PROVIDENCE — Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract.

McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district hasn’t been moving fast enough to improve student achievement and that it was time to intervene in a much more aggressive fashion.

The order should come as no surprise to the district. Over the last two years the commissioner has issued a series of “corrective action” orders that spelled out what the district needed to do to improve student performance.

“This is intervention,” McWalters said yesterday. “Every state gets to the point when it’s time to stop suggesting. The district can’t come back and tell me they can’t get it done.”

McWalters said that seniority can no longer be the way that teachers are assigned and vacancies are filled. Starting this fall, teachers at six Providence schools, including the new career and technical high school and the new East Side middle school, will be assigned based on whether they have the skills needed to serve students at those particular schools.

McWalters made it clear that contract language will not stand in the way of the changes he expects.

“I’m saying that seniority is not an appropriate way to manage the assignment of teachers based on what we know in the 21st century,” he said. “It’s no longer about teacher preferences. It’s about whether the teacher is the best match for that particular student.”

This may put both Brady and the commissioner on a collision course with the Providence Teachers Union; seniority has been the standard for filling vacancies when there are layoffs. Although he hopes for cooperation, McWalters said, if it comes down to a legal battle, he won’t back down.

“I don’t doubt I have the authority,” he said. “I also have the obligation and the responsibility.”

According to McWalters, the commissioner of education has the power to intervene in a chronically under-performing school district under a 1997 state law called Article 31 and under the federal law called No Child Left Behind.

The teachers union president, Steve Smith, said yesterday he wasn’t prepared to challenge the order until he had a chance to discuss the matter with Brady and the union’s lawyers.

The union’s contract with the school district expired two years ago. But the teachers have continued to work under terms of that agreement, and Brady and Smith have established a good working relationship.

“We’re not going to panic,” Smith said last night. “We’ve always been willing to work with the district. But to say that we’ve resisted improving schools is disingenuous.”

Brady said he welcomed the commissioner’s directives and was pleased that McWalters trusted him to take on the challenge. He acknowledged an apparent conflict with terms of the teachers’ contract but said he hopes the union will work with him to avoid a legal battle.

“This order does not eliminate collective bargaining,” said schools spokeswoman Kim Rose. “And there is no item that treats teachers as anything less than professionals.”

McWalters is trying to stabilize a school system marked by a considerable turnover in teacher staff. Under the existing seniority rules, when there is a layoff, the most senior teacher can dislodge or bump someone with less seniority. In a district with 2,000 teachers, bumping can have a devastating impact, with one teacher bumping another in a cascading series of dislocations.

Last year, 25 elementary teachers were laid off, but 41 teachers wound up being bumped from their jobs. Also, some of the smaller high schools have lost up to one-third of their staff in recent years.

McWalters says this has to stop. For years, he said, research has shown that building a common school culture is perhaps the most critical element of school and student success. Principals need to have the authority to select teachers who not only agree with the school’s mission but are best suited to the needs of those particular students.

McWalters also ordered Providence to take the following steps to improve stability in the teaching ranks:

•Starting this fall, every elementary school will select one teacher who would otherwise be transferred or laid off and keep that person at the school. This person will fill in for teachers who are absent as well as provide extra help in the classroom. Brady welcomed the idea and said it fits with his vision to create a more stable school culture.

•Replace department head positions at the high schools with teacher-leaders, something that Hope High School did several years ago. McWalters wants to build a cadre of high school teachers who can take on leadership roles in their schools. Department heads are typically administrators.

•Return Hope High School to local control. The state took over the failing East Side high school four years ago. Since then, McWalters said, Hope has improved so significantly that state oversight is no longer necessary.

lborg@projo.com