That’s my subject in today’s Everett Herald column.

Right now, layoffs are handled by seniority — last hired, first fired, with no regard for teacher performance. A pair of bills (HB 1609 and SB 5399) would create a performance-based system for staff reductions.

The legislation calls for making layoff decisions based on teachers’ average evaluation ratings for the most recent two years (one year if only one is available). Teachers with the lowest average evaluations get laid off first. Seniority, rather than being the sole criterion, comes into play only in case of a tie, when two teachers have the same evaluation scores.

The public likes the idea.

Last January, the Partnership for Learning and the Excellent Schools Now Coalition surveyed 500 Washington voters on education issues.

A remarkable 81 percent of those polled agreed that “if a district is facing layoffs, teachers should be retained based on their performance in raising student achievement, not how many years they have been teaching.”

So does the academic research, as I report in the column. What do you think?