Jennifer Cohen on School Budget Cuts, Reform Efforts on PBS Newshour

On Thursday, Ed Money Watch’s Jennifer Cohen appeared on PBS Newshour to discuss the effect of education budget cuts in school districts and classrooms alongside Jay Matthews of The Washington Post’s Class Struggle blog. The discussion focused on teacher layoffs and class size increases as ways to shore up budgets in struggling school districts, as well as reform efforts like the teacher contract ratified by the teachers union in Washington, DC.

Cohen described how teacher layoffs often affect low-income schools, where more inexperienced teachers work, more than higher-income schools because of “last-hired, first-fired” policies in many teacher contracts. She also explained that by firing the least experienced, and therefore least expensive, teachers, school districts are forced to fire more teachers than if they were able to fire some more experienced, more expensive teachers.

To view this video, click play. For a transcript of the interview, click here.