 Restricting seniority as a factor in public school district layoffs: Analyzing the impact of state legislation on graduation ratesChristine M. Dabbs Economics of Education Review, 2020, vol. 74, issue C Abstract: Following the Great Recession, employment in the U.S. local education sector fell by about 364,000. I analyze whether state legislation that prohibits or limits the use of seniority in layoff decisions has an impact on public high school graduation rates. I find that over a ten-year time span, all else held constant, such legislation on average increases the yearly growth of district graduation rates by about 0.3 percentage points. This is economically significant, as the average yearly increase in the national graduation rate from 2010–11 to 2015–16 was 1 percentage point. When states prohibit or limit using seniority to determine a layoff order, districts must utilize other considerations such as teacher quality. In states with this legislation, teachers remaining following layoffs may be more effective than when states use seniority to determine the layoff order. Keywords: Efficiency; Human capital; Layoffs; Seniority; Rate of return; State legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:74:y:2020:i:c:s0272775718305028 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.101926 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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