The New York Times education reporter, Motoko Rich, wrote an article about the national teacher shortage and ignored the real cause of the reason behind the teacher shortage, the demoralization of the teacher profession by the education deformers and their media allies along with the politicians of both parties. In the article the New York Times points out how nationally there has been a 30% reduction in teacher preparation applicants and a 55% reduction in California. In one of my earlier posts and an even earlier one I was informed by a friend that his college's education program dropped almost 50% since 2011 and many of his education students have no intention of teaching in the classroom.
While the Times article claims it was the cutting of education jobs during the recession, the real reason is the education deformer organizations like StudentsFirst, Democrats for Education Reform. Students For Education Reform, and politicians like Michael Bloomberg, Chris Christie, Barack Obama, and Jeb Bush who buy into the education deformer mantra that bad teachers are the reason why children struggle academically, By blaming teachers for society's ills, it has demoralized teachers and disrespected the entire teaching profession. As the Perdido Street School blogger RBE stated in his blog to the seniors he teaches:
"I teach seniors and I tell the ones who say they want to be teachers to think twice about the major - that teacher bashing and odious accountability measures (most of which simply add more work to a teacher's load without making them better teachers) make the job miserable these days"
Few teachers are recommending to their students the teaching profession, this is a turnaround from a generation ago when teaching was looked as a highly professional and respected profession. Who in their right mind thinks teachers should be held accountable for children who are three or four grades behind academically, just learning English, or have learning disabilities, be it academically or behaviorally? That junk science in the form of a value added method can count for up to 50% of a teacher's rating despite the highly respected study that showed that a teacher is responsible for 1% to 14% of a child's academic ability? In Indiana, ground zero for education reform, the results have been a worsening teacher shortage with veteran teachers leaving the classroom due to low pay and the State's teacher evaluation rules, including tying high-stakes testing to teacher effectiveness.
The bottom line is that the mission of the education deformers and their political and media allies want teaching to be held accountable for all society's problems, make it a temporary job, with low pay, and no pension, and it seems that they are succeeding in advancing that mission to destroy the teaching profession as we know it. That's why there is a teacher shortage and its only going to get worse as long as the education reformers have the upper hand as they do presently.
21 comments:
I taught in California a while back. When I taught in California during the recession, my district went back 7 YEARS on the seniority list to lay off teachers. This kind of situation is not hidden from the public eye as these teachers have families and friends who know how horrible the teaching profession has become. I would never tell someone to become a teacher in this day and age.
Lets cut to the chase, low class, welfare recipients, who are entitled to everything to to school to party and disrespect everybody they see. If we graded fairly, grad rate would be 10 percent. I am in schools where 30% attendance is good enough to pass.
Chaz, I would just offer another point on the issue to tying a teacher's job security to the student's academic progress and other VAM measures. Based on my personal experience, Administrators will without hesitation fraudulently find some way of removing a teacher (even an effetive teacher) if that teacher's data doesn't measure up in the administrator's eyes. Just to elaborate for a moment on my letter to Aimee Horowitz that got much deserved attention on your blog....in the very beginning of May of last year there was a discussion between Ganesh and myself when he extended my probation for the first time. Because Ganesh was instructed by the then superintendent of District 27 that he could only appoint tenure to 1 out of 6 people, He was forced to choose a reason justifying not to grant it to the 5 other people. For me he was concerned about the passage rate amongst my students (for the first two years prior to Mr. Ganesh coming into Richmond Hill as principal) He didn't like the passage rate of my students on their state exams. But hisconcern did not take into account the passage rate amongst my students for the follow month (June) because this discussion was ha din May. Also almost all of my students despite some not passing showed "steady growth" and "improvement." I was a special ed teacher and Richmond Hill was known to have a ever increasing influx of especially bad academically performing students. On top of that, disciplinary issues and student behavior were extremely ineffectively addressed by administration, but that is beside the point. Like so many other administrators, Mr. Ganesh's simple minded mentality is just looking at teachers statistics from a quantitative standpoint rather than a qualitative one. Any educated person knows that data is meaningless without asking the how and why questions. So this year (as I mentioned in my letter, (that I'm certain was ignored completely by Ms. Horowitz) Ganesh instructed his AP to rate me with nothing but "ineffectives" because that was his way of having me removed from the school. So the fabricated ratings no doubt were manufactured and I was consequently discontinued.
Don't feel too bad anon. I was rated as ineffective not f due to
Students scores, but for being the chapter , This is after teaching in this school for 18 years! Not a u in sight until they sent in the clearer upper! This sucks.,
Until someone admits the problem, teenagers having babies, no self reliance, breakdown of the African American families, relaince on govt subsidies,nothing will change. When students are 20 years old, failing all their classes, with a household income of 0, several children, but have an $800 iphone and 20 pairs of $200 sneakers, staying up all night drinking, but then "too tired" to get to school on time, nothing will change. Low class is low class.
Yup, who would want to work with people like 90 percent of the students we have?
I'm a veteran teacher in the public school system. I believe it is unethical to encourage individuals to become teachers. Student teachers go into major debt and then have a 50% chance of surviving as a new teacher. They're offered minimal if any support at all. They are treated like crap, and their professional opinion over time won't matter. As a public school teacher, you are treated as a perpetual student, constantly being graded, abused, and observed. You will NOT be treated as a professional in this field. In addition to all of this, there is a constant flow of teacher bashing from the U.S. president down to your local daily newspaper. Why would anyone encourage a student to become a teacher? It would be unethical and callous to do so.
This is what happens when your future as an employer is tied to a bunch of students who have no future, except being parasites on our tax dollars, They can abuse and destroy us, and they have nothing to lose. They know the next check is always coming from the government. The answer I always hear is "Im about to get my income tax refund." Huh? A refund on taxes you never paid in the first place? Well, I am 18 and I have 3 kids, so i get $10,000 back. Perfect. Why do I even bother working?
In my summer school, classes ended in JULY. How are they still having students do makeup classes, including during the regents next week, in order to pass. Classes are over, they failed. Nope. Chance after chance...
Low class is still humanity to teach as best we can. Hopefully inspire as best we can . Fight back against the education reformers as best we can . Survival is not enough. We need to prepare our own place for letting the national stage we are not defined by the school system... the students are not defined to be defined. Low class? NO they are not. There are historical reasons for our students life conditions.... racist education policy and systems are hugely part of the equation.
Racist education policy? Please. Why isnt it racist against Asian? Because they work hard and dont get arrested and g to sleep at a normal time, and dont get pregnant at 16 and dont get in trouble with the police, and dont drink alcohol all weekend underage, etc. You make excuses. De Blasio makes excuses. Suspensions are racist because more backs get suspended? NO. Its because they break the rules more, which is why they end up in jail and on welfare. They then come to school, free breakfast, free lunch, free metrocards, free grades, curse and threaten me all day, and get away with it...
Gladys, What you say reminds me of whats going on in Ferguson right now. Cops are totally correct, fighting with criminals , who happen to be black, are totally wrong. Who gets blame? The cops. Why? Because its politically correct to say that. An 18 year old, black, with a stolen gun shoots at cops into a van, they shoot back at him, hit him...His family say it was an execution, etc, etc, etc. The people protesting are breaking every law they can, and by the way, Mike Brown was killed after he broke the law about 10 different times that very day, was on marijuana, asaulted a clerk, stole cigars, assaulted the cop, tried to take his gun. Thats who they and the president approve of...Much like our overage, undercredited, criminal students.
We are all just supposed to ignore that little old fact that so many of the inner city students have habits and behaviors that are not conducive to learning.
The Gates' of the world know this is the case. They gleefully hinge the teachers' livelihood to the scores of chronic underachievers.
If the government gives out free apartments,food,education,and money there will always be people lining up to collect. Today it's not just African Americans or Hispanics. I was in Monsey recently and felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode. Almost everyone is ultra-orthodox, dirt poor and on social services. They are pushing baby carriages down the middle of the highway and won't get out of the way of cars. I felt very much out of place and they let me know I wasn't welcome. It was a parallel South Bronx experience. I was in rural Kentucky last year, all blondes and redheads, and the same thing - except they were constantly trying to sell me guns! All these handouts are done in order to keep people poor and uneducated. I don't blame people for accepting the handouts, I blame the government for giving them.
If you think the education system is racist now, wait if the billionaires get what they want. They're going to put these kids in front of a computer screen and tell them to login to get their assignments. They will never see a human being in front of them. They will get a watered-down education that prepares them to work for minimum wage. They're not going to be going to charter schools. The charter schools will be for other kids.
The charter schools will become (some already are i.e. New Vision charter at Kennedy HS, Bronx) exactly what public schools are now, shit. The one difference is that a select few will become millionaires from it.
Its not racist, its just that most of our population is trash...
Trash comes in every color.
It's not the color that makes you trash, it's the behavior.
You people are the ones who are incredibly racist. You are blaming all black kids as the problem ignoring those kids who do well in school of all races. And before you call me a troll or clueless, I am a black teacher who was at Lehman HS and am now an ATR with tenure. I was cussed out. Brought up on false accusations, found unsubstantiated, etc., threatened, and it was by Hispanic students and black students and Albanian students. I had some lazy Asian students and Bangledesh students too. But I also had some wonderful students and some students that did the best they could, and some I became very close with. I would never generalize any of them as they were all mixed races. If you only view your students as black is bad and Asian is good, I think you are the racist and hence people/students can sense your hate and treat you accordingly. There's good and bad in all races just like there are good and bad students in all races. Really, you racists need to look in the mirror. Go teach in a all white school then, you are not what inner city ethnic kids need to deal with. You are part of the problem, not the solution.
Anon 11:51
I agree with most that you say. However, I must point out that single parent. poverty, and lack of male role models is the issue that besets the community and the schools and until these social-economic issues are solved, children subject to this hostile environment are more likely to have academic and behavioral problems that cannot be solved by the school and certainly not by one teacher.
I don't disagree. It is just narrow minded that some people feel poverty is a black and Hispanic only problem. While poverty does affect them disproportionatelyr, blacks represent on average only 16 percent of the US population. Hispanics only a little more. Nyc has a larger population of ethnic people so the schools reflect that.. Our media does a good job of perpetuating that myth by ignoring the vast effect of poverty nationally and people believe the hype. We need to look at people and stop focusing on just one race . I live near Monsey and what was said about this improverish community is true. Blacks are not the only poor people on welfare, whites are the largest in fact. Just racist ignorance. Makes me sick.
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