to prove that the role of teachers in this whole grooming saga cannot be overemphasized. Some of the immediate consequences of teacher lay offs are a negative shift in the teacher to student ratio. Over populated class rooms is not helpful for many reasons, chiefly among them are the poor management process, leading to a reduction in the effectiveness of the teaching and learning activities.

Teachers are no doubt part of the resources of any school system, for that matter a fall in the resource base is not welcomed news for any serious minded educational system within the long term sphere. Resources and in this case human resources as stated by researchers are part of the input devices that contribute to the positive outcome of students. In the same vein, in a related study Arum & Lafree (2008) have argued that the school environment provides a potent source of changing the possibility of juvenile delinquency because ultimately their argument is that schools rather families are better placed to control delinquency because of the capacity of teachers through their training to monitor children at a regular interval than most parents can do in our day and age.

In concluding, the universal consensus is that the ongoing teacher lay offs in most school districts much as are inevitable measures required to address budget deficit crisis, it also does negatively affect the students and by extension undermines the quality of the educational system in the long term.

Works Cited:

Claude Fischer and Micheal Hout. Century of Difference. Russell Sage Foundation: 2006

Arum Richard & Gary Lafree.. Educational Attainment, Teacher/Student Ratios and Adult Incarceration Risks Among US Birth Cohorts since 1910. Sociology of Education. 81(19).