Teacherpocalypse Update: There Was No Teacherpocalypse

The National Council on Teacher Quality did an (unscientific) survey of actual teacher layoffs in the last couple of years, after noting "the lack of reports on layoffs in newspapers this fall. Last spring, they were all reporting about school districts handing out pink slips by the thousands, but there's been little follow up on teachers converting from pink-slip status to no-job-at-all status."

And it turns out that despite threats of hundreds of thousands of unemployed teachers nationwide, teacherpocalypse was more fizzle than bang.

In their 74 district sample, which was heavy on urban districts that should have experienced more layoffs, they found that:

Around 9,545 teachers–about 2.5 percent of the total number of teachers in these districts–were actually laid off (or were probationary teachers who were non-renewed for budget reasons). Excluding the uniquely bad-off California districts, that rate falls to about 1.5% across the country. About half of the districts reported no layoffs.

Many of the districts reported filling budget gaps with stimulus and EduJobs money. But two-thirds of the districts say they still haven't spent all of their federal stimulus cash, opting instead to do things like lay off administrators, allow attrition, and (in a small number of districts) trim benefits.

More Reason on teacherpocalypse hype.