Arizona has a teacher shortage. School will open soon, and there are at least 1,000 vacancies.
The reason is not hard to find. Low salaries, which results in high teacher turnover. Arizona has been in the forefront of corporate reform. State policymakers want to hire “effective teachers,” but they don’t want to pay a middle-class wage.
“And the situation is likely get worse, with 25 percent of the state’s roughly 60,000 teachers eligible to retire within the next five years, said Cecilia Johnson, the state Education Department’s associate superintendent of highly effective teachers and leaders.
“Heidi Vega, spokeswoman for the Arizona School Boards Association, said there are many factors in play behind the vacancies but, “First of all, of course, the budget.”
“Vega said some teachers haven’t had a raise in six or seven years. The state routinely ranks near the bottom when it comes to per-pupil spending, she noted.
“Johnson said the average salary for a teacher in Arizona is $47,000 – well below the $54,000 national average – and an average starting salary in the state is $32,000.”
With a starting salary of $32,000, the state’s associate superintendent of “highly effective teachers and leaders” will not have many people to supervise.
Most teachers have not had a raise in years. Enrollments in teacher education programs are dropping. Some schools have no one to mentor young teachers.
“Once in the profession, Johnson said, teachers face greater accountability requirements and more demands of their time than they used to. Those demands “require them to take less and less time in teaching what they believe as experts should be taught,” she said.”
What do reformers think when they see stories like this, echoing the situation in many other states? Do they recognize a problem? Do they see a connection between the loss of teachers and their relentless campaign to belittle teachers and blame them for low scores?
Bill Gates used to boast that his data-driven approach to measuring teacher quality would produce an effective teacher in every classroom. How’s that working out, Bill?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Combine low pay with ineffective corporate designed programs and unrealistic demands. What could possibly go wrong?
Bill Gates and other Silicon Valley titans lobbied hard to expand the H1b cap for years. Their argument was a “tech worker shortage”. Sound familiar? In reality, American tech workers over 35 faced severe age discrimination, no matter how effective. The H1b program brings in overseas tech workers to replace Americans. The H1bs must be sponsored and often work as indentured servants to their company. The H1bs can be paid much less and forced to work under extreme conditions – long hours with little sleep, cramped cubicles, meager benefits. Some return to their home country taking knowledge of our nation’s technology with them.
In the same way Silicon Valley created a mythical tech worker shortage, they are creating a teacher shortage. The result will be more Americans, particularly older teachers, out of work, short careers for young teachers, and an influx of overseas H1b teachers to replace the Americans. History repeats.
Adding-major Silicon Valley firms were charged with collusion to suppress the wages of software engineers
“The H1bs can be paid much less and forced to work under extreme conditions…”
So goes the “menagerie”. Once they sign on the dotted line, “their”
employer of last resort, doesn’t even bother to “kiss them first”.
Sad, but complicity is required…
Mathvale,
Yes Silicon Valley benefits from the H1B visa regime. But let us do some math. The H1B Visa is limited to 65,000 per year and has been for a long time in spite of Bill Gates and other tech giants lobbying for an increase.
It is also an established fact that there are about 4 million teachers in this country. About 5% of the teachers retire every year which is about 200,000 teachers every year. Therefore we need to find about 200,000 teachers every year assuming that the demographics do not change, i.e., the school kids population does not increase or decrease.
Now let us assume that the dreaded Bill Gates and company do not use any of the 65,000 H1B visas(but the fact is they use the majority.) We are still will be left with a shortage of 135,000 of teachers on a yearly basis.
What is the incentive for Silicon Valley or anyone else in creating a mythical teacher shortage?
The question of indentured servants, forced to work under extreme conditions, long hours, no sleep, cramped cubicles for the H1B workers and then they take back nations knowledge to their own countries is nonsense. The US Senate has clamped down on these practices by foreign based companies and subjected them to large fines in the past. We are vigilant.
There are about 800,000 foreign national studying in American Universities at any given time. That comes out to be about 4% of the 20 million plus students enrolled in higher education. America is the world hub for higher education. A small fraction of them, 20,000 per year to be exact get preferential H1B visas in addition to the 65,000 previously described above. The remaining take back American education, knowledge, technology etc, back to their homeland. The take from this is that USA is the most generous nation in the field of education.
One more fact of interest is that there are about 6 million engineers and scientists in this country and 65,000 is a very small fraction of the same. The H1B visas are good for three years and one extension is permitted.
“In the same way Silicon Valley created a mythical tech worker shortage, they are creating a teacher shortage.” Are you sure that “they” started a mythical tech worker shortage, do you have any proof? And who are they to create a mythical teacher shortage?
“an influx of overseas H1B teachers to replace the Americans? History repeats?”
In 1976, was quite surprised by the lack of effort on the part of the U. S. To create a supply of tech workers. I was appalled by the lack of tech training for the movie industry. I am less blaming of the tech industry than I am of American apathy and short-sightedness. But taxes must be reduced at any cost.
Noted your comment about the number of foreign students here. I have heard that lack of creativity is a complaint among testing crazy nations so the kids get sent here.
Raj, You must live in a different reality than I. You do not need to fill every job with H1b workers, just enough to eliminate the older workers and churn enough to suppress wages. H1bs are leverage. Then, of course, there is the massive outsourcing to countries like India where companies here can enjoy the stability and freedoms of the U.S., yet pay the lower wages overseas. The net, cumulative effect from years of these actions is a displacement of American workers with foreign workers. You might ask the former employees at Disney IT about H1bs and outsourcing, amongst many, many others. In tech, the term for training an H1b to do your job is called “digging your own grave”.
The American worker “protections” by Congress are a complete joke. Originally, the H1bs law said they could not be hired if an American worker was available. But that rule was largely ignored. The reality is age discrimination is rampant and very real in tech. Your mistake with the stats is you generalized. In IT, most of the gains in employment go to H1bs. Other engineering disciples less so, but that could change if the cap is lifted as some in Congress want.
Of COURSE those gaining skills here in jobs and universities take it back home. It is foolish to think they somehow lose knowledge when they cross the border. Where do you think overseas hackers gained so much knowledge so quickly? Reading USA Today? Other governments are actively involved in cyberspying and that knowledge is valuable. And I do not want to educate rest of the world when too many Americans have to go into deep debt to get a degree. I mean, I’m a nice guy and all, but I don’t want to be a “hub” when college costs are unreachable for my own kids. You can go hub all you want, but being an American citizen has to mean SOMETHING.
Proof only comes with transparency. Transparency is lacking in much of the Reform movement. I am not privy what goes on in meetings at Davos or the ALEC retreats, are you? Are you saying that because we do not have access to information, it doesn’t exist? Isn’t that sticking your head in the sand? Those of us who live with the H1b/outsourcing hell know what is really going on in spite of the spin.
Awhile back Arizona was importing cheaper teachers from the Philippines and housing them to address the shortage. That does not sound like supply and demand raising American teacher’s compensation. It sounds very much like rigging the system – just like what happened in high tech.
Raj,
When the story about Disney replacing American IT workers at its parks with H1B visa workers came out, I for one wrote to them to register my disgust. There was no shortage of IT workers. In fact they forced them to train those who were taking their jobs.
I know they do not care, but I told them I would find some other place to take my grand kids. I told them I hoped many others would boycott the parks as well. Maybe others did the same because they then announced they would not be going through with the replacement plan.
I don’t really believe they cancelled the plan. I would like to hear from the IT workers to see if it is true.
You said, “The US Senate has clamped down on these practices by foreign based companies and subjected them to large fines in the past. We are vigilant.” You cannot take back whatever knowledge has been shared or how workers have already been treated. Money is not everything. I guess you voted for Obama as well.
> The H1B visas are good for three years and one extension is permitted.
That’s exactly the reason why employers want to replace regular workers with work visa holders with three-year-window each. You will see plenty of foreign workers come and go by hiring them every single year. It’s very effective cost-cutting scheme for privatizers. Same scheme Japan is using to hire foreign workers under phony work-visa/ trainee program with meager pay(less than a 1/3 of Walmart employees.)
Excellent point. Add to that the politicians glee over the prospect of “freeing up” millions of budget dollars from salaries and pensions, shifting to tax incentives that benefit their re-election donors.
They are going to have to pay starting teachers more money, and hopefully the shortage will cause that to happen. I hope they use the opportunity to put a more sensible compensation plan in place than the one that exists in most states.
Pay starting teachers at least 40-50k. Ramp their pay up rather quickly to the 70s or 80s instead of making you stay 15 years to get there. Save money by not continuing to grow pay (beyond cost of living) long after data shows teacher effectiveness pretty much flattens out. Use 403Bs instead of pension plans that you get next to nothing out of unless you stay in the profession 20 years or more. Try to get unions more involved in new teacher support and bettering the profession as that’s what the newer employees value more.
In short, adapt to the changes that have happened in all workplaces in the last few decades so that teaching looks more attractive to students instead of looking like something you have to commit to doing for 20 years in order to get the compensation that you should have gotten earlier.
Embrace that it is a very challenging job and pay appropriately in exchange for accountability. Make it less attractive as a stable, protected job that you can safely assume is yours for life and make it more attractive as a job where hard effort is rewarded well. Make it more attractive to the highest achieving students and less attractive to the lowest (don’t bite my head off; just look at the data).
I don’t believe that will encourage people to leave the profession early, because I think the safety and delayed gratification aspects only work for a small and dwindling set of people. I do think it will encourage more people to join the profession, and I do think it will change the makeup of the teaching force for the better over time.
How long have you been teaching?
Dienne,
I, like many, have an opinion about how police are treating minorities, and yet I’m not a policeman either.
Your comment is one of entitlement. Nobody could possibly have an opinion about teaching unless they’re a teacher.
How long have you been managing a workforce?
Dienne: save yourself the trouble; you are dealing with a myth.
The reality, as you well know, is that when you create perverse incentives and outright disincentives to deepen and maintain an environment of burn-and-churn you are guaranteed a significant worsening of the problem you (supposedly) set out to solve.
Unless, of course, you are in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$.
Then it makes perfect ₵ent¢. For the few at the expense of the many.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
P.S. A laughable—and at the same time, painful and sad—aspect of the myth is that in these times of severe fiscal belt-tightening, with more to come, the idea that one can exchange modestly attractive incentives for chimerical big money straightaway is, well, so Atlanta and DC and such. And I notice that Lakeside School and such like don’t operate that way either…
I wonder why?
😏
I ask because it’s very clear you know nothing about what teaching is like. You really should talk to some teachers. And, better yet, listen when you do.
BTW, does “doctor effectiveness” bottom out after a few years? What about “lawyer effectiveness”? Given a choice between a surgeon with 5 years’ experience and one with 25 years, you’ll take the 5 years, right? Could you then explain why lawyers can’t even get to be partners for a minimum of seven or eight years? And they don’t make senior partner for many more years after that?
Anyway, you clearly have no idea what motivates employees in general, much less teachers specifically. Again, maybe if you talked to them, you would.
Dienne,
In my district, school nurse pay stops growing at 10 years, but teacher pay goes up through 30 years.
The increase during the first 10 years of teaching is half what the increase is between years 10 and 20.
Pensions are backloaded even more.
I don’t think accurately reflects the value of teachers and penalizes younger teachers. They have to stay for 20 or more years to get the compensation that they deserve.
Reading John’s comment reveals he wants to see a very different type of person become a teacher, so having him talk to existing educators is silly since we are (apparently) the wrong type of people to be teaching. He seems to imply that the intrinsic motivations that currently drive and sustain most educators are of little valued and should be replaced by extrinsic values. I’m not really sure young people see job stability and delayed compensation through pensions as quite the problem he does. The kind of people drawn to teaching (in my view) like the long-term viewpoints that public education provide, especially since public schools are so fully integrated into a community’s culture and history. Of course, if you devalue that very ethic, then of course you want a different type of teacher, one less invested in the system and more invested in themselves and their own career.
It’s the same nonsensical idea that devalues experience and lauds the idea of changing careers every 7-10 years. That mindset suggests that anyone who sticks around a company for more than a few years is moribund. So too with teachers. Make it attractive enough to get newbies into the classroom, but not attractive enough to encourage them to stay, because experience is a net negative over time (re. the point at which “teacher effectiveness pretty much flattens out”).
I don’t think the public will really want the type of teacher John envisions. I certainly hope not. I want educators invested in their districts and their schools. As a parent I want teachers who will be there for decades so their experience can be shared and disseminated across the school.
And I’d bet that’s the way the majority of people feel.
In response to rockhound2: The thing about being an educator is that you can change jobs every seven to ten years. I taught preschool, middle school, junior high school, high school, English, reading, and English as a Second Language. Some teachers teach other subjects as well. I also worked in a rural small town, in the East Bronx, in N. J. suburbia, and several areas of L. A. Yes, I stayed in the field in part for the pension and benefits. I have no problem with being responsible for wanting to support my family while providing a service and knowing that I could be protected from capricious and wrongheaded administrators. Stability is not a sin and is pretty good for society.
West Coast: I agree, you can change jobs every 7-10 years in education, but I used the word “careers”.
I’ve had several careers, all orbiting around the environmental business, but all very different. I’ve worked as a geologist, as a certified safety professional, as an industrial trainer, and now as a teacher. There are certainly skills from all these careers that have been useful in each job, but they are different careers.
I really do see a new paradigm evolving in that there is an expectation that workers not only change jobs every few years, but take on new careers as well. I can also see some advantages to that, but to me it serves the corporations far more than the workers.
How we got to the point where loyalty between employer and employee is somehow a detriment to the workplace I’ll never understand. I guess it’s part of the “destructive reform” mindset that they are trying to apply to education as well.
Thanks for your input.
The value of teacher stability to a community is qualitative and quantitative. Their institutional history of the community, makes them invaluable and irreplaceable as leaders in civic and religious organizations. Their purchasing power stabilizes real estate values and, through the multiplier effect, enables a semblance of community to remain, in the midst of the hollowed out shells, that surround the Walmart eyesores, prevalent in the Midwest and south.
You should check Florida out. The 15 years you speak of takes you from 40K to about 44K. That is when steps are even granted. My former District has granted one step in the last 7 years.
I went from 35-40 in AZ over 12 years and even got a Masters in the progress.
As of last year steps are now illegal in Florida. Pay must reflect performance based in part on VAM and cannot reflect degrees earned, seniority, or any other traditional pay scale. Thanks ALEC and JEB!
.
One of the problems I see, John, is that you are obviously judging teacher effectiveness based on student test scores. I think you have been around long enough to be aware of the problems associated with that metric. Even if there was a strong correlation between test scores and teacher effectiveness, are we using this metric to measure all the other roles beyond content knowledge instructor that a teacher fulfills? Do I have any obligation to mentor new teachers, collaborate with other teachers on the various curricular initiatives, contribute to the school community, serve on district-wide committees…? I’m sure others can keep the list going. In other words, John, the veteran teacher provides far more than any test score could possibly even claim to measure.
2old2teach,
That’s fair in that studies that are available rely on what’s measurable. iMO though, the ridiculously back loaded compensation schemes that exist, at least in my state, are not fair to most teachers. Nobody can convince me that a teacher’s value goes up more between years 20 and 25 than it does between years 1 and 5.
John, I do not think the changes that have been made in today’s labor market are all to the good. Changing to a defined contribution (403b) instead of defined benefit (pension) program does NOT encourage long tenure, because it is portable. You don’t like this job? You can take it with you to another state.
The notion of removing the stability from the job is short-sighted, and one of the problems with these new entrepreneurial school models. Better are defined ladder increases that are earned and master teachers to help the schools attain teaching excellence. The stability is important for the students, too. Teaching is more than a single human being in charge of 20 to 30 students. Schools are communities, and they are nested within larger communities. Communities are dynamic, and are composed of all their members in complex interrelationships. In a smaller school, a single retirement and new hire can throw the dynamic into crisis. When you have a turnover of 30% per year, the community dynamic is likely to be unable to achieve any kind of stability.
What is the sense of flattening pay “long after data shows teacher effectiveness pretty much flattens out”? Which data? Do your alleged data show that teaching effectiveness declines? Why would you want to penalize people for attaining very high levels of effectiveness? How much can anyone improve?
What is the basis of your presumed knowledge about the teaching profession, or are you basing your opinion on how to manage widget designers? The latter deals with products, but teachers deal with human beings–students, parents, and the community. There is a high benefit for attracting people who want to make teaching a lifelong profession. They improve with age, not only in teaching technique, but also in understanding human dynamics, including child development. You can teach a little of this in school, but all the peculiarities of neighborhood, school district, parenting patterns, and socio-economic impacts can never be completely “taught.” They take a lifetime to learn.
Sophie,
You say: “John, I do not think the changes that have been made in today’s labor market are all to the good”
I couldn’t agree more.
But, I disagree that defined contribution plans discourage long tenure because they are portable. Portable also makes it easier to change jobs within the profession, which tends to drive up compensation and to make employers work harder to attract and retain employees.
Regarding data on teacher effectiveness, just Google that to look at any graph. Effectiveness grows most sharply in early years, and while it generally continues to climb gradually after 5-7 years, it does level off, as it frankly does in any profession.
I’m not trying to “penalize” anyone for effectiveness. In fact, I’m try to reward it in current pay instead of future pay. My school pays 5th year teachers as much as my district pays 18th year teachers. Who will retain more effective teachers for their students? Whose teachers will feel that they are fairly compensated. Whose will feel that they are valued in their school now and for the students they are teaching now, and whose will feel that their school owes them something and tend to feel underpaid?
As another reader pointed out, most teacher effectiveness studies use growth in student test scores as the basis, and that certainly is not the only factor. But, I’ve seen lots of studies that show by other measures that advanced degrees, credits earned, and years experience beyond 7 or 8 or so do not directly equate to teacher effectiveness. I’m sure they do in cases, but one can’t show by data that that is what we should base compensation on.
I’d be happy to look at any data you have to the contrary.
In response to John, guess who contributes to the vast growth of a teacher from year 1-5? Answer: mentor teachers that are in year 20-25, they are passing on the knowledge, supporting the new teacher, and usually doing an insane amount of curriculum work. It is going to level off as you say in any profession because that teacher is stronger, more efficient, and “knows the tricks of the trade.” Again as in any profession. Observe a 6:1:1 special education class or any class really to see what a teacher deals with on a daily basis, children coming to school with few hours of sleep, under-nourished, family problems, or an ESOL student or special needs student all thrown in a class of 30 with little to no support. Pay these teachers well, acknowledge and support that they are entering the field with a masters, degree and many having additional credit hours required every year, and by far the most important they are trying to have a positive impact on our youth which is all of our future!
John, I’ve been a teacher in Arizona for 17 years. My undergraduate degree is in social and behavioral sciences. I have a post bac in secondary education and a masters in curriculum and instruction. My doctorate is in educational leadership and organizational behavior. For twenty years prior to becoming a teacher I worked in corporate America. Regardless of all of these experiences my student assessment scores show that I am a highly effective teacher. Even with all of that my salary is almost twenty thousand less than the 70 to 80 thousand that you believe teachers make after 15 years. I work with many teachers who work long hard hours to insure their students achieve socially, emotionally, and academically. Many of those teachers have been in the profession here in Arizona more years than I have and none of them make 70 to 80 thousand dollars. They stay because they believe what they do is important. What we do want is for people to respect what we do as professionals. Being accountable is not an issue but the current accountability is political Is political in nature and although it may have begun in a very altruistic manner once corporate America and Wall Street entered the picture it became about profit and greed and has nothing to do with what’s best for children. if we are going to have true discourse about education reform then we need to deal in facts not opinions unless those opinions are based in facts.
Robin,
My numbers are from NY. My comments were mostly about what compensation “curves” should look like over time.
I did look at entry, median, and top salaries for teachers in Arizona and I was pretty shocked at how low they are.
Your post is every free-market, corporate reform cliche strung end-to-end. Everything you say is a lie, and everything that you recommend has been tried in one state or district or another, and it’s always failed.
Let’s see if I can get them all:
pay more to starting/younger teachers, scrap the pay-by-years-on-the-job step increase system — CHECK
teachers effectiveness “flattens out” after five years (or some other arbitrary time frame) on the job — CHECK
get rid of “pension plans that you get next to nothing out of unless you stay in the profession 20 years or more” — CHECK
replace pension plans with 403Bs — CHECK
unions are not involved in new teacher support and bettering the profession — CHECK (and that’s perhaps the biggest lie, by the way)
“adapt to the changes that have happened in all workplaces in the last few decades so that teaching looks more attractive to students instead of looking like something you have to commit to doing for 20 years in order to get the compensation that you should have gotten earlier.” — CHECK
“Embrace that (teaching) is a very challenging job and pay appropriately in exchange for accountability (presumably students’ test scores) — CHECK
shred all job protections, make your continuing on the job totally a totally unstable proposition… as teaching with a union contract is currently “a job for life”— CHECK
“Make it more attractive to the highest achieving (college) students (considering which career to choose) and less attractive to the lowest (don’t bite my head off; just look at the data)” OR — CHECK
thanks to union contracts, the teaching profession is currently filled with those who were the bottom-of-the-barrel Gomers and Goobers when they were back at college — CHECK
doing ALL OF THE ABOVE will not encourage people to leave the profession early, because the safety and delayed gratification aspects only work for a small and dwindling set of people— CHECK
doing ALL OF THE ABOVE will encourage more people to join the profession — CHECK
doing ALL OF THE ABOVE will change the makeup of the teaching force for the better over time — CHECK
Did I get everything?
And one more thing. It is valid to ask whether or not you’ve ever taught, because that’s where one’s understanding of the job is attained, and not from sitting in some ivory tower.
Step schedules can work but only if the steps are distributed proportionally. However, most step systems are designed with the meaningful increases on the back side while the first fifteen years or so of the schedule earning a teacher the equivalent of peanuts. This is designed on purpose to save the Districts money and as a result, contributes to the churn and creates an ever revolving door of teachers every few years when the ones who are sick and tired of not being compensated fairly for their work leave for greener pastures.
The Real One: A lot of people drop out of the ranks of teaching in their first five years, and if you ask them why, the issue of pay is not nearly mentioned as much as as work conditions, opportunities for collaboration, lack of administrative support, etc. Plus, as least in NYS, new teachers are often earning their Masters in those first few years, adding to the stress. But when they get that second degree they usually get a salary bump, not just because of the degree, but often due to the post-grad hours alone.
The “churn” you write about, as a consequence of traditional practices is very different from the artificial churn imposed by education deformers. In the former case, it tends to weed out those unsuitable for long careers in education, in the latter it gets rid of experience and higher salaries.
Now really, which is worse?
Rockhound 2,
“and if you ask them why, the issue of pay is not nearly mentioned as much as as work conditions, opportunities for collaboration, lack of administrative support, etc.”
I agree 100%. I only talked about compensation because that’s what this article was about. People going in to teaching know what the pay scales look like, so presumably, starting salary and early increases more likely affect those who decide to go into teaching or not, as opposed to those that have started and are deciding whether to stay.
I also agree that teachers who probably shouldn’t be in the profession tend to leave pretty early, and most often do not get tenure. My own experience is in the charter world, so my ideas about increasing salary quickly don’t take tenure into account. I think I’d be inclined to have a big jump in salary along with the earning of tenure if we could figure out a way that it wouldn’t cause denial of tenure in order to keep a cheaper workforce.
My decision to transition to teaching and take a 30% paycut was mitigated by the chance for a real retirement benefit and the idea of job security. Tenure provided that security, not because it “guaranteed” me a job, but because it gave me due process. If I were ever to find myself Ina situation where my employment was at stake, I’d be able to make my case, unlike my former life where I saw a competent engineer lose his job because he was a Red Sox fan and his manager rooted for the Yankees.
Undoubtedly the prospect of job security when I was in my mid 40’s making probably the last career shift I could make had an influence on my decision. I don’t believe I’d have made the same decision if it hadn’t been there.
Agree, a little originality from deform apologists would be refreshing.
An opinion column, about education, published in our newspaper cited G.E.’s former CEO, Jack Welsh, a man who believes all of the things, checked off in the list, above. The parrot who wrote the opinion didn’t let the fact that G.E.’s current stock price reflects the abysmal performance of Jack Welsh’s hand-picked successor deter him from his certainty that he knew what he was talking about.
Parrots like the lies.
Jack, that is a pretty ludicrous post. As I imagine you know full well, most of what you’re discussing is anecdotal and about half-hearted attempts to go through the motions of trying something so that people like you cans say “we tried that and it didn’t work”.
Would you like to provide some data on some rigorous attempts at these methods?
Pick up a copy of “Who Moved my Cheese”.
Jack: if I may add…
This will come as a shock—shock I tell you!— to the rheephormsters but W. Edwards Deming was a genuine, true blue, to the bone, pro-business guy.
And he utterly eviscerated the then-current versions of those clichés DECADES ago. [He died in 1993.]
Ah, and George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946), where he comments about five passages he has selected for discussion:
[start excerpt]
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.
[end excerpt]
Link: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
Orwell never goes out of date.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Rockhound2: Well all I can say is that I’m not one of the people you mention. I left because my salary was only $2,000 more than a new teacher after 13 years of service. It was becoming extremely hard to make it in Miami with that income so I pulled the plug and entered school for a career change. The seven steps that were stolen from me were never going to be recovered and the unconstitutional three percent tax that was imposed on my pension wasn’t either. I never had an issue with administration as I was an excellent teacher so I was really left alone to do my thing. In addition, I wouldn’t take squat from anyone and was very outspoken. A Masters Degree in my District earns a teacher only $3,000 in Florida when that same Masters Degree costs about $20,000 to obtain. Not a very smart investment if you ask me. I know each area is unique but I will tell you that most teachers who are leaving the profession are doing so primarily due to salary reasons. How can you live when a room bedroom apartment goes for about $1,200 per month and most teachers are bringing in only $2,500 per month?
The Real One,
Sorry to hear that. I think teachers need to get paid a lot more, and this is definite more true in some states than ever.
It’s hard to have these discussions here. I say teachers should get paid more and people jump all over me because they say teachers aren’t in it for the money. At the same time, they will certainly have conversations amongst themselves regarding how they should get paid more.
It is not, and shouldn’t be, mutually exclusive to be in a career that you love and to expect to be paid fairly. I said nothing about motivation and nothing negative about paying teachers more. I simply think that’s appropriate.
“Ramp their pay up rather quickly to the 70s or 80s instead of making you stay 15 years to get there. ” John certainly doesn’t teach in Arizona! What is he referring to? No one, not even principals or high up administrators get pid like that in Arizona. 😦
“…a stable job you can assume is yours for life…” I also know NO teachers in Arizona who assume this.
” Make I attractive to higher achieving students..” I am one of those students. I was in at least the top 13% or higher in the very competitive state of California. I’m rated highly as a teacher and guess what? I would say that high achieving students can make the poorest teachers. Some of these high IQ people do not relate well to students and some are great teachers. You stated to just look at the data but where is your data that academic achievement translates into highly effective teaching? Which brings us to another point. How do you accurately measure teaching ability. We know by current research that VAM is not an accurate measurement. So how would you propose to accurately measure.
When I read this response, I felt like I was reading a commentary from a plumber on how to improve the state bar association, in other words, the person had no practical experience. But wait, I’ve flown in airplanes many times, so I can make comments on how pilots should improve.
John, I like the higher pay part. Teachers are paid peanuts. I think you have a narrow view of effectiveness. Rather than just fire all the veteran teachers, there should be career paths harnessing all that experience and knowledge. Defined contribution plans are a fraud. Most workers do not have access to the real money machines on Wall Street – hedge funds and stock options – and are being scammed with high fees. All the defined contribution plans do is absolve companies of paying retirement benefits and make mutual fund managers very wealthy.
I have found many very good teachers in the field. But the public thinks since they sat in a classroom, they must have all the answers. But hey, I had my appendix out. That qualifies me, no ENTITLES me, to be a surgeon.
MathVale,
Do you have any data regarding teacher quality over time using broad measures of effectiveness? My only point is that effectiveness by any measure doesn’t match the compensation curves that I’m familiar with. That’s because teachers are asked to wait to get paid more later in the careers and to get the lion’s share of their compensation only after decades of service. Maybe it’s different in some states as compared to mine (NY).
I said nothing about firing veteran teachers, and nothing I talked about was meant to change the compensation plans for current teachers. In the future though, I believe we have to pay teachers much more earlier in their careers. Today’s graduates simply don’t have the desire to commit to something for decades. They know that things change and they want some flexibility. The carrot at the end of the decades long stick is just not functioning. We will keep more teachers by paying them more today.
I also agree 100% that there should be career plans for teachers that don’t require them to go into administration to get highest salaries. In my school, admin salaries are only a small amount higher than teacher salaries, and there are teaching coaching positions, etc. that allow teachers to take on greater responsibility for higher pay. I also think it would be fine to pay the best teachers at least as much as the best administrators, but the definition of “best” is the rub. If teachers could determine a means for this, I’d be all for it.
Sure, defined benefit programs are preferable to defined contribution. But nobody is talking about how the costs involved contribute to cutting of programs. The reason education costs keep going up are largely due to healthcare benefits, retiree benefits, pension costs, and compensation plans that push costs into the future. They’re just not sustainable.
You say: “But the public thinks since they sat in a classroom, they must have all the answers. But hey, I had my appendix out. That qualifies me, no ENTITLES me, to be a surgeon.”
I haven’t found anyone who thinks they are entitled to *be* a teacher based on this. But, everyone in this country has spent more time in a classroom than you spent in surgery, and they are certainly entitled to opinions regarding the experience. What if politicians said that the only ones that can evaluate and have an opinion about politicians are other politicians? They seem to act that way enough now.
70s or 80s in pay???? I make $48 thousand a year. I am coming into my 15th year. I have credits equivalent to a Master’s degree. I am not in Arizona, but a similar state further north. I haven’t had a raise in six years. We’re FINALLY getting a 4% increase this year, but that doesn’t make up for the loss of wages for the last six years.
$48,000 is a pipe dream in Florida. In fact it takes 17 years for a teacher to go from a starting salary of $40,000 to $48,000.
Sheesh. And I thought my state was bad. Florida truly sucks.
HHmmmm. Go figure.
It suits the corporate reformers’ purposes. Initially, some of the more idealistic and naive ones may have believed what Bill Gates said, but now that the rabid and greedy ones have come into play, that’s no longer the case. Now they can cry teacher shortage and put temp teachers in for little money. They aren’t disturbed by this. It’s welcome news and plays right into their hands.
What do reformers think when they see stories like this, echoing the situation in many other states? ”
“Mission Accomplished!”
Mission Accomplished!
Send in computers
Teachers are vanquished
Bots are our suitors
Contracts are written
For software and hard-
Teachers were smitten
By Gates and his guard
Damn, DAM, when you are good, you are very good. This says it all.
I’m just channeling George W. Bush and he makes a garden slug sound/appear good.
John has obviously never taught a day in his life. We don’t tell you how to manage a workforce. What a boring job that would be! John, why don’t you go tell doctors how they can better perform surgery. This is an American thing. You can’t go to Germany or France as a rich man (or business idiot) and tell them how to change their educational system. You have to be an expert in education, or people won’t listen to you. These businessmen with their many opinions on education make me sick! Most teachers I know got into teaching to show their love of their subject, to make a difference, and to have a stable job. Most people I know do not want to jump job to job. The best high schools in America are successful because they have a large veteran teaching force that doesn’t leave. They are well paid, and they have tenure and mentor younger teachers, etc. They are master teachers (mostly) and that shows in student achievement. Do you want a first year surgeon operating on you. Give me a break! The reformers are doing everything wrong. This is not an assembly line, and money is not the key motivator for teachers. The reformers are ruining the profession, but that may be their end goal. These practical business people are completely destroying the profession and the public schools in America. It is unbelievable and scandalous! They know nothing about education or how it works.
Steve,
You sate “Do you want a first year surgeon operating on you. Give me a break! ”
Your logic is amazing. If you are correct the first year surgeon will never become a second year surgeon and a third year surgeon and so on. Pretty soon we will have no surgeons.
You state that most teachers go into the profession because they love it. Does that mean Engineers got into the profession because they hate it? Does that also mean Doctors got into the profession because they do not like it?
Raj, if you were going to go under the knife for… say… open heart surgery, and you were given the following choices of surgeon, would you want your surgeon to have performed that operation successfully…
A – … only 1 time?
B – … 10 times?
C – … 100 times?
D – … 1,000 times?
E – … 10,000 times?
I can’t imagine you saying… “Yeah, give me the guy who’s only done it once before? I figure you’ve done one triple bypass, you’ve done ’em all. Right?”
To make it simpler…there is a reason that people are less likely to have surgery or even be in the hospital in July. Interns fresh out of med school and new residents are on the floors. No one wants to be someone’s first patient. I wonder why that is?
2old2teach is right
Remember most surgeries are performed on an emergency basis and you hardly ever get a choice. You get sick, an ambulance comes and takes you to the nearest hospital resulting in surgery by the doctor that is on call at that time. You have 0 choice, no second opinion, no selection of the doctor and so on. Therefore, do not get sick in July, Thanksgiving and Christmas when the hospital staff is mostly new less experienced interns, but thank God they still are not allowed to perform surgery, but they might miss the diagnosis and not get you the right treatment. Also do not get sick during the holidays, thanksgiving, christmas etc because the experienced doctors are not on call and you get who ever is available. But I forgot that you do not have a say when you get sick. It happens probably at a random time and place.
Answer the Jack’s question, the way doctors are trained to be surgeons is extremely exhaustive. It takes almost ten years of training after medical school before one is on his own. The doctor is trained, by observing others, then assisting others, doing a small part of the surgery and finally under supervision performing all of it. If you end up in a teaching hospital, they will inform you that doctor trainees will be assisting and/or performing the surgery, but you if are still able to respond are given the right to say no. Jack’s question is absurd. I still do not think the medical profession is stupid, they are always in check with malpractice laws.
I would never have surgery from a doctor who has performed the same 10,000 times. He is probably dying or dead.
Elective surgery is another story.
” If you end up in a teaching hospital, they will inform you that doctor trainees will be assisting and/or performing the surgery, but you if are still able to respond are given the right to say no. ”
Actually they don’t really tell you. They may or may not identify who will be in the surgery, but they do not tell you who will be doing what or how well trained they are to do it. I woke up while someone other than my surgeon, who was no longer there, was closing. There was dead silence when I asked from beneath the drapes if they were sewing me up. After an awkward pause, someone asked if I could feel it (slightly), before the anesthesia was was upped and I went back to LaLa land.
Such comparisons between teaching and medical training perhaps seem strained, but they do point out the importance of the training process. Just as we would not leave an intern to direct patient care without close supervision, we should not put five week trainees in a classroom. For teachers who have obtained their certification, the first years of probationary service should be a time of professional growth guided through a well developed mentorship program.
Raj,
You duck the question by calling it “absurd”, when the point of that questions was and is that, whatever the profession, experience matters when it comes to the quality of the work being performed. The more someone does something—or observes in an apprentice-ship capacity, or assists in an apprenticeship capacity, or first performs under supervision—the better they become in what they do.
You argue that surgeons have to serve in those apprenticeships—as observers, and then assistants to surgery, then finally under supervision. OK, great. We agree on that. So why not teachers? Corporate reformers don’t believe in teachers having any such period of apprenticeship, as they view the work as something akin to fast food, or retail, or office temping—something so easy that it can be done with little or no training or apprenticeship period.
I remember a conversation with a TFA, where I politely argued that teaching requires education and apprenticeship, just like as it does with doctors, lawyers, etc.
His response, “No, I disagree. Medicine or law is different from teaching. Those are REAL professions.”
Oy vey!
The rich kids’ private schools—I taught at one—use as a key selling point the decades that their teachers have been on the job. The parents demand that their child is placed in the classroom of the best of the best—and experience is a big factor in determining that. Teachers at my old school were never hired without at least five years experience teaching elsewhere. Those in charge needed their staff to cut their teeth elsewhere before being hired—at a private or public school, learning on the job there before they were deserving of teaching privileged kids at their school.
I can’t tell you how many times parents would balk at their child being placed into the classroom of newbie teachers with less than ten years of experience, as they didn’t want a teacher learning on the job with their children.
Therefore, I’ll ask the question again (minus the “absurd” multiple choice of “10,000”):
————————
Raj, if you were going to go under the knife for… say… open heart surgery, and you were given the following choices of surgeon, would you want your surgeon to have performed that operation successfully…
A – … only 1 time?
B – … 10 times?
C – … 100 times?
D – … 1,000 times?
—————————-
Please don’t duck it this time 😉
With my father’s surgery, we had exactly such a choice—a novice that day, or a highly experienced veteran if we waited. As a result, we waited a day until an more experienced surgeon could make it to the hospital to perform the surgery… and the experienced surgeon did it flawlessly. Would the novice that was ready to perform it done so as well? Perhaps… we’ll never know. The odds were better, of course, with the veteran.
It’s the craziest thing… in the minds of so-called “corporate reformers,” teaching is the only profession where, the longer you perform it, the worse you become at it, or at best, remain at the same level you were when you first began “practice”.
Yet in the expensive private schools to which they sent their own children, they demand their own children’s teachers have lots and lots experience, and would never let … say… some 5-week wonder from TFA anywhere near their own children.
By the way, are you Raj Chetty?
One more thing…
As if to prove my point, check out this article on this blog about Michelle Rhee’s organization TFA-like TNTP taking over and providing faculty for a “turnaround” school in Tulsa, replacing the entire teaching staff in the process.
And which teachers did they get to take over? Well, 88% of the teachers that TNTP provided had three years or less teaching experience.
See how well that turned out:
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/24/john-thompson-why-did-tntps-turnaround-school-fail/
A freakin’ disaster.
Jack: many good comments and much solid info on this thread.
Your reminder of the TNTP working its magic on a turnaround school is a powerful example (among many) of what rheephorm looks like in practice.
A small reminder for those in favor of a “better education for all”: how many times do the spokespeople for the self-styled “education reform” movement come on this blog and brush aside objections to their “arguments” by declaring that they’ve followed this blog for a long time and done their homework and put in the time and energy necessary to be acquainted with what’s what on this website and how to present their sales points?
The posting you reference appeared yesterday. Yesterday! Is it too much to ask that those that fulminate about “grit” and “determination” and “rigor” show, well, even a smidgeon of what they claim standardized tests measure and demonstrate?
I’m not perfect by any means, but at least I make the attempt to walk my own talk.
Many good comments and much solid info on this thread.
Thanks.
😎
TFA to the rescue, by design, right? Perhaps the TFA vulture operation will move headquarters to Arizona. Win win, right?
If TFA filled with idealistic, activist minority teachers committed to real social justice, in their communities, the corporate and oligarch funders would abandon TFA?
TfA has placed 47,000 corps members in the last 25 or so years (less than 2,000 per year). How are they going to fill all the nationwide vacancies caused by these nonsensical policies without changing their recruitment, which would eliminate their whole message? (And that’s even if one actually thinks TfA is a good thing, which I most emphatically do not.)
Easy by eliminating the degree requirement to become a teacher. i remember about 10 years ago when there was a teacher shortage in Florida, one County was contemplating changing the teacher requirements in order to allow anyone with an AA to become a certified teacher.
I have students that graduate high school with an AA. This would mean we could have 18 year olds teaching! No problems there (that last sentence was sarcasm).
We could always turn the clock back about 100 years. Have a friend, raised on a ranch in the Dakotas, managed to graduate from a high school in Kansas. She was immediately recruited to be the only teacher for a one-room elementary school near the family ranch. On the plus side her only concern was teaching, no one to supervise her. After the first two years, she left. Was way too difficult.
The teacher shortage fuels the plot to defund public education. Nevada funds charters, vouchers, and home schooling. All of them are alternatives to a shortage of traditional public school teachers.
Bill Gates backs (1) larger class sizes and (2) for-profit, schools-in-a-box, to use at home. Both reduce the need for teachers.
In the case of technology workers, a contrivance of perceived shortage, was necessary to drive down wages, which was addressed by increased immigration visas. In education, the teacher shortage is real and desirable to plutocrats. The shortage was intentionally created by ruining the reputation of the profession, dehumanizing it and, by the credentialing standards demanded by the Dept. of Ed.
We now know that disparagement of public schools had nothing to do with minority student advancement. The criticism achieved the objective of weakening public commitment for tax-funded education. Charters and vouchers are a stop-gap measure to elimination of public education.
As Dr. Ravitch recently posted, more guns are aimed at higher education, even after the number of full-time faculty was reduced to 25% and university spending on instruction was reduced to 25%-50% of total school budget. They’re goals that were achieved by free market college trustees appointed, even at public universities.
The oligarchs have a record of opposing publicly funded….anything. They have an abundance of duplicitous strategies to achieve their results. For example, reform groups have for years told the Ohio newspapers that they want increased accountability for charter and on-line schools. There are at least 3 reform groups in Ohio, being funded by the Waltons. Based on Plunderbund reporting, it appears it would only take $230,000, paid to the campaigns of top Ohio House leaders, to get the accountability. But, the money is never spent.
If the “reformers” were so concerned about improving outcomes for students, would they have spent so much time, energy and money trying to bust unions? You’re right on the mark; the reform crowd has attacked the profession to de-professionalize the career while making the compensation on par with fast food workers.
Retired teacher,
“If the “reformers” were so concerned about improving outcomes for students, would they have spent so much time, energy and money trying to bust unions?”
There are some reformers that are assuredly anti-union, but most just feel that unions don’t add value to students and add costs. Do you know of any studies that show correlation between unions and educational outcomes?
I know that union states are generally higher achieving than non-union, but there are lots of other cofactors. Do you know of any studies that compare comparable schools, districts, or states and makes the case that unions add value for students?
Thanks.
But at the same time, John, you argue that teachers should be paid more, at least initially. One of the things a union does is negotiate better pay. You’re arguing out of both sides of your mouth.
Threatened Out West,
I can support part of what unions do without having to support all.
The fact that I support more pay for teachers and unions do to does not imply that I have to support unions.
I live in Arizona. I consider myself a good teacher. What did me in was speaking up for my students. First, I spoke up to the new principal in 2009 that I didn’t see how all children, including special ed, would achieve 100% by 2014. He tried to tell me how that was possible. For my insubordination the following fall, I received a class filled with behavior problems/learning disabilities. The school secretary told me he stacked my class. I was not allowed to use the time-out room, and I could not have children evaluated. I had one evaluated early on before he stopped me, and she was full-blown high-functioning autism. Mind you, she came to 4th grade from the same school never having an evaluation. She was the type that ran out the door and tried to run away if she became frustrated or the schedule changed. With assistance from the school psychologist, she and I had a pretty good year considering the problems of many others. Somehow I survived. I tried to use our state association (right to work state–no unions), and my representative had no background in negotiation. I was banished to another school. Eventually, this principal had 12 complaints against him. His reward was to go to another district. My district would not hire him, because of all the complaints. However, they did nothing to help the 12 teachers. I continued to speak up and fight for my students. I was excessed one more time. I think once you are excessed to another school, you are labeled as damaged goods and eventually you give up or are put on an improvement plan, which is the end. I chose to retire early. So, if this is what is done in the business world, it is wrong. The greatest injustice with all this are the students. So many needed help with learning disabilities and/or emotional problems. I still think of them and wonder how they are. I sometimes feel as though I failed them. But, I didn’t fail them, this horrible system did.
Dottie, I’m sorry to hear about this. Sadly, there are too many districts across Arizona where this is happening. This is exactly what many “reformers” seem to want to happen. They are forcing good teachers out of the profession, then declare public education to be a failure! You would think this would get every single public school teacher out to vote, but in the last election the majority of teachers didn’t even cast a ballot in Arizona. That’s why we end up with an ALEC sponsored governor and a state superintendent of schools who is more concerned with filing lawsuits against the board of education than actually doing her job (probably because she still doesn’t understand what it is).
Same teacher voting record in Ohio. I blame the unions for not getting the teachers out to vote. But, when, at the AFT/ACT site, the union says it strongly supports charter schools, given certain parameters, with full knowledge that 1/3 of Ohio charters are for-profit and with Weingarten in Israel, last Labor day, exhorting workers to keep up their fight in the U.S., what can be expected?
I’ve been teaching in Arizona for 16 years now. My school is about half a mile from the Mexican border, most of my kids are English language learners (Spanish primary language at home and in the community), and we have a 94% free and reduced lunch rate. This is my chosen home and my chosen profession, but even I agree that it’s getting hard. I am forced to work at least one and usually two extra jobs to make ends meet. As much as I love teaching, I have urged my daughters (I have 4) to go into another profession – ANY other profession. I could leave and take another job (I’ve had offers), but I’m working to bring change to a profession – no, make that a CALLING – that I believe in. I have made it a point to be in on the ground floor for professional evaluation committees – making sure that we keep them realistic and use them to help teachers, not punish them. I have been a part of the salary negotiations for several years now (and I recognize that there are always trade-offs and have even been willing to wait for salary increases while making sure that the board NEVER forgets that WE are making sacrifices). I mentor new teachers and have been the president of our local teachers association (part of NEA). My own county has made extremely positive changes in our representation at the state capitol (both representatives and our senator are very pro-education), but sadly that does not reflect the rest of the state. If we don’t stay and push for the changes our kids need, who will? If we don’t agitate and keep the problems of public education first and foremost, who will? For the first time a majority of Arizonans recognize that Education is the LEADING problem in our state. Sadly, there’s not a lot of agreement about what to do to fix it, but at least people are starting to realize that we have a SERIOUS mess here. Like most teachers, I’ve worked most of the summer getting ready for next year. I’m not too worried about my classes because I’m a music teacher – I’ve got that covered. I’ve worked to organize the teachers in my district. I’m planning professional development outside the district’s schedule so that we can equip the MANY new teachers we’ll have this year (as well as the many long term subs that we have because we can’t find enough teachers). With all the problems we face, we also face tremendous community support, caring – if messed-up – families, loving kids, and the chance to change the world. It’s hard, but I’m sticking with it. I was blessed to buy my home at an affordable price so that I can make my mortgage and car payments without a significant pay increase. I’ve finally gotten the board to realize that the state has completely abandoned its responsibility to provide sufficient resources for education and it’s now on the back of local communities. The state has made even that difficult, but we won’t give up. I don’t expect to see everything I want, but I DO expect to continue seeing growth and improvement.
It’s true, there are shortages all over. Makes you wonder about just how bright these edu reformers are. Highly qualified will become a thing of the past. Five week trained TFA era to the rescue temporarily because we know they are just paying off their student loans.
Shortages, by design. See above.
Larry-Thanks for your commitment and service to so many needy students. Teaching needs more people like you. I hope you stay long enough to make a change for the better.
The number leaving would be far greater if a teacher did not have to face the economic realities of moving. Too many feel trapped, living on the edge with little or no savings, not able to afford to pull up stakes to move. Too often I have heard the complaint. I have no choice. Teaching has enough demands without adding entrapment.
Dottie and Larry F:
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” [Mother Teresa]
Thank you and so many other teachers and school staff for all you have done and are doing.
😎
I was put in a portable at the edge of the school environment in my 1st few years of teaching, and I was generally left alone out there. A lot of trial and ERROR went on in those years.
What new teachers really need are mentors and time to collaborate with peers. In most districts this is a pipe dream. The teacher shortage, increased administrative demands, pressures on class time from pre-testing and testing, etc… will exacerbate the challenges faced by new teachers as well as veterans.
The constant reference and impulse to rely on “modern” business practices is certainly going to aggravate the teacher shortages. It is too demanding a profession for quality people to invest their time and emotional well-being in a capricious, top down, failed model.
Check out 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.”
—————————————————-
Or to frame it another way, …you start out with 100 new teachers, all starting their teaching careers all on the same DAY ONE of the 2010-2011 school year… for neatness, call that first day …September 1, 2010…
… Fast-forward to five years later, and it’s DAY ONE of the new 2015-2016 school year… again, call it September 1, 2015…
… at this point, only 11 of those original 100 are still in the game commencing their sixth consecutive year as a teacher.
The other 89 have all left at some point during that same five-year time frame… September 1, 2010 – September 1, 2015.
Some may have quite in the first week of September 2010. (and yeah, that happens… I’ve seen it.)
Some quit just days before September 1, 2015, DAY ONE of the newest (2015-2016) school year starting. (and yeah, that’s happens, too… I’ve seen it.)
The rest quit somewhere in between those two extremes.
Longevity in a teaching position is irrelevant to reformers. Tenured professors at a public university, were funded by plutocrats, to report the adverse effect of teacher tenure. IMO, both the connivance and hypocrisy were stunning.
Teacher bashing LEADS TO A teacher shortage.
For an article on the teacher climate in California:
https://www.cabinetreport.com/human-resources/teacher-bashing-may-be-turning-new-recruits-away
———————————————
“The precipitous decline in young people entering the teaching profession in California is now a 10-year trend and cause for state officials to worry that the blame can’t all be placed on a hangover from the recession.
“Instead, there’s growing concern that the job’s appeal has diminished in the wake of broad-based criticism of teacher performance, demands for more accountability and distrust of long-standing tenure and assignment protections.
” … ”
“But during the decade ending in 2013-14, the number of teaching credentials issued in California dropped 52 percent – from 31,397 in 2003-04 to 14,810 last year.
“Perhaps even more telling, however, is that enrollment in teacher preparation programs is off almost 74 percent from 77,705 in 2001-02 to 19,933 last year.
” … ”
“ ‘This is more than just having a demand and advertising for it,’ she said. ‘I think some of it has to be resolved by talking about teaching differently than we’ve been talking about it in our policy community for many years now.
“ ‘Accountability is important. But the constant focus on who is to blame for low performance does not inspire talented young people to consider teaching as their calling,’ she said.
” … ”
“David Simmons, an assistant superintendent over personnel at the Ventura County Office of Education, said districts in his region are actually having a hard time finding good applicants for job openings.
“ ‘The year before last, we had 400 people applying for a multiple subject credential (position),’ he said. ‘Last year we started to see a drop and this year it has been even harder to find qualified applicants.’
“The question of teacher salary has always loomed as a challenge to schools wanting to attract good talent but Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association, noted that the tendency to blame teachers for all that is wrong in education is clearly turning off many applicants.
“ ‘Young people or second career individuals that are looking at the teaching profession are severely impacted by this negative narrative,’ said Vogel.
“ ‘It’s based in the false premise that the difficulty we are having in the system is because teachers aren’t working hard enough, or there’s too many bad teachers or we’re not evaluating them right,’ Vogel said. ‘Look at the people who are called to this profession – there’s a sense of altruism and a desire to give back to the community.’ ”
Jack: thank you for the link.
And contrary to rheephormster assertions on this blog that the LATIMES is out to report all the ed news that’s fit to print—
I read the LATIMES every day. If it weren’t for folks like you, many of us wouldn’t have this kind of info.
😎
My worry is these shortages are going to be used as an excuse to deprofessionalize teaching.
Excuse-already is, coupled with funding cuts.
In Ohio, the State Board of Education voted that art, music …teachers don’t have to be credentialed.
This is not just an attack on teachers. It’s an attack on all unions, and in general, on the entirety of the middle and working classes. I posted about this elsewhere on this blog about Illinois’ current governor, the anti-union Bruce Rauner—back before he even ran. In a TV forum, he repeatedly ducked the questions about whether he has hostility towards all unions, public and private, or only the teachers’ union.
Here’s an excerpt:
———————————————-
Keep in mind that Chicago is a huge union town… from the private sector unions of pipe fitters and electricians to the public sector unions of police, nurses, firefighters, etc. … and keep in mind that Rauner’s a plutocrat who embraces an extreme right-wing ideology, and thus, hates all unions, and everyone of their members. Of course, he wants them all crushed.
However, he can’t dare say any of that, as he was planning his run for governor at the time, and he needs to hide his hatred of all middle and working class unions, and trick all these union worker voters into voting for him in two years.
In that context, Carol then asks if he feels that way about ALL unions, and Rauner runs like a bitch from the question.
This is truly a FROST-NIXON or 60 MINUTES moment that must be seen again and again:
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/19/mayors-adviser-attacks-ctu
—————————————————————–
——————-
( approximately … 05:00 – 7:00 )
BRUCE RAUNER: (finishing an anti-teacher union diatribe) … and we’ve got to fight them (teacher unions) hard.”
CAROL MARIN: “Is this your view on ALL unions, or JUST the teachers’ union?”
BRUCE RAUNER: (uncomfortable) “Tonight, this is focused about the schools, and making our schools the best in the nation.”
CAROL MARIN: “No, I understand tonight, but in general, is that your view of ALL unions?”
BRUCE RAUNER: (more uncomfortable) “That’s a different subject.”
CAROL MARIN: “It is, but it is the question.”
BRUCE RAUNER: (slightly angry) “But it’s not the subject of TONIGHT.”
CAROL MARIN: “It is, but the question is: globally, is this the problem of collective bargaining being a problem systemically in our society?”
(What follows is TOTAL DUCKING OF THE QUESTION… Rauner just regurgitates more anti-teacher talking points that he had memorized for the show that have no bearing on the question asked of him)
BRUCE RAUNER: “The teachers’ union is engaged in a conflict of interests (then goes into a stock diatribe against teachers’ unions specifically, effectively ducking the global question about his opinions of unions in general… because he can’t share that and get elected governor)
CAROL MARIN: (gives up, then turns to JESSE SHARKEY) :”Mr. Sharkey, your point of view on this I gather would be different.”
JESSE SHARKEY: “If I could, Mr. Rauner isn’t answering the question, because he’s ideologically committed to a right-wing program that basically sees unions as an impediment to frankly, privatizing public schools. In New York, private equity fund managers like himself have been involved in a scheme where they buy up under-utilized or unused school buildings on the cheap, and then lease those schools back to charter schools for profit. And I understand that Mr. Rauner himself is trying to do the exactly the same kind of scheme in Chicago.
“The teachers’ union is one of the organizations is this city is advocating for public schools… (then goes into detail about how the charterization of Chicago schools has been a total failure)
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I don’t know the teacher voting situation in Chicago but elsewhere, it’s an embarrassment. Why aren’t teacher unions joining with other unions to get politicians elected? While the Communications Workers of America court Bernie, the AFT’s Weingarten prematurely endorsed Clinton.
This is by design. The TPP will be the nail in the coffin of the middle class and won’t need as many educated workers, just low paid drones. So states are decreasing quality public education in anticipation of this brave new world to come. We already have people with BA’s working at Starbucks.
And Starbucks is subsidizing college degrees for employees of questionable value. I guess they like pseudo-educated baristas. I’ll be more impressed when those same employees actually leave their barista jobs for careers outside of Starbucks that actually require a college degree.
“And Starbucks is subsidizing college degrees for employees of questionable value” How do you judge this? Do you use a yard stick? Meter stick? Oops, I forgot teachers have infinite wisdom. I take back my questions. Sorry.
I kept my language ambiguous because I remembered an earlier post from Diane: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/23/the-catch-in-starbucks-offer-of-free-college-education-for-workers/
“And Starbucks is subsidizing college degrees for employees of questionable value”
Whoa! That sounds like I was questioning the value of the employees!
If that is what you read, Raj, that was not my intention. I intended to be questioning the value of the ASU online program. I can’t tell from your response to what “this” refers.
Raj,
Go ahead and click the link below:
http://asuonline.asu.edu/starbucks-and-arizona-state-university
You can analyze this situation all you want……but let’s look at some of the hard cold real-life situation facts. During the past 7 years I personally know of 30 excellent teachers (with 3 – 10 years of experience) that have either left the state of Arizona or left the teaching field all together. They all stated that “there was no support and thus, no future for public education and teachers in Arizona”. Many student teachers at the U of A have reiterated that they would finish their degree here and would teach……just not in Arizona. Just this year, after witnessing our state leadership cutting the education budget….again……three fantastic teachers with 2 – 3 years of experience (the future of Arizona’s education) sought after and received jobs in Las Vegas and California. The new Las Vegas teachers received a $15,000 raise and the California teacher received a $18,000 raise. Unless our state leadership and our Arizona citizens turn this around, the mass teacher exodus that you see now is just the tip of the iceberg.
WHAT! I started at 42,000 10 years ago in a VERY RURAL school district in Illinois. So make no mistake, it’s not like I’m on the North Shore. The cost of living is not that different state to state, city to city yes but the over all states all pay the same thing for cars, clothes, food, insurance. What a joke. I’d love to see every politician (who votes down a living wage for college educated teachers) live on a teacher’s salary, in all of their respective states.
I think the variability is more than you think. In 2008, the Illinois district I worked in paid fresh out of college teachers around $30,000.
As long as they are cashing in, the deformers don’t care about anything else. Their rhetoric is a smokescreen, “all hat and no cattle” as they say in Texas.
My new favorite expression!
Charter school debt in 2014, $1.6 bil. Interest payment return to Wall Street debt holders, 18%. Almost 1/5 of taxpayer money, spent on charter schools, went to the capital markets instead of students. Add-in, the self-dealing facility and equipment leasing. Add-in the profits for school operators. (One-third of charters in Ohio, are for-profit.) Very little of the taxpayers’ money is left for students.
Proof -“all hat, no cattle”
Disgusting is what I would call it.
They have been diluting our pay for decades with programs that get non education majors into teaching with a few weeks of training to take a test. How many people at your schools are from another field? It’s a tremendous number at most school now days. If they did not allow that then the ‘free market’ would have had to step up long ago and increase salaries, but they weren’t going to let that happened so every failed accountant, engineer, and nurse takes a short summer course and are now teachers. I know some are doing a great job but the truth remains they have been artificially adding to the teacher numbers for decades. At my own school almost everyone is much older than I am, yet I am 4th in seniority with 17 years. I know many teachers in their 50’s and 60’s who are still in their first 5 years…
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KATI HAYCOCK: “But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
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So Kati divides public school teachers into two categories:
1) HIGH QUALITY: that small minority — the elite “smart people” (TFA & others) who, over a lifetime, “change careers every six or seven years”— with just one career being teaching, and the other five or six being non-teaching careers—and who, albeit briefly, deliver the highest quality of education to their students before moving on…
… OR…
2) LOW QUALITY: the vast majority — the “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers who make teaching a long-time career, merely to avoid having “to compete in the job market,” with teaching being a place to hide out and be lazy… and, in the process, willfully destroy the academic and career potential of millions of students… and who do so without the slightest twinge of conscience.
In Kati’s deranged mind, if you teaching in classroom for more than five years—ten years at the absolute most—you’re guilty-as-charged of being one of those “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers that are driving our country to ruin.
Seriously, teaching is “the only career done for life”? What is she smoking?
Kati may be relying on plutocratic-funded “research”. Some university faculty, mostly in economics, have made a cottage industry out of crafting the message that their masters want to be able to trot out to propagandize. Unfortunately, the “profession” of economics has no enforceable ethical standards.
It’s one thing for corporate reforms to spew this venom to adults. As far as I know, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the only one who does it to kids (perhaps Eva M. does, too.)
Check out this link: (make sure to hit the expand icon next to the volume, to see it full frame)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid616303324001?bctid=665566293001
In the 2010 video, Christie takes this one grain of truth—some teachers taking two days off for for the NJEA convention—and extrapolates that to all New Jersey teachers as a way of condemning them as lazy, selfish, who care more about “having a party” than they do about their students… that they also have all this time off for vacations, instead of helping their students…
.. and he’s telling all of this… TO A CROWD OF STUDENTS ???!!!! At the very beginning of the video, he even tell the kids that they need to “stand up” to their teachers.
Christie bloviates to kids that …
CHRIS CHRISTIE: (TO STUDENTS) “(If their teachers) cared more about all of you learning, they’d be in school, Baby. That’s right. They wouldn’t be down there having a party, which is all this (NJEA convention) is. It’s a party!”
Comments that are not on video include Christie further trashing their teachers, by telling the students present that their teachers belong to “greedy teachers’ union”, and that’s why they don’t have enough supplies in their classroom—not that Christie just cut $1.3 billion from the state’s education budget, so he could pay for tax breaks to the rich.
See this link for the quote about “greedy teachers union” causing no school supplies:
https://www.njea.org/news/2010-11-09/njea-christie-irresponsible-and-out-of-control
Since teachers act “in loco parentis” (in place of the parents), Governor Christie telling this to students is like someone going up to children and saying, “You know your parents don’t care about you. All they care about is partying. The reason you have to go without things is because your parents are so selfish and don’t care about you.” How vicious and downright counter-productive can you be.
Now compare the moral bankruptcy of Governor Christie to the idealism of last month’s recent education department grads (in New Jersey) who are applying for teaching jobs:
(from a PBS segment):
Here’s a link to the PBS story and transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/todays-newest-teachers-face-tough-job-odds-high-turnover/
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JOHN MERROW: Is this a good time to become a teacher? Salaries haven’t kept up with inflation, tenure is under attack, and standardized test scores are being used to fire teachers.
— Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania says teaching attracts a certain kind of person.
RICHARD INGERSOLL, University of Pennsylvania: We have these surveys that ask people, college seniors, you know, what do you want out of a career? Is it money, is it prestige, is it security, is it problem-solving, is it intellectual challenge, is it doing good and helping people?
WOMAN: If it wasn’t for the people in my schools, I would have never have graduated or been here. So I want to be in the system (as a teacher) to help other children.
MAN: I’m not really looking for wealth or riches or anything like that.
RICHARD INGERSOLL: It’s not that they, you know, want to live on a low salary or something like that. It’s that their main driver is to feel that they can make — make a difference.
Not sure where the number 47.000 became an average number for teacher salaries. I am entering my 19 th year have over 200 hundred credit hours after my BS , and I only make 41,000 . I will never see 47,000 . If you actually list what I take home after all the required deductions I make 32,000 . It is low pay that is making teachers but I myself did not become a teacher to become rich . I want to leave because of the constent belittling ,percussion, and threating me with the lose of my job that I love.