Teachers are leaving Arizona in record numbers due to low salaries and persistent legislative intrusion in their classrooms.
In the Phoenix area alone, there are more than 1,000 open teaching positions.
“”We think this is the largest documented teacher shortage that Arizona has faced in decades,” said Andrew Morrill, who is the president of the Arizona Education Association and a former high school English teacher.
“Morrill points to three factors that are affecting the shortage. He says the state’s teacher salaries are among the lowest in the country, the state requires so many exams and guidelines that seasoned teachers feel limited in their ability to be creative, and according to a recent Census report, the state is dead last in dollars spent in the classroom.
“Teachers are leaving the profession. They’re leaving in debt and they’re leaving in tears,” said Morrill.
This is a predictable result of the test-and-punish policies of the Bush-Obama administrations, as well as the corporate-media assaults on the teaching profession in recent years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m not so sure that reformers care about this. In fact, I think it may be a part of the goal. De-professionalize teaching, reduce the pay and the requirments so anyone can teach and there will be plenty of money left for private interests.
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And convert the schools into online academies.
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Yes, it is part of the plan. They can’t lose. If this doesn’t work, they still have testing and tech profits from the public schools. But they will be competing with one another for the profits. As little charters come in, they will be swallowed by the KIPP’s and such. Big, corporate ed will win some of our schools, and tech will win others. Our future is a question mark. Change may be needed, but profiteering isn’t – yet that is our culture. Thankfully, people are beginning to speak out and fight.
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You are so right. When the patterns appear identically in so many states, it should be evident to all that there’s a big push to discredit public schools and their teachers. Once public education is in total disarray from decimated funding and constant attacks, private, for-profit entities will become a viable option. All of those who believe that education, in addition to most government services, should be privatized are well on their way to seeing their vision realized.
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Wait time out… we are STILL blaming Bush? At what point are we allowed to hold THIS administration accountable for the things that went on during THIS administration?
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I think you need to reread what Diane wrote:
“This is a predictable result of the test-and-punish policies of the Bush-Obama administrations, as well as the corporate-media assaults on the teaching profession in recent years.”
See — there’s an “Obama administration” after that dash.
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They have already done exactly that in Minnesota or Wisconsin, I was reading about it the other day. They have passed a Law that will let High school Drop Outs teach if they want too … Google it .. I think it’s Wisconsin.
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I have a HS friend from AZ moving up to WA State to teach. She’s leaving behind her teaching job of 10 years in AZ, and coming up here where I (and now she will) make nearly double her AZ salary. Granted, the cost of living is higher up here, but she’ll be living in southwestern Washington, which is not as expensive as Seattle. She signed her teaching contract for next year and said she thought there had to have been an error in the salary schedule when she first saw it. WA teachers haven’t had a COLA increase in over 6 years, but compared to Arizona, we’re looking pretty good. My poor home state is just a (heavily polluted) shadow of what it once was.
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Florida wins this battle hands down. I taught in the 4th largest District in the Country. When I quit last year I was making $42,000 with 13 years experience which is only $2,000 more than a rookie teacher but I was only getting paid as if I had seven years experience since steps have been all but eliminated. Take a look at this salary scale and tell me how you can be expected to live in the Miami area as a teacher. I simply had to quit as it was economic suicide to continue to work in a profession that simply does not value its teachers in the slightest way. http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/teacher/employment/ins/salary/new_hire_salary_schedule.html
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That salary scale I listed above is the pay for performance scale. I though it was supposed to increase pay not lower it. Here is the Grandfathered scale which is just as pathetic considering no more steps are given. So you are basically stuck at your current step for life. http://www.nctq.org/docs/Broward_2013-14_Salary_Schedule.pdf
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When will anyone pay attention? It is such a shame that teachers who once hoped to make a career out of teaching are being forced out of the classroom in record numbers. More than education is being destroyed by neoliberal policy that tries to commodify all human activity.
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I’m looking at the survey questions / data from this study on teacher attrition in Arizona:
Click to access err-initial-report-final.pdf
Here’s a shocker (on p. 29 of the Appendix):
———————————————————
“Question 14: In general, educators who were recruited out of Arizona typically remain in a district / charter school…
“ANSWER …………………………………RESPONSES
CHOICES
“A) 0 – 2 years ……………………………. 40.94 %
“B) 3 – 5 years ……………………………. 48.32 %
“C) more than 5 years ………………….. 10.74 %
————————————————————–
Holy sh%& !
That’s an attrition rate of 41% leaving at 2 years or less. (i.e. more than 4-out-of-ten, more than 40-out-of-100)
and
an attrition rate of 89.26 % (9-out-of-10, or 90-out-of-100) leaving at 5 years or less … i.e. combined number of those leaving 0 – 2 years AND 3-5 years;
That’s just staggering.
It must just flat out suck to work as a teacher in that state.
Also, keep in mind that 31 schools surveyed refused to answer this question, with 149 answering. One can presume that many or all of those schools among the “31” did not have promising answers to that question that they wished to share.
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Teachers are also leaving in AZ due to being treated so poorly. Three years ago I retired because of the harassment I received by the Principal I had for three years. I was always trying to get my children the help they needed by taking their information to child study. I was told to go back and try more strategies, which didn’t work. They were LD and/or had other problems that needed more than one person could do in a class of 28 to 30 students. There was little help coming from anyone other than me. I felt I was failing my students. I know other teachers experienced similar. Now AZ is an even bigger mess. This madness needs to end. We are hurting our most vulnerable children. Special Ed funding needs to be reinstated by the Federal and State, as well as pay increases and more money in the classroom equal in all schools.
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Dottie, I agree that our most vulnerable children need a lot of help, often more than a classroom teacher alone can offer. However, our state moved to a new system of identifying children with learning disabilities by evaluating their response to intervention in the general classroom setting, and from what you described that is what your principal asked you to do. Is it hard to implement in a classroom with lots of children? You bet. However, I’ve seen it work, even in a school with a very high percentage of children receiving free & reduced hot lunch.
As part of a special ed team at my school, we also tell teachers to go back and document the specific strategies they implemented, so that we can prove the child has a learning disability, according to state guidelines. If the teacher doesn’t provide the data, we can’t move forward with an evaluation. We’ve observed a lot of variability in the quality of documentation teachers provide. It’s not enough to just bring concerns to the attention of the team anymore; there must be proof that the teacher tried a different way of teaching the student and that the student still had difficulty learning the material.
Something that would definitely help is additional monies for teacher support, so that literacy specialists and others can provide this individualized instruction for students as needed.
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Janet, I taught for 13 years, so I knew what I needed to do. I documented, tried different strategies, and presented the info. What about the boy, who was very obviously high-functioning autism (not just to me but to many other teachers), but I was told his mom didn’t get it, so we weren’t going to do anything. Just shove him on to the next grade with no help. I think that is part of our job–educating the parents. How about a young man who was so angry that he was an emotional mess to the point of threatening other students and me. He made it very difficult to teach by yelling out and disrupting constantly. When the counselor would come, he would be quiet, so he knew the game. I wanted him to get counseling, which his mom did eventually begin until the new boyfriend said no. Probably the best example happened at the school before. I had two brothers from Africa in my math class. We split to help one of the teachers have a break. One boy had a severe stutter. The other would not stay in his seat, constantly made noise, could not do first grade math, let alone 4th grade math. I used manipulatives, worked with them in small group. Nothing helped. Speech teacher told me the one boy had the stutter from learning English. Long story short–I have a lawyer friend, who works with refugees. She got permission from their guardians to represent them at school. The boy with the stutter has stuttered all his life in his own language. The brother tested to be special ed. Not a little–a lot. He also had the worst form of dyslexia, and ADD. They both suffered from PTSD. They received the help they needed, but only due to my friend. I was sent to my last school at the end of that year. I don’t regret it at all.
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Weren’t the “reformers” constantly told that this would happen? I talked to a school board member who wanted tenure ended because of a “mediocre” teacher they wanted to fire. I told her that if you get rid of tenure, then “mediocre” teachers are all you will have left. What serious potential teacher would take up a career where, at any time, he could be capriciously fired.
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Sounds like every other industry. I don’t work as a teacher, but I could be capriciously fired at any time for any reason.
That’s life in America. Get used to it. You’re asking for special treatment to be exempt from that risk, sorry.
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Wow. The attitude that we should all accept the least possible outcome without question is about as defeatist and unAmerican as it gets. Why not aspire to make all hiring and firing fair and with due process? Not all jobs are subject to political machinations and tampering like twaching is but we can raise that tide to include all boats.
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EP: Do you answer to hundreds of bosses? I do. I had 275 students this last year, so I had at least 275 parents to answer to. Of course, with multiple parents and guardians, the number is much higher than that. Every parent wants something a little different for his/her child. Many of those needs and wants conflict with the needs and wants of another parent. That’s not complaining, that’s just the way it is. So, without career protections (tenure doesn’t exist in K-12), do I support the want of a parent to have his child with special needs mainstreamed, who is very disruptive in class? Or do I support the want of another parent to have her child learn in a classroom with minimal disruptions? Without career protections, I could lose my job either way.
And we should ALL be fighting to NOT be fired for no reason, regardless of the profession. This should NOT be set up as the deformers have done–us vs. them. We’re all in it together, and we should all have basic rights. The fact that we don’t is not the fault of teachers. It’s the fault of the 1%. The 1% knows this, That’s why they keep up the propaganda to divide the rest of us, because if the rest of us woke up and started fighting against them, they would lose.
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In addition, Arizona’s lack of funding for public education is ending up costing the state even more money. My cousin’s high functioning autistic son was not getting any type of quality education in her Arizona public school district. She eventually had to hire a lawyer and had to even sue the district to even get a due process hearing (which is her right under IDEA). Obviously, after going into debt to pay over $30,000 in legal fees because of the district’s legal delaying tactics, she did win the due process hearing. The district is now paying for a state approved special education program in a private school and transportation which totals close to $70,000. In addition, because she won the hearing, all her legal fees were returned to her from the district. It would have cost the district less to have a good special education program with a competent teacher. My cousin’s son is only 12 years old, so I guess they will be paying for his education for at least another nine years. That is about $700,000 for just one child because of the state’s hatred of public education. I would bet that this extra cost to the district resulted in more cuts and lay offs.
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Nevada is almost as bad for teachers. There is total hostility toward teachers there.
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That is a bright spot in breaking up the CCSD.
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“Razing Arizona”
Arizona’s imploding
Really going to pot
Crazies are reloading
Leave with what you’ve got!
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I’ve been teaching in Arizona for 16 years (having come here from Texas). It is harder now than it’s ever been. I happen to live in a community that strongly supports public education . However, the community itself is poor with one of the highest non-reservation levels of unemployment. Still, the board is seriously looking at raising tax rates to try to compensate for salaries that have been frozen for 8 years. While the state has shrugged off its obligation to fund public education, it has made the problem worse by making it more difficult for local communities to raise funds themselves. It is difficult to look at the mess we are in here and come to any other conclusion than that this is a concerted effort to destroy public education.
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Former Superintendent Huppenthal and Republican legislators have been setting up this situation for years. They haven’t believed the teachers were worth what they’re paid and diverted millions into creating ways to prove it, in data mining technologies, in low pay and low benefit charters, and in dubious teacher replacement software (like the one Huppenthal invented). Huppenthal bragged to business groups that he believed that low-pay teacher technicians could administer in classes sized at 50 plus. Giddy at the prospect of those wonderful cost savings, legislators have been siphoning out huge dollars from the education financing system that ultimately pay for their donors corporate tax breaks.
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After driving the teachers away, they’ll claim they *have* to go to online instruction, that there’s no alternative. The alternative of paying the teachers well and treating them like professionals will somehow disappear from the conversation. Tennessee is not far behind. It is heart-breaking.
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Yes, they have all angles covered. What is needed is somebody to uncover them all, speaking in our language instead of theirs, as Bernie Sanders is doing about wage inequality.
Jeez, I wish I had more energy. Surely there are some retirees out there who can take up the fight?
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Reblogged this on donotmalignme and commented:
When you punish good teachers for trying to do the right thing and they leave the teaching profession you punish the children too.
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Arne Duncan has proposed a two-prong plan of attack against this issue in AZ and other states. First, more federal mandates making things just as miserable for teachers in every state of the nation, so teachers will have fewer reasons to seek greener pastures. Second, new laws forbidding anyone who has ever been a certified teacher from being employed doing anything other than teaching for the rest of their lives.
Duncan assures the nation that this last proposal is legal because technically it does not force anyone to remain in teaching.
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Could you please let us know where we can look up these new laws?
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I’m sorry guys — I was just being silly. That isn’t real. At least, I HOPE it isn’t real. It’s telling how believable it was, I guess.
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It’s not far from the truth here in Florida due to our VAM laws,written by ALEC legislators, once a teacher is rated “Needs Improvement’ or below for 2 straight years they are stripped of their teaching license and it is against the law for any district within the state to hire that person as a teacher ever again. I know this legislation has been packaged and passed in other ALEC-controlled states as well.
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Where did you find the information about certified teachers not being able to work elsewhere? I would like to investigate this.
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I agree. This article by Mark Naison addresses the phenomenon of …
“Let’s not leave teaching outside the charter sector well enough alone… instead, let’s make teaching suck everywhere!”
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-charter-school-leaders-are-behind.html
Apparently, working at Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy Charter Network is sort of like living in East Berlin after World War II, and the Charter World in general like those countries then behind the Iron Curtain.
Given the job opportunities to work in the public school system—sort of like an open border / the absence of a “Berlin Wall”—the charter school teachers readily defect to work for the public school system, where, thanks to union protections, they thankfully can work in a harmonious environment where they are treated as professionals, with respect, dignity, and are free from bullying and abuse.
At one point, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz had a teacher / administrator that she brought out in the media as a PR “show pony.” Her name was/isJessica Reid. Jessica was showcased at NBC’s Education Nation, then interviewed and profiled extensively, including in Steve Brill’s corporate reform book, and in the pro-charter documentary THE LOTTERY.
You want to see “The Stockholm Syndrome” at work?
Go here to 02:40 to see Ms Reid in THE LOTTERY do Eva’s bidding and attack the public school system Ms Reid used to teach in—but, again, the same system to which she returned a year after the movie was released:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW-M0EDWJM0
Ms. Reid was the young mid-twenties, hard-working, union-free, go-getter teacher in charter schools… that was contrasted with the stereotypical lazy, complaisant unionized veteran teacher in the traditonal public system… blah-blah-blah…
Well, guess what happened? Jessica “defected” from Eva’s charter-land to return to work where she started her career—at a unionized NYC public school and —horror of horrors!!!—where she re-join the local teachers’ union. Ms. Reid claimed that working for Eva drove Ms. Reid to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and almost destroyed Reid’s marriage. Talk about PR backfiring on you. Read about this here:
http://www.thenation.com/article/162695/can-teachers-alone-overcome-poverty-steven-brill-thinks-so#
This explains Eva’s dictate that no current Success Academy teachers shall not now, nor, in the future, will receive a letter of recommendation—from an administrator, or fellow teacher (writing one being a fireable offense)— in pursuit of a teaching job outside the Success Academy network (“company policy” according to what one of her former teachers posted on Glass Door)
The “no letters of rec” policy is Eva’s version of the “Berlin Wall”, or a closed border.
That explains why Eva, Michelle Rhee, Steve Perry, Geoffrey Canada, and the other charterization/privatization creeps are seeking the total annihilation of unionized schools.
Once they have achieved this, Eva (and the others) can then snarl at her abused workforce, “Hey, there’s no more public schools with unions anymore for you to escape to, so you’re all stuck here and have to put up with this hell-hole environment whether you like it or not… either that or leave the teaching profession altogether.”
Finally, here’s that article to which referred to at the beginning of this post, where the author (Mark Naison?) talks about this key — though rarely discussed— reason that charter leaders are so obsessed with annihilating teacher unions, and running them down, and scapegoating them for all that’s wrong with education.
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-charter-school-leaders-are-behind.html
Here’s the text:
—————————-
“Thursday, September 4, 2014
“Why Charter School Leaders Are Behind
Attacks on Teachers Unions and Public Schools
“If you ever wonder why famous charter school leaders like Eva Moskowitz or Steve Perry don’t just run their schools quietly and let the results speak for themselves and instead devote much of their time attacking teachers, teachers unions and public schools, consider this.
“When the hiring freeze in NYC public schools was lifted a few months ago, a large number of charter school teachers applied for positions in NYC public schools, especially in high performing schools with principals known for treating their staffs well. These teachers couldn’t wait to get out of jobs with long hours, no due process or job security and abusive administrators for positions in well run public schools.
“The hiring freeze is back on so the exodus of charter school teachers has temporarily ended, but you can see why a strong public school system, buttressed by strong teachers unions, is threatening to charters. The best teachers want to teach in well run public schools and be protected by unions. That could be why Eva Moskowitz is a major force behind the lawsuits attacking teacher tenure in New York City and New York State.
“If public education remains strong in New York City, she will not be able to hold on to her best teachers.”
—————————————————-
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In 2009, we had teacher layoffs out here in L.A. at the hands of some corporate reform whores then serving on the LAUSD Board (thanks to UTLA botching several key elections, we lost control of the board for about 4 years.)
At that time, I remember attending a friend’s wedding where I was sat at the same table with someone on the board of a prominent charter school.
We then got into a lively chat about ed policy. She kept interrupting me when I distinguished between public schools and charter schools.
“Charter schools are public schools!” she angrily snarled.
In response, I said that the only thing “public” about them was the money, as charter schools were and are…
— not accountable to the “public” via a democratically-elected board,
— not transparent to the “public”, and
— refused to educate all the “public”—those children who are most expensive and difficult to educate—special ed., second-language learners, foster care, homeless, behavior problems, etc.
In essence, her alleged “public” school was nothing more than a “private” school using “public money,” and the parents were saving thousands of dollars they would have otherwise (and could have… I know them; these folks were/are loaded) shelled out to an actual private school. That tax money that went to her school was draining money from and damaging the public schools where I taught… blah-blah-blah… The difference between this set-up and vouchers is minimal.
Needless to say, these comments went over well with her…. NOT!
Anyway, I asked her how things were going with her school, and she said that thanks to the recent layoffs by the new anti-union school board (UTLA botched several elections, and for 4 years, we lost control of the LAUSD Board, but that’s another story). Those UTLA folks were now being forced out of desperation into working at charter schools like hers.
“We’re finally getting applications from credentialed teachers”, this woman gleefully reported.
(Though I didn’t ask it at the time, this comment begged the question, “Then what-the-hell kind of teachers applied before, or have been working at your school until now?”)
There was one traditional public school where four of the laid-off teachers working there (victims of 2009 RIF, or layoffs) all applied and took jobs at a nearby charter school. I ran into one of them while I was out Christmas shopping…about mid-December, if memory serves.
“So how’s Such-and-Such Charter School treating you guys?”
“We all quit just before Thanksgiving,” she abruptly replied.
“Really, why?”
” ‘Cause we were working in f—in’ sweatshop.”
“So they made you work hard?”
“No, the hard work wasn’t the problem. I normally work hard. I enjoy hard work. It was the toxic, fear-based, abusive environment. Nothing you did was good enough. You were constantly abused, run down, and bullied, and in front of others—parents, kids, fellow staff… I can only compare it to being in a relationship with a controlling, abusive husband or boyfriend. And not one of the abusers had any background of experience in education… apart from one with a 2-year stint at TFA.”
“What happened?”
“Well, one of us (the four) said she was going to resign on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving… so we all talked amongst each other and decided to do it together and join her that day. When we did, the Director couldn’t have cared less. No attempts to dissuade us or anything. No “Good luck elsewhere”. Just pack your sh– and go. We were just like lightbulbs that burnt out, and were soon replaced with new lightbulbs.”
On that score, LAUSD needed to start hiring again last spring, and—surprise, surprise—I’m meeting teachers who are refugees who defected from the Charter World. The shortage in LAUSD provides charter school teachers the opportunity to work in a unionized environment erasing the metaphorical “Berlin Wall” or close border (from earlier in this post). I sat next to one of them at this year’s first UTLA Area Meeting the week before last, and she told almost the same, word-for-word story as the teacher above did.
“I’m so glad to be outta there. It was Hell!”
Oh what the hell… I’m going to out that charter network that this teacher bitched about. She was describing her time working at Judy Burton’s “Alliance for College Ready Public Schools”
http://www.laalliance.org/
(UTLA is in process of organizing the Alliance schools, bringing over 600 teachers into UTLA in the process. The sleazy tricks that Alliance honchos are engaging in to block this will blow your mind… more on that later.)
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It sounds like things are going exactly according to plan: make the situation unbearable for career teachers, and then rely on a constantly churned group of low-wage temps, and then use the resulting dysfunction to further shrink the public schools and extract resources that can be re-directed to political backers and cronies.
As for the kids, stick one hundred per class in front of computer screens running some “personalized” software, overseen by a distracted temp. After all, these are other people’s children anyway, and are “destined” to be part of a powerless service industry proletariat.
Every action and policy proposal of the Overclass demonstrates their belief that most humans, especially the poor and working class, are redundant, if not disposable. In these people’s minds, why should resources be “wasted” on them?
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Michael, it is even worse than you portray. Most of the children being harmed in Arizona are of Hispanic origin and are poor. The Overclass seems to think they need little education, as their “career” will be very low-level.
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I don’t know who originally said this, but it addresses your point Diane, and those of others on this thread: “In the US, Class often speaks in the language of Race.”
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When students from pre-K to high school are sitting in front of computers for 6-7 hours per day making money for tech companies and testing companies, will parents care? Will they be bamboozled by the bells and whistles of technology? Will they bow to technopoly? Will it be too late to change? Maybe the most important 21st century skills will be sitting in front of computers, the ability to bounce from low paying job to low paying job, and the ability to keep your mouth shut and not question anything.
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susannunes mentioned the same problem in
Nevada… and she’s right.
The situation is even more catastrophic
if you head north to Nevada, and
this is what’s coming to the rest of
the country.
The situation for teacher in both states
are like two canaries in a coalmine…
Or the tip of the sword… or the earliest
echo of the coming avalanche…
whatever… it’s early… and I can’t
find the right metaphor.
This is the game plan for teachers
in all fifty states.
This is what ed reform has wrought…
the de-professionalization of teaching…
and the downgrading of the caliber of
the teaching force. Check out this quote
(from the link BELOW):
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/06/402887228/las-vegas-betting-on-new-teachers-but-coming-up-short
—————————————-
—————————————-
“‘I feel like I’m being challenged, which is a definite change,” says first-year teacher Jessica Adams. She used to work as a cocktail server at the Planet Hollywood casino and resort on the Vegas strip. Unfulfilled with that career, she joined a fast-track teacher training program to get into the classroom.
Server Jessica is now Ms. Adams, the fourth-grade teacher.
“I really enjoy being with the kids and making a difference instead of serving tables,” she says with a chuckle.
The 26-year-old, who has a college degree in hospitality management, now works the floor in a temporary classroom trailer at Robert Forbuss Elementary, an overcrowded school in southwest Las Vegas.
———————————–
————————————
Now, Jessica… if you’re out there reading this, I don’t mean to denigrate low-level service work such as cocktail waitressing, or degrees in “hospitality management”, but as kids these days say, “WTF!” (What the f-word!)
Are Bill Gates kids at Lakeside being taught by cocktail waitresses with a couple weeks “training”, and in converted trailers? Obama’s kids? Rahm Emanuel’s? Michelle Rhee’s? Campbell Brown’s?
The enrollment at ed departments are dropping like an elevator ride at a Disney park… and current teachers are fleeing teaching like… like… like… I can’t think of any more metaphors …
So what do they have to do in places where this crisis is being felt earliest—and there’s no union, or an extremely weak union (i.e. right-to-work-FOR-LESS states)?
Again, let’s take a trip to Sin City, U.S.A. and find out
about the teacher shortage there:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/06/402887228/las-vegas-betting-on-new-teachers-but-coming-up-short
“Las Vegas: Betting On New Teachers But Coming Up Short”
The title of the NPR piece is wrong; those in charge in Clark County and Las Vegas are most certainly NOT “betting on” teachers. “Betting” implies you’re putting money on the table on the square marked “teachers”. They’re doing nothing of the kind. They’re only betting on… or hoping… that they can continue “cheaping out” on what they have to pay teachers. They believe that they do this, in part, by coming up with ridiculous gimmicks to get teachers to work in lousy conditions and for lousy pay.
Back to NPR:
——————–
Many veteran educators here say the shortage is undermining morale and student learning.
“It shouldn’t necessarily all be put on the veteran teachers to help the new teachers,” says fifth-grade teacher Rob Rosenblatt. The shortage and overcrowding issues, he says, mean more work and more stress for teachers.
The district increasingly relies on long-term substitutes and online classes to help plug the holes. And there is a critical shortage of qualified substitutes.
Sarah Sunnasy teaches fifth grade at Bertha Ronzone Elementary School. She has back trouble but says she almost never calls in sick.
SCARY GRAPH ILLUSTRATING SHORTAGE
“I’ve come to school on days where I cried trying to get out of bed,” Sunnasy says. “Because I know if I try to call in a sub, there is not going to be anybody there. And I’m not gonna put that pressure on the people that I work with to split my class or cover my class.”
Last school year in the district about 500 teachers quit without giving any reason. One of Rosenblatt’s colleagues resigned a few weeks into the new school year. Rosenblatt says he and a colleague have had to pick up all the slack — lessons, report cards, grading and tests.
“Basically it was the two of us teaching not just our two classes but a third class on top of it. I even told my kids, ‘I’m neglecting you guys.’ ”
He apologized to his regular class but told them he had to step in because the class next door “just wasn’t getting the education they deserved.”
————————-
——–
Things there are so godawful that to solve the problem, those in charge
even come up with this idiotic “superhero” teacher recruiting campaign where
Las Vegas’ (i.e. Clark County’s) anti-union school superintendent Pat Skorkowsky
went zip-lining through downtown Las Vegas like a superhero to drum
up publicity, and where all human resource dept. workers now wear superhero capes.
I’m not kidding… watch this video of this blithering idiot soaring through the air:
Hey, Pat Skorkowsky… why don’t you just pay educators a decent, (union-negotiated?) salary, with decent benefits, job conditions, etc.? This is a profession, not a low-level service job like cocktail waitressing!!! No… the rich Red States’ folks don’t want their taxes raised.
The Ed Week article BELOW has Staci Vesneske, the district’s chief human resources officer, implicitly dismissing the notion of raising teachers’ salaries will be part of the efforts to address the teacher shortage: (There’s more details about the “superhero” campaign)
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2015/04/are_you_a_certified_teacher_cl.html
ED WEEK: “One challenge in attracting candidates is wages. The starting salary for teachers there is just under $35,000, less than the national average and lower than other similarly sized urban districts. (The 2012-13 national average teacher starting salary was $36,141.) But that number may appear deceptively low, Vesneske said, because district employees do not pay for Social Security withholdings—the district covers those costs—and there are other financial perks that may make the salary worthwhile, she said.
“The need for teachers is more crucial in the elementary grades, but the district is looking for candidates in high-need areas such as math, science and special education, Vesneske said. Of the 2,600 teacher candidates the district is seeking, at least 1,000 will be elementary teachers, she said.
” ‘We are still looking for quality,’ she said.”
—————-
… but we don’t want to have to pay anything for it….
she should have added.
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I left Arizona after teaching there for just three years. I moved to California and never regretting leaving that “Right to Work” state! Besides the low pay and lousy benefits, I’ll never forget the HUGE push to get all of the teachers to contribute monthly to the United Way. There was a long, mandatory presentation after school, and each of us received donation pledge forms with our names and addresses already typed in. We were supposed to fill in how much we were going to contribute each month. Site principals really pushed this and had competitions between each grade level and between each site. It was nuts.
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Same in Utah on all accounts, except we get the added “benefit” of having lower per pupil expenditures AND higher class sizes! Utah has been doing for years what everyone else is seeing now around the country. It’s sad that NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia, a Utah native who taught for 15 years or so in Utah, hasn’t been shouting from the rooftops about what was to come. A lot of states could have avoided this if they had looked to Utah’s experiences over the past 20 years. I’m sorry that those states didn’t learn from those experiences.
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And I’m sorry that you all have to live through the experiences.
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Our issues are global issues.
For a few years now I’ve been aware that the situation in Britain is as bad or worse than here, and similar, with teacher blame and privatization winning the day.
Here is an example from (presumably) an educator’s blog.
“Let’s give Morgan the benefit of the doubt, and assume that there’s been no impact of the last 5 years of being told that teachers are so shockingly poor that they need carpet salesmen , failed journalists and dodgy hedge-fund shysters with odd links to assaulted Lithuanian prostitutes, to show them how to do their jobs. Likewise, the endless tough-sounding speeches making damning-but-pointless comparisons with other countries, the very public attacks on teachers’ pay and conditions through PRP and pension cuts, and the official policy that teaching is such a piece of piss that nobody actually needs to be qualified to do it – anyone can walk in off the street and do a better job than these so-called “professionals”. Yes, none of that had any impact, Nicky, none of it. You’re right about the media – it’s all their fault.
There is something she’s right about though, and that is the forthcoming teacher shortage. I’ve written about this before and lo, it has come to pass. I’d love to claim that I was particularly prescient, but every bugger with eyes in their head and a brain to think with, has seen this one coming for a while. ”
Apparently, Gove has been replaced by Nicky Morgan; however, it doesn’t seem that things will change for the better.
This is not just an American education fight; it is a globalized issue, with globalized players, no doubt. Didn’t Chile privatize? A global corporate takeover needs to be fought at a global level. They are so big, powerful, and rich, and they are winning so fast. But, as Bernie Sanders has shown us, sometimes a voice in the wilderness earns itself ears.
Diane Ravitch has been one, and continues to be, but my sense is that she is doing all she can do now. We need to get louder, faster, and that may require a world-wide educator network.
(Note: I am reposting this after the post about AZ attrition, as that is what led me to this blog post.)
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I just finished my first year teaching in Arizona after teaching for 26 years in California. This was, without a question, the worst year of my career. First, the ridiculous testing requirements – pencil/paper tests? For kindergartners? Really? That determine my performance pay? I’ve never encountered such insanity and I’ve taught K or first for most of my career. Also, a completely incompetent administration made a difficult situation even worse. Finally, behavior problems from the students like I have never seen before – I was kicked, bitten, told to f#%{ off, multiple times the first few months of school until I finally trained the children into school appropriate behavior. Of course, there was little support from that incompetent administration other that to yell at the students or throw them into ISS. By the end of the year my behavior problems were crying that they didn’t want me to leave. During the course of the year, 6, (yes, 6!!!) other teachers at my school alone, quit in the middle of the year. In my 26 previous years I had only seen a teacher quit in the middle of the year due to health reasons, never because the conditions were so bad. I’m giving it one more year at a new school in a new district for yet another pay cut (I’m making less that half what I made in California but the COLA is, thankfully, lower as well). If this new school is as bad, I’ll be looking to work at WalMart where the pay is better…
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Thank you for staying, K-3 is extremely important and is given insufficient weight, or reverence. The problems which should be solved in 2nd grade, and are not, make subsequent education difficult or impossible.
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What has been said about pay is undoubtedly true
but
I remember famously what one of our BEST teachers said, this was decades ago
but
“I knew when I went into teaching I would never get rich.” [Forgive the nomenclature but” “There has always been bitchin in the kitchen but people are so mad now that they could bite nails now: THAT was DECADES ago.
Tragic to say but he went home and hanged himself.
A common cry even back then was “how long before you can retire?”
This was not that long after “A Nation at Risk” came out.
Steadily down hill since then.
How VERY much worse now.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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I keep wondering where Arizona gets that they spend the least per pupil in the nations. Utah has been the lowest for decades now, including this year, according to the U.S. Census. Not that I want to brag, but, we’re number 51!!! Here’s the report. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-98.html
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I left my Arizona teaching job in 2003 due to low pay. I have been teaching on the east coast ever since but the morale everywhere is bad. I plan to get out and go into something else.
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