Marie Corfield, tireless advocate for children and teachers, prepared a speech to honor her retiring colleagues in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.
She noted that on that night, the schools of New Jersey were losing 500 years of experience.
Too many good teachers leaving, retiring.
She writes:
“Within the first 6 months of Christie’s first term the number of public school employees who filed for retirement almost doubled that of the previous year. While I don’t have statistics on the past 4 years, I have personally spoken to many retiring educators who are simply fed up. A special education teacher with whom I had the honor to work for 10 years, who worked miracles with our most challenging children for over 20 years, told me that while she didn’t want to retire, she could no longer subject her students to education ‘reform’. Another is taking an early retirement, sacrificing part of her pension, because she just can’t take it anymore. This is how we ‘attract and retain the best teachers’? This is how we make a great public education system better? We make educators’ jobs so unbearable that they leave rather than inflict damaging policies on their students?”
We have had a barrage of damaging policies and attacks on hard-working teachers. Marie is one of those teachers who has been a model for others. She won’t give up. Neither will we. Don’t retire if you have the fortitude to persist. Stay in your position. Fight for your kids and your profession. Outlast the Know-Nothings..
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The saddest commentary is that the number of early retiring teachers is getting higher and higher, thanks to those policies.
“…the number of early retiring teachers is getting higher and higher, thanks to those policies,” which is to say that the so-called reformers are succeeding in a major part of their project, which is to remove career teachers from the schools and replace them with temps.
If the so-called reformers have their way, none of the replacements for those career teachers will last long enough to earn tenure or a pension.
Success!
I hope that those that DO retire, use their newfound retirement time to be tireless advocates for public education. THAT would be useful and invigorating use of retirement and a heck of a legacy for any teacher.
That’s what I’m going to do. While I was in the classroom I lacked the time and mental energy for the advocacy needed. As of yesterday, I’ve got both now.
I read this article and could only sadly nod my head as my peers and I are encountering a lot of teachers who can either afford to retire because a spouse earns enough or have almost enough years in to make the retirement somehow work. They are leaving in droves. And then there are the ones who miraculously stuck it out and have the correct number of years for full retirement. I know someone who is nearly 40 years in this year and is likely to leave. She is an excellent teacher – really and truly each year she seems to age like a fine wine! But sadly she will retire and even at 40 yrs in she would stay longer but just HATES the destructive anti education climate now. She says it is worse than she has ever seen it. These retirees need to fight tooth and nail for the rights of our students and teachers (now that they are armed with experience and free from the punitive dangers of fighting while on the job)!
“Common sense” reforms continue in Ohio:
“After charter schools received the largest funding boosts per pupil in the most recent state budget, state legislators are toying with the idea of giving them more money to fix Ohio’s dropout problem at a time when charter schools are reporting record-high dropout rates.
Sixteen years ago, drop-out recovery charter schools didn’t exist. Now they enroll roughly 14,000 teenagers and young adults, mostly in cities with high poverty and unemployment.
These students may be prone to dropping out. But charter schools especially struggle to retain and graduate them.
In the 2012-13 school year, more than 5,300 dropouts — a quarter of all Ohio dropouts that year — attended one of two online charter schools: the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow or Ohio Virtual Academy. Collectively, these two charter schools have a dropout rate 45 times higher than traditional public schools, and 10 times higher than the state’s eight largest city school districts.
Another 6,829 students — about a third of all Ohio dropouts — attended charter schools designed specifically for dropouts, among them Invictus and Life Skills. Last year, these dropout charter schools enrolled one percent of Ohio’s public school students but accounted for roughly the same number of dropout events as did public district schools, which enrolled 91 percent of Ohio’s students.”
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-s-charter-school-dropouts-soar-push-state-in-opposite-direction-of-u-s-1.490893#.U4R6BiYHPTQ.twitter
Wonderful. Good money after bad, after bad, after bad. But, hey, these are ONLINE and cost minimal $ per student, right? Who cares if they aren’t accountable, just have to log in, etc., and drop out anyhow. The onlines aren’t working, but sadly online learning, without teachers, is what the 1%ers ultimately want. There will be no accountability. There will be no fox watching the hen house, there will be no brick and mortar buildings, no superintendents, no principals, no nurses, no counsellors, no teachers, no aides, no lunch programs, no security, no busses – there will be videos and computer programs, and testing. All paid for by the people. All funneled to the wealthy, who own the technology and the tests. The kids will be indoctrinated to be walmart workers, and be grateful, with rigor.
What a world we are heading for.
Oh, it was lovely. There was a lot of strutting around on stage and the now-obligatory public school bashing.
This was the end-game:
“Stebelton, who did not respond to multiple requests to participate in this story, took the language from a separate bill that would have done the same, and had been lobbied by White Hat.”
I retired 23 years ago and at that time, the hue and cry was: how much longer do you have to go before you can retire. I LOVED teaching but even then the politics drove you crazy. This began with “A Nation at Risk” and has gone straight downhill since then. I cam home from teaching exhausted and discouraged and retired as early as possible. I still miss interacting with children and still hear from many of my former students.
I fear that this kind of mindset, the autocratic, top down belief that those on top have the knowledge and wisdom to demand obedience from their underlings, the peasants, permeates our society now and not just in education although of course that hits us where we live.
It seems that those “on top” have ceased to believe in the efficacy of democratic ideals. “WE” have the answers and you peasants MUST follow our dicta.
Watching “Secrets of the Dead” on PBS last night was enlightening from my perspective. The English captured German generals and treated them with great respect which led to the English getting a LOT of insight into the German war machine. What was interesting to me was that one of the generals was not a Nazi but was a highly intelligent, well read man who disliked Hitler but another general was unintelligent and a stooge of Hitler, a Nazi in belief and in his actions.
I likened the latter with some of the actions, beliefs, ad nauseum of some of our politicians now in their ignorance yet hubris. Worse than those who know not that they know not are those who know not that they know not but are absolutely sure they know. How our country and planet suffers from this.
I am nearing retirement. I almost can’t wait. It makes me sad. I have been offered positions at private schools recently, but I am not going to let the deformers force me out!! I know several mid-career teachers who have just resigned and are now regrettably teaching at private schools much to their chagrin.
“Another is taking an early retirement, sacrificing part of her pension…”
What pension? NJ educators, please take a look at this petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/new-jersey-state-house-and-new-jersey-state-senate-don-t-let-the-governor-shortchange-the-pension-system?share_id=bDRVCYTeOZ&utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition
Diane,
Can you or someone on this set get a set of data that shows how many teachers are actually retiring or quitting, for say the last five years. I know a lot of us baby boomers were due to retire sooner than later, but the exiting of teachers is dramatic. I would love to know, but don’t know how to access this kind of data.
Thanks so much.
I want to know how I fit I to this equation.
Teacher exodus is at historic levels, according to the 2014 Carnegie report “Beginners in the Classroom”:
“[A] 2013 study of teacher attrition in four large urban
systems, TNTP, a teacher recruitment and training organization, found that nearly one-third of highly e ective teachers left within two years, and almost half left within five years.”
The same report says that “the primary driver of the exodus of early-career teachers is a lack of administrative and professional support.”
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/newsroom/press-releases/new-carnegie-report-examines-rise-in-inexperienced-teachers-in-public-schools. The Carnegie report says it is even worse in charter schools. Not a day goes by when my wife and I don’t talk about retiring. 30 years ago being a teacher was a public service, today you are the new welfare queen. So little truth is reported about the real crisis in education masquerading as “reform”. I don’t know where we would be without Diane behind us. We need to reach the parents and community members who are constantly bombarded by the anti education propaganda.
I have 8 years experience as a teacher in Camden, NJ and recently got laid off along with approximately 200 other teachers. A record number of teachers in Camden are retiring this year due to the state “occupation.” I work in a building without air conditioning and we are sweltering. Could this be part of the reason for the “achievement gap” that has been blamed on teachers in public schools?
Debra, your fellow educators are thinking of you. This travesty needs to be answered.
Outlast the Know-Nothings
Here here!!!
You can add me in. On June 6, I will retire after a total of 30 years in education, three in Hunterdon County, NJ and 27 years in three districts in AZ and on the Hopi Reservation. I would love to have continued in my current position, AP at a Title I school, but I just refuse to implement policies with which I totally disagree. I’m retiring, because I can.
I have 25 years in. I absolutely still love the teaching part of my job. The educrats are making it harder and harder to stay. Unfortunately for them, my daddy named me after his family’s mule. I am a stunning example of the self-fulfilling prophecy — way way too stubborn to quit ;). I thought I wouldn’t make it to Christmas back in the fall, but I realized our newly elected, anti-teacher, tea party-backed school board needed me around to help teach THEM a thing or twelve about the value of veteran teachers.
Good luck to all the new retirees and bless you to those who vow to use your newly found freedom from the deformers to continue the fight for our kids and teachers! ^0^
My older sister, a HS English teacher in central Indiana, retires this spring, having reached age 62. She is so glad to get out! As a tribute to her htireless work as a regular teacher in the trenches, I sent her a copy of this article, with this quotation from the Bible:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
(2 Timothy 4:7)
I am 10 years younger, and I told her recently that I would not be able to survive another ten years of ugliness in public education. There will be a total breakdown before I make it to retirement UNLESS things change for the better.
Of course…Teachers are no longer teachers…They are robotic testers testing robotic children………There are still a few good principals who allow the teachers to teach………..I have noticed that the so called “DR PRINCIPALS” with the online degrees are the ones that harass the teachers the most about the most “nitpicky” daily nothings. ..