Dirty Little Education Secrets Part 2: Teachers Are NOT All Leaving The Profession Over Pay



This morning I read an awesome article by a long time teacher from Pennsylvania was explaining why teachers are leaving the profession. Never once in his treatise did he mention money. Here was one of his closing paragraphs:

In the very worst of districts, a “teacher” has no job but to unpack the curriculum in a box and read a script, or to float around the room while students hunch over computers. In the worst of states, anybody with a pulse can be put in charge of a classroom. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer students enroll in teacher preparation programs? “I just want to grow up to help more students bubble in the right answer on a standardized test,” said no bright young person ever.

So that’s something that has changed. Policy has shifted to treat teachers like obstacles rather than educational warriors. We still get in there and do the work of one of the best jobs in the world, but it has become increasingly clear that we have few allies and that many leaders don’t even believe in the work any more.

We said this over and over again when we were fighting Common Core. The whole notion of federalized standards treated teachers - who go to teacher's college to learn how to teach to developmental groups - as though they were too stupid to know what to teach children.

Here is a teacher explaining to us that she is retiring after many years of teaching because of Common Core alone. She didn't mention money ONE TIME in her discussion. Once. She talks about how hard she worked only to be overlooked by administrators. THAT'S what she said.

A recent Sooner Poll surveying teachers was used to "justify" teacher raises. The question was asked: "What is the greatest challenge facing public education in Oklahoma today?"

43% of respondents said "lack of state funding" - HOWEVER - what was missed was that wasn't even HALF of the responses. Please note: there are TEN other CATEGORIES of responses here OTHER than money. Here's what they say:

Lack of discipline in the classroom                                                             5.5%
Lack of school administrative leadership                                                    1.5%
Lack of parental involvement                                                                      3.9%

Too much governmental bureaucracy                  7.0%

Not enough money GETTING TO THE CLASSROOM

    - too much administrative costs                                                               6.8%

Classroom size                                                                                            5.1%

Teachers performing too many school roles/functions                                7.1%

Too much testing                                                                                         3.6%

Not enough teachers                                                                                   2.6%

Other - we're not given the write in answers

     here which is a shame because the category is so high                        13.7%

 

So 57% of respondents - OVER HALF - claimed that there were many more other problems than just money.

 

I've been in the public school classroom. One of the reasons it became easy to leave to be a stay-at-home-mom, was the fact that it was becoming increasingly difficult to teach.

• I would get to my classroom between 7 and 7:30am for class to begin at 7:50. I ate lunch in my classroom while I helped students with their work. I left my classroom between 5:30 and 6pm every single day. I bought a TV for my classroom out of my own pocket and brought a VHS from home so I could show videos that paralleled my lessons. I wrote grants to get microscopes and lab equipment.
• I had children misbehaving in my classroom, yet I wasn't allowed to put them in the hall and when I sent them to the office they either sat there, or were sent back to class to disturb the rest of my students and disrupt my ability to teach.
• I was routinely drug into the principal's office and made to kowtow to parents on everything from grades to stuff as stupid as having to explain why I wrote a SMILEY FACE on a student's paper in red pen (we were discouraged from using red pen to grade because it hurt student's feelings - NO JOKE).
• I was called a bigot by the mother of a basketball player when I wouldn't give her kid a passing grade for sitting in my classroom and sleeping with his feet up the whole class period. My principal solved that problem by moving that student to a class where a teacher would pass him for sleeping with his feet up the whole class period.
• I spent weeks preparing for tests instead of teaching my students what I was told they needed to know to be proficient in their subject knowledge of science.

These are just a few of the worst problems I encountered in my classroom days. My mother was a teacher in Oklahoma City public schools for nearly 35 years. She has horror stories that would bring sane people to tears.

STOP THE MADNESS! Administrators, if you really cared about teachers staying in the field of teaching - LET THEM TEACH. Observe them in their classrooms. Watch them with their students. Check the grades on their daily work (not test scores!). If they're doing well, petition the LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD to give them a raise.

And PARENTS - your job is to raise respectful kids who don't infringe upon the rights of others to learn and to accept responsibility for your child, not make excuses for them.

Just those things alone would make teachers want to stay in teaching even more than pay - bet me money.