According
to NPR, many states are have a difficult time attracting and retaining
qualified teachers and staff.
First, districts are woefully short of funds, thus they offer teachers
little financial incentive and few benefits. Second, the media attacks schools and teachers vilifying
them while expecting teachers to use their own time and resources to reinforce
the crumbling infrastructure of education systems. Third, teaching no longer provides teachers with a creative
outlet as districts are dictating every lesson, evaluation and procedure in
the classroom. Fourth,
teacher-training programs fail to prepare teachers with a realistic view of the
difficulties teachers face with social problems, crime and dysfunctional
families. Fifth, to save money,
many school districts want to base teachers’ salaries on test performance. This means that teachers placed in
affluent, suburban schools will earn higher salaries than those teaching in
lower-socio economic, urban schools.
Thus, the most challenging teaching positions will pay the least. If
improving education is truly a priority, funding education, providing
appropriate benefits and training teachers to instill a realistic view of the
teaching profession. Finally teachers are overwhelmed with demands foisted upon schools and cost cutting methods districts have foisted upon educators making time for proper mentoring difficult.
Reason One: Funding Education
Districts are woefully under-funded and often spend their resources on
palatial building and not on teacher’s salaries or benefits. Regardless, teaching has never been a
lucrative career, but teachers in the past still pursued careers in education
knowing they were never going to get rich. Teaching careers offered a stable career where women could
work and still share the time on holidays and in the summer to raise their
children as their calendars and those of their children were often the same. It offered both men and
women time to explore other careers or travel the world (even though it might
be in an old VW bus) and explore other hobbies and interests. The career offered great medical
benefits and an opportunity to retire with both social security, and a stable
retirement from the state. Unfortunately, because of cost saving methods in the school districts most of these advantages have disappeared. Many of
today’s graduates cannot afford to become teachers because they are overwhelmed
with educational loan payments.
Fortunately for me, I graduated in the 1970’s when Lyndon Johnson’s
National Defense Loans were available.
If a teacher took an assignment in a Title One School, that teacher’s
student loans were excused.
Perhaps, the country could attract more qualified teachers if they
offered to excuse the student loans of any student who chose to teach in a
public school for five years or more.
The overbearing costs of insurance have been passed onto the
teachers. Perhaps education needs
an influx of money, so educators could be offered better health insurance and
retirements.
Reason Two: Respect
Teachers were once respected and
admired by the public. Today, the media often villifies teaching blaming them for students’ poor performance
without considering the social problems that have created the decline in
academic performance. Wealthy
Americans design programs that are foisted upon districts with little or no
input from teachers. No one would
disagree that schools need to improve, but the number of people who live below
the poverty level and the influx of people who have special educational needs
including special education and language skills have increased. All of these factors affect student
test scores. The teaching career
has become much more complicated as all of these students are mainstreamed into
over-crowded classes. Without the
resources and training to reach the individual needs of all these students,
many teachers are leaving the profession in search of a less difficult
job. For example, one of my former
students told me that I had inspired her to become a teacher. After two years of working day and
night to keep up with the demands, she quit and went back to law school. She is now a lawyer making four times
more money while she said working considerably fewer hours. The workload, the pressure from parents
and the disrespect by students were key elements in her decision to quit
teaching. Teachers need the support of our community to continue in the profession. This includes the support of the press.
Reason Three: Stifling Curriculum Demands
Teaching used to be a creative outlet
where teachers shared ideas and developed new methods, and assignments
independently to approach a list of learning goals provided by state curriculum
committees. Today, teachers are
often asked to collaborate on units provided by the district or by The Gates
Foundation. Teachers are expected
to all teach the same lessons in the same way simultaneously and participate in
the same weekly tests. This
homogenous view of instruction is stifling to educators. Most teachers loved the independent
feeling of creating new methodology and assignments to approach learning, but
that has all been replaced with a factory version of education. Since the
career is no longer personally rewarding, many teachers are leaving the
profession. Yes, there are
teachers who are not effective, but they are not the majority of teachers. Treat
teachers as professionals.
When an administrator identifies a teacher who is ineffective, eliminate
that teacher. Do not treat
teachers like they are all unprofessional, ineffective individuals who cannot
be trusted to do their job.
Reason Four: Teacher Preparation
Many students are attracted to
teaching because they imagine that teaching will be a continuation of their
days as a cheerleader. They
imagine that all students want to attend school and are excited to participate
in all of the activities. Teaching
is hard work. Teachers need a strong understanding of the horrors many students
face every day before they arrive at school. Many students arrive at school hungry because their families
are homeless. Many students are
abused by parents or have experienced such violence in their neighborhood that
they are overwhelmed. I have had a
parent who called her children home because she wanted to commit suicide, surrounded
by everyone she loved. I have had a
student who arrived as refugee after watching his families murdered. He was not only emotionally distraught,
but unequipped with the language skills or the cultural knowledge to be
successful in his new home. I have
had students who were fourth generation gang members. The horror
stories that most teachers could tell are endless and grotesque. The students who experience these
situations do not behave in class like many others. Simply because they are disruptive or distracted, only means
that teachers must work harder to reach them. When some novice teachers discover that teaching these hard to
reach students is part of the reality, they often request that those students be
sent to other more experienced teachers or they leave the profession. Teaching
preparation programs need to prepare students for the reality of public
education. Yes, there are
still the cheerleaders who join every club and love school, but they are not
the only students in the school.
If teacher preparation programs allowed students to interact with the
real world problems before their first teaching profession, those teachers who
have an unrealistic perspective of education might choose a more appropriate
career before they damage these fragile children.
Reason Five: Connecting Salary to Test Performance
Basing teacher’s salary on test performance is counter-productive
because the students who are the most challenging to teach are housed in
schools that are the most likely to have the lowest scores and those scores are the less likely
to improve quickly. According
to the Center
for Public Education, although
most states differ in their definition and approach to English Language
Learners (ELL), most agree that it takes at least six years for these students
to become proficient in English.
This means that they are not going to show significant growth in test
scores until their language skills to improve. As a result, we are rewarding teachers for taking the easiest
jobs in the most affluent neighborhoods where parents are involved in their
student’s education and often pay for additional training beyond their
education in the school. If
we are going to attract teachers to teach in challenging schools, we need to
pay them accordingly.
Reason Six: Time
Teachers are overwhelmed with the demands
foisted on schools by outside organizations and cost-saving methods leaving
little time to properly assist new recruits.
Teachers have been asked to employ new technologies, new teaching
methods and a new, demanding curriculum while many districts are taking
teachers’ consultation periods: thus, teaching more students with fewer
teachers and less insurance costs. Adding extra pressure to over-worked
teachers means all planning and correcting is done at home. As a result, an eight hour a day job becomes
a twelve to fifteen hour a day job. All
of this leave little time to properly supervise or mentor young recruits.
