American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession's massive teacher layoffs and other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.
Indeed, this year's MetLife teacher satisfaction survey, the 28th such assessment of teacher, parent, and student perspectives on how school life is going, shows the impact of these conditions. Teacher job satisfaction has dropped 15 points since 2009, from 59 percent who were very satisfied to 44 percent, the lowest level in over 20 years. The percentage of teachers who say they are likely to leave the profession has increased by 12 points -- from 17 percent to 29 percent -- now nearing a third of all teachers.
Much has changed in those two years; in 2009, the impacts of recession-based cuts had yet to fully hit schools. Larger classes; laid-off colleagues; cuts to libraries, physical education, foreign languages, arts and music; and reductions in supports like health care, counseling, and afterschool programs that help low-income students overcome impediments to effective learning -- all factor into teachers' decisions about whether to stay on the job. Teachers, parents and students surveyed all reported rising levels of economic insecurity, hunger, poor health, homelessness and anxiety over lack of sufficient resources to pay for household basics. In my own region of Northern California, child homelessness has increased by more than 30 percent in the last two years, with some districts seeing more than 1 in 10 of their students without homes.
At the same time, public discussion and policy increasingly place the full weight of these problems on teachers alone. Despite repeated warnings from leading scholars that test-based "value-added" ratings cannot be reliably used to evaluate individual teachers because they reflect home and other school factors as much as the teacher him or herself, more states are urging that they be used to fire and reward teachers. This is particularly problematic given evidence that teachers' ratings decline when they teach the neediest students -- especially new English learners and students with disabilities.
Indeed, New York State's new policy effectively makes continuing to teach contingent on such test-based ratings, and New York City recently insisted on publishing teachers' names alongside their ratings. This created a furor as it became clear that the scores are wildly unstable from year to year and across subjects, are often based on inaccurate data, and appear unrelated to the known successes of good teachers or the failings of poor ones. This is prompting many great teachers to make plans to leave a profession they loveand children who need them.
Bill Gates noted in a recent op-ed in the New York Times that "using employee evaluations to embarrass people," is something a smart firm like Microsoft would never even contemplate, "much less publish in a newspaper." Even if it is legal, he points out, "as a harbinger of education policy in the United States, it is a big mistake," because "the surest way to weaken [systematic teacher development] is to twist it into a capricious exercise in public shaming."
The problem is not only that the ratings are poor measures of actual effectiveness, but that such policies fundamentally misunderstand what drives teachers to improve and to stay in tough jobs. In his recent best-seller Drive, Daniel Pink draws on years of research to confirm that the personal satisfaction of getting the job done right -- in this case, teaching students well -- is at the core of our drive. That's why bonuses handed out to teachers based largely on test scores turn out not to improve achievement and are often resisted by teachers who want support to succeed, not bribes that undermine intrinsic motivation and collaboration.
We have never heard more policy rhetoric about the importance of developing, recruiting, and retaining strong teachers, especially in our most troubled schools. Ironically, our policies have also never done more to ensure that good teachers will have little incentive to serve and stay in those schools. We need to get the incentives right. According to the Met Life survey, that means enacting a Broader Bolder Approach: treating teachers as professionals, providing them with opportunities to learn with one another and improve their practice, ensuring that schools offer decent teaching and learning conditions, and supporting children with the services that enable them to be ready to learn each day.
Eric Smith: Building on the Values of No Child Left Behind
The solution is not as easy as gathering leading teachers in a room and asking them to figure out a common answer. Instead the solution includes a collaboration of teachers and functions that support their inputs. Roundtables with teachers such as one held at the White House at the end of 2011 exemplify ways that teachers can be rallied and asked suggestions on what improvements they need to help their students succeed. During the 2011 roundtable, one teacher highlights that the most inspiring part of the seminar was not listening to national executives or politicians but experiencing teacher-led discussions. These national roundtables give teachers the opportunity to share, communicate, and learn from one another but more importantly, build goals to better the education system. On a local, school-by-school basis, the roundtables can be applied as a forum where teachers unite to find ways to improve their individual schools...
Your post is an excellent portrayal of the current lack of teacher input in the reform and improvement of the American education system. Although a large proportion of criticism for the nation’s failing system is blamed on teachers, there is little attention given to what teachers need to succeed. While most initiatives are trying to change the structure of the education system and transform teachers into synonymous teaching machines, only a few are focusing on action steps that teachers can use in the classroom every day that can directly improve student achievement. Many solutions are proposing incentives to entice teachers to improve. But teachers are not driven by paychecks, bonuses, or praise. Instead their real incentives are seeing their students grasp material, grow as individuals, and leave the classroom prepared for the next grade. Administration and policymakers tend to overlook this fact and instead propose to first change the administration and structure. The Los Angeles Unified School District recently distributed $175 million to the improvement of the school board instead of contributing the money towards the actual schools. A recent article by David Lyell shows that this large sum would better fight the achievement gap if directly donated to Title I, II and III schools instead of going towards the district management. Lyell, a 13-year LAUSD veteran teacher, disagrees with this allocation of funds demonstrating a lack of a communication and solitary plan between administration and teachers...
I wonder where Eli Broad and Michelle Rhee stand?
Nothing like making teachers wear a scarlet letter on their chests or stars on armbands to attract the brightest and best into a profession quickly being dismantled and deformed into a minimum wage Walmart equivalent wage slave job anyone thinks they can do.
What next? Are we going to tattoo teachers who we deem failures so they will never be hired by anyone for any job?
This public vilification is past enough.
You think it's so easy? You do it. See what kind of teachers you're going to recruit now. Forget the math and science students. Forget the brightest and best. You'll be lucky if anyone volunteers to go into decades of student loan debt to participate in an underpaid and overworked profession that is publicly shamed, ridiculed and scorned.
I expected this from Republicans. I didn't expect it from the Obama administration.
Too little, too late and it's going to get a whole lot worse. I'm done with teaching. What a waste of time and money that was, when I could have stayed in my previous science career. I'm hoping my improved people and project management skills will be recognized as a benefit to future employers.
Many teachers told me not to go into teaching, including half of my greater family who are or were teachers, but I rufused to listen. Live and Learn I guess.
It's the right that has been systematically dismantling the teacher profession for years.
You can spot them because of the frequent use of talking points like "accountability" and "value-added evaluation".
No job is perfect, as no person is, yet it seems to me that teachers are being held to a higher standard. People are quick to malign teachers' hours, yet I can promise you that MOST of us work many more than 40 hours per week. People complain that teachers have summers off, yet MOST of us are attending workshops of one type or another to make us better teachers. We are coaches, cheerleaders, advisers, surrogate parents, AND teachers. And we deserve more than a LITTLE respect.
On the one hand, I have District officials, Federal and State policies that keep adding layer upon layer to my responsibilities. On the other hand, I have a voting public that won't raise the taxes to support the new layers of responsibility. I keep getting to told to build a house with 20 nails and rock for a hammer. {0.o}
55? 60?
That's how large PE classes were at the middle school I taught at ten years ago.
I'm a teacher librarian, MLIS and National Board Certified. I'm teaching music because budget cuts have eliminated all of the library positions. I'm in excess again this year. Fourth time in four years. I'll probably be teaching 6th grade next year.
Unless you get elected, the only way to effect that change is to draw attention to the damage the misguided laws are doing. In other words, you publicly say the things this article said.
If a child is so damaged that they will not or cannot learn, then they should be removed from the classroom until they are able to function at some reasonable level.