Indiana has a teacher shortage.
Is it surprising? State after state has teacher shortages. This is the outcome of a dozen years of phony “reform,” which demonizes teachers, bust unions, takes away teachers’ right to due process, and ties salaries and evaluations to test scores.
Congratulations, “reformers”!
Dave Bangert of the Journal & Courier writes:
What sort of gymnastics will state lawmakers try to pull off at this point to remedy a looming teacher shortage after years of running off potential, young candidates by convincing Hoosiers that public schools were essentially broken?
And will they actually be willing to shoulder some of the blame?
We’re about to find out.
Last week, the chairmen of the Indiana House and Indiana Senate education committees asked House Speaker Brian Bosma for a summer study into the creeping ambivalence to the teaching profession. It’s a situation that has depleted the ranks of undergrads studying education in state universities and put some districts on their heels when it comes to recruiting for open positions.
In their letter to Bosma, Rep. Robert Behning and Sen. Dennis Kruse laid out numbers that have pricked up ears in recent months. New data from the state show that “licenses issued to first-time teachers (have) declined from 16,578 in 2010 to 6,174 in 2014.”
“We think,” Behning and Kruse wrote, “it would be wise for the Indiana General Assembly to proactively address this issue.”
No kidding.
Where to start?
The biting commentary came right away from teachers, who have been bristling under state-pushed reforms — the killing of collective bargaining, the rise of private school vouchers, pay raises tied in part to student performance on standardized tests and more — put into high gear in 2010.
Was “reform” intended to make teaching an undesirable profession? Was its purpose to drive good teachers out of their classrooms and discourage many from entering teaching? If so, “reform” is working. But it isn’t reform. It’s destruction.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The beatings will continue until recruitment improves …
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Good variation on the saying.
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Did they really think they could solve the poverty gap by filling schools with “great teachers” who could perform miracles on a regular basis?
What self-created metaphor for Bill Gates is most appropriate for him?
A. Drinking recycled poop water
B. Speaking while a pie is hurled in his face
C. Wearing heavily marked up glasses (fingerprints all over lenses ; anecdote by an interviewer, or actor)
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Or did they fully understand the impossibility, and fully intend to replace public schools with private agencies of all sorts that would be linked to corporate and industrial needs, including service industries and fast-food chains? How many private agencies would pipe to prisons, or would only that be left to the government, perhaps corrections itself?
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I assembled some greatest hits about teacher bashing a while back:
DR. RAVITCH: Some people love to teach. They want to make a career of teaching. They see teaching not as a job but as their life’s work, their mission.
Other people don’t understand why anyone would want to make a professional commitment to teaching. It’s a poorly paid profession, it is hard work, and a teacher must often deal with recalcitrant children who don’t want to be there.
But despite the obstacles and burdens, there are still people who love to teach, and their critics find it possible to know why.
Reader Jack Covey has collected a few choice quotes on this subject. As I read his comment, it seemed to me that someone could write a book collecting similar quotes disparaging teachers and teaching. Not only the infamous Newsweek cover story noted below, but also several TIME cover stories, including the recent one called “Rotten Apples,” about how Silicon Valley execs decided to “fix” education by eliminating tenure. No plan from Silucon Valley execs about how to reduce poverty or directly address the needs of children, just a plan to make it easier to fire teachers.
Here is Jack Covey’s comment:
———————————————————
“Let’s start with anti-corporate reformer Leonie Haimson:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
—————————————–
LEONIIE HAIMSON: Scapegoating teachers has become the mantra of the so-called reformers. From Katie Haycock claiming (with no evidence) that the problems of low-performing schools are primarily due to poor teaching, to the recent cover of Newsweek, proclaiming that the ” Key to saving American education” is to “fire bad teachers,” with these words repeated over and over on the blackboard, this simplistic notion notion infects nearly every blog, magazine, and DC think tank, including this one.
In what other sphere would we make this claim? Is the key to reforming our inequitable health care system firing bad doctors? Or the key to reducing inner city crime firing bad cops? No. But somehow this inherently destructive perspective is the delivered wisdom among the privateers who populate and dominate thinking in this country.
———————————————————————–
From corporate reformer Kati Haycock: (originally at NEWSWEEK—since deleted by NEWSWEEK) but still available at
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
————————————————————-
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. Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust, (Newsweek, 9/1/08)
———————————————————————–
From Corporate Reformer & hedge fund guru Whitney Tilson:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
————————————————————-
WHITNEY TILSON : (Public school teachers are) gutless weasels and completely disgraced themselves in siding with the unions against meaningful reforms of a public school system that systematically, all over the country, gives black and Latino students the very worst teachers and schools, thereby trapping black and Latino communities in multi-generational cycles of poverty, violence and despair. (July 30, 2011 blog post)
————————————————————-
And finally… From Michelle Rhee
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/crusader-of-the-classrooms/307080/
————————————————————-
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One of the other concerns I’ve heard voiced about alternative selection models is that the teachers aren’t making a thirty-year, or even a ten-year commitment.
MICHELLE RHEE: Nobody makes a thirty-year or ten-year commitment to a single profession. Name one profession where the assumption is that when you go in, right out of graduating college, that the majority of people are going to stay in that profession. It’s not the reality anymore, maybe with the exception of medicine. But short of that, people don’t go into jobs and stay there forever anymore.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: So you feel like teachers can be effective even within a short term?
MICHELLE RHEE: Absolutely, and I’d rather have a really effective teacher for two years than a mediocre or ineffective one for twenty years.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: One thing that I’ve encountered personally in talking to a lot of veteran teachers is this idea that programs like Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows de-professionalize education. They see it as a kind of glorified internship.
MICHELLE RHEE: I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whom parents know are not good. Those are the things that de-professionalize the teaching corp. Not Teach for America, not D.C. Teaching Fellows. That, I think, is a ridiculous argument.
—————-
Put yourself in the shoes of a university student. Are you going to spend and/or incur debt in a range of $100,000 – 300,000 for tuition/room & board/other expenses, then face all of that?
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They can force us to teach material that is developmentally inappropriate and pedagogically unsound, take away planning periods for “professional development” (thus ensuring we work 11-12 hour days), and deprive us of the materials we need to teach, but they cannot force us to stay in a stress-filled and hopeless career. Neither can they force young people to choose to become teachers. This is how “reform” will fail.
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I wouldn’t count on it.
There are lots of profit-hungry, campaign donating tech companies more than happy to step into the breach to offer teacher-less learning solutions. All the legislatures will need do is purchase lots and lots of tablets or laptops with pre-installed software or website licenses and there will be no need for teachers anymore, the endgame of all of this reform.
So-called ‘expensive’ teachers will be replaced with minimum wage earning technicians who will not merit benefits packages, pensions, or step increases.
So many here seem shocked and in disbelief that they are actually willing to let teaching go. Why? They have demonized us for over a decade, they have hated our unions for a generation and sought their demise, and they have one goal only: make it easier for their beneficiaries to make more money.
It’s not a bug for them that there will not be enough teachers. It’s a feature of their longterm, long-planned program to eliminate teachers’ unions and public schools.
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Utah is facing that exact problem. Our governor just appointed a lobbyist for IM Flash to the state school board. Of course, this lobbyist has no education experience, but I expect we will now be buying computers by the truck full. This guy’s wife was the speaker of the house until fairly recently, so he has a lot of pull.
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I thought point was to drive teachers from the classroom. That way we can be replaced with cheap labor.
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My thought too. Teaching will become the new minimum wage job that no American will want.
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The teacher shortage is a national problem that varies from state to state. The chaos is all part of the destructive plan of privatization that is led by a bunch of greedy capitalists that have no regard for our children, future or democracy.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kansas-teacher-shortage-recipe_55c28ce6e4b0f1cbf1e3a2d7
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This is an issue which demands national media attention from the few remaining “progressive” spokespersons on television, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Melissa Harris-Perry (Ed Schultz, the better of them all was recently dumped by MSNBC), but they seen to be content to waste their airtime on endless reportage of politics and polling results. Their oft expressed amazement at the popularity of Bernie Sanders and the crowds turning out to hear him suggest to me that they are as uninformed as the major network news organizations and the New York Times when it comes to what really matters and what is happening to our country as the Koch brothers take over.
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The ridiculous NYT story attributes absolutely no part of the teacher shortage to reforminess. I am flabbergasted that a pro reporter for that newspaper is so incredibly out of touch with what every teacher and commenter on this blog knows.
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Teaching is work anyone can do, but less and less people want to do it. In order to address a substitute shortage, the state of Indiana adopted laws allowing just about anyone with a high school diploma to substitute teach. This is the new reform; reduce and eliminate the credentials required to teach. The teacher shortage is a created crisis that will be used as justification to allow the deprofessionalization of educators to be capitalized by entrepreneurial angels, aka job creators.
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That alternative certification plan is part and parcel of the ALEC agenda. Several states, like Wisconsin and North Carolina, are floating legislative trial balloons and actual laws that allow anyone to teach without having to undergo the traditional teacher preparation.
Combine this with their attacks on teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities and you have the perfect storm that will destroy the profession of teaching as we know it today.
And still the NEA and AFT fiddle away doing nothing and the NCTE, NCTM, IRA, and other professional organization just figure out new ways to make a profit from it all.
I am beyond frustrated.
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Teaching is NOT “work anyone can do.”
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I concur… how many people flee from the profession as soon as they possibly can? And NOT just after all the reforminess started. Back then, when teaching was respected, folks acknowledged that not everyone was cut out to be a teacher. Patience, the ability to develop supportive relationships with students AND parents, as well as get along fairly well with faculty and admin. This, all in addition to having solid subject and pedagogical knowledge along with a good sense of child development. No, teaching is NOT work anyone can do.
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One goal of the Deformers was to make teaching a profession people would engage in for only a few years. Hire newbies an burn them out. Put Teach for American missionaries into difficult inner city schools.
The billionaires wanted a revolving door, so nobody could ever attain high salary or a pension. EDUCATION ON THE CHEAP.
The great Michelle Rhee, now working as an executive at a fertilizer company, summed it up some years back. She said that teaching should be looked upon as a temporary profession that people do for three, maybe four years, before moving on to other careers.
The attrition rate of teachers today is at an all time high due to onerous work loads and poor supervision. The NY Times front page article today completely missed the real reasons why there is a teacher shortage. The end of the recession has nothing whatever to do with the myriad of teaching vacancies across the country.
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Diane, the NY Times has a teacher shortage article today by Motoko Rich. Unless I missed it–no mention of ed policies that are driving teachers away. Unbelieveable!!
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Yep, that’s what Arthur noted above.
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The other problem: Overloading teachers with bureaucratic demands and constraints–which send the message “We don’t trust you to do a professional job.” With little autonomy, it’s no wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves. And the good ones are those most likely to leave. Down we go!
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Something like “treating us like ignorant, untrustworthy proto-criminals with constant ‘accountability’ inquisitions” on a Facebook post to family and friends explaining the teacher shortage.
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I’m surprised that Pearson or other educational software companies aren’t ready to go with entire computer programs schools can buy to take the place of teachers.
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That’s coming. Online learning, usually called Distance Learning, is already in use here in NYC for so called Easy Pass credit recovery programs.
In states such as California, they actually have charter schools that operate completely online.
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Same here in FL. The tea party legislature actually passed an ALEC law requiring all students to take some online classes before they can graduate snd another requiring all future textbooks and materials be digital only starting next year. No money for laptops and tablets, however.
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I have no doubt that Pearson, Jeb Bush and his brother’s educational software company, Joe Biden’s brother’s company, and many other insider politicos will profit handsomely from this.
That’s been the point all along, eh?
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Sadly, if anyone was paying attention, online schools don’t work. There are three fully online schools in Utah. One is the lowest scoring school in the state, and the others aren’t much better. I always get a few kids “back” from online schools every year, and they’re always really behind.
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Even more sadly, it doesn’t matter that they don’t work. As we’ve seen in the charter sector, the grifters will just shut down suddenly and reopen under a different name and incorporation while pocketing millions of our tax dollars formerly earmarked to educate our children. Working, fairness, integrity, logical, etc. are no longer operational when it comes to schools in the USA.
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Yes, I know. Students can now miss a great deal of school and just sit in front of a computer and get their credit. Then they can graduate and schools can declare their high graduation rate. Yeah!
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The teacher shortage is an indication that we’re losing the battle to the “reformers”. Teacher shortages result in measures to remedy the shortage by hiring young, inexperienced teachers who have little institutional knowledge or wherewithal to know when they are being abused by administrators. They are also generally not very skilled at their craft, which further fuels the narrative that we, as teachers, don’t know what we’re doing. This also results in weaker unions. And yes, I am proud to say I support stronger unions.
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CORPORATE REFORMERS’ / PRIVATIZERS’
SOLUTION TO THE TEACHER SHORTAGE
I just dug the following up from two years ago. It gives you a preview of how corporate reformers want to solve the teacher shortage.
In it, I wrote about a corporate reform think tanker—Connecticut Policy
Institute’s Ben Zimmer—claiming that there’s no teacher shortage, merely a monopoly on the pipeline of who is legally allowed to teach. According to this line of thinking, he State Education Department of Connecticut has been colluding with the teachers union to prevent “outstanding teachers”—with zero education, training, certification, etc.—-from being hired. The this three-part axis of evil—State Ed. departments, teachers unions, administrators unions—have been selfishly doing this order to:
1) “keep the antiquated education administration departments of the state university system in business.”
and
2) “serve the economic interests of existing (K-12) teachers and (K-12) administrators by limiting competition for their jobs, while not advancing the goal of obtaining the highest quality teaching and administration possible.”
It’s all part of the failed status quo that puts adult interests ahead of children’s interests. By contrast, CEO’s of privately run charter schools / charter chains making $500,000-plus are the heroic “reformers” fighting against that failed status quo (made up, in part, of teachers whose starting pay is $20,000 – 30,000.)
You goat that?
For a little context, two years ago, some Connecticut citizens were suing to have Paul Vallas removed from his position as Bridgeport Schools Superintendent because he lacked the credential that were required by law to hold that office. I reference that in what follows:
———————————————
July 28, 2013 //
A reader (Jack) sent the following commentary
on reformers’ efforts to lower standards for
educators and to welcome people without
professional preparation and credentials to
teach in and administer the nation’s public
schools and charter schools. His response
was prompted by a post about teachers in
Arizona with online degrees.
He first quotes from a comment
written by “Arizona teacher”,
then comments:
————————–
“ARIZONA TEACHER: ‘I have seen staffs
comprised of high school graduate
teachers who bought their degrees
online and took not one college level
course.’ ”
——————————–
JACK:
To the “Arizona Teacher”… here’s a newsflash:
destroying the profession of teaching
and filling it with unqualified faux
teachers is not a “bug” in the privatizers’
“reform” model, it is a “feature.”
I just found this from the Connecticut Policy
Institute—a “think tank” and “a non-partisan
research institute on Connecticut economic
policy and education reform” that fronts for
for-profit business interests that are trying to
profit from the privatization of education.
To do this, they put out bogus “studies” and
“policy papers” in support of these business
interests’ practices and approaches to privatize
education:
http://www.ctmirror.org/op-ed/2013/06/30/vallas-certification-debacle-reveals-shortcomings-education-reform-efforts
In this op-ed, Connecticut Policy
Institute’s Ben Zimmer defends Vallas’
lack of credentialing, but goes one further.
Not only should there be no credential
requirement for Superintendents, THERE
SHOULD BE NO CREDENTIALING OR
EDUCATION REQUIREMENT OF
TEACHERS (???!!!) as well as
ADMINISTRATORS.
————————————————————–
BEN ZIMMER: “With a few exceptions, Connecticut
law requires teachers to have a degree in education,
meaning many talented people who didn’t decide
to become teachers until after completing their
educations have difficulty doing so.
“This serves the economic interests of existing
teachers and administrators by limiting
competition for their jobs, but does not
advance the goal of obtaining the highest
quality teaching and administration possible.” ————————————————————
Don’t you get it? If the government entity in charge
of education requires thing like ohhh… bachelor’s
degrees, or even 2-year community college associate
degrees… or even one single college course… well,
you’re just “serving the economic interest of existing
teachers and administrators by limiting competition
for their jobs.”
Those teachers who’ve actually achieved these
“worthless degrees” will bring along with them
accompanying demands for a decent salary,
health benefits, retirement, etc…. AND WHO
NEEDS THAT when you’re trying to make a
profit… err… excuse me… make
“transformational change” in education?
Oh, you don’t believe this? Well, Connecticut
Policy Institute’s “studies and papers” have
“proven” all of this to be true… that you
need nothing more than a high school diploma
to teach in K-12 schools.
Zimmer goes on:
————————————————————
BEN ZIMMER: “As the Connecticut Policy Institute
has discussed in our papers on education reform,
there is no evidence linking certification regimes
to teachers’ or administrators’ effectiveness in
increasing student achievement. They simply
serve to limit the recruitment pipeline of
outstanding educators and keep the antiquated
education administration departments of the
state university system in business.”
————————————————————–
An organization fronting for business interests
that want to profit from the privatization of
education—some of them charter school chain
CEO”s making $500,000/year or more
(Geoffrey Canada, Eve Moskowitz, etc.)—
has its spokesman going on-line to attack
education departments—some of them Ivy League
universities… most of them having turning out
quality teachers for 100-150 years or more—as
only being “in business” to advance the selfish
financial interests of their administrators and
professors that work in them. They are
deliberately blocking “outstanding educators”
from entering the field because they are out
for themselves, and not the students.
In turn, this serves the interest of teachers
and administrators unions—with whom the
Connecticut Department of Ed. is colluding—
as such policies “serve the economic
interests of existing (K-12) teachers and
(K-12) administrators by limiting competition
for their jobs, while not advancing the goal of
obtaining the highest quality teaching and
administration possible.”
Wow! I’m so glad someone’s finally blowing
the lid off this!
But then look at this assclown Zimmer’s bio
at Connecticut Policy Institute:
http://ctpolicyinstitute.org/about/bio/ben-zimmer/leadership
He proudly touts his own education credentials:
———————————————————————-
“Ben received a J.D. from Yale Law School,
where he specialized in business law and economic
policy, and a B.A., magna cum laude with highest
honors in history, from Harvard College.”
———————————————————————-
But Ben, I thought those high-falutin’ things like
degrees didn’t matter. Aren’t those “J.D.’s” and
“B.A.s” and “magna cum laude’s” just worthless
pieces of paper spit out by “antiquated” entities
that are only trying to keep themselves “in business”
to pay the undeserved salaries of the folks who
work in them?
No, no, no… you see in Ben’s world, rigid
requirements like… oh… years of post-secondary
education, or even passing a certification test….
those things only matter in OTHER careers or
professions. They don’t matter in the realm of
K-12 education… as his noble “kids first”
organization, Connecticut Policy Institute, has
produced studies and papers” have “proven” that.
No, according to Ben, teaching is like working the
fry machine at McDonald’s… just let anyone in the
door—education and credentials be damned—to
have at it and compete for the job, then just keep
the ones who do it best. And THAT is how you
end up with a staff of what Ben describes as a
nation of “outstanding educators.”
Got that?
You see the way to get better teachers in front of
kids is just simple… so simple that those antiquated
ed departments full of money-motivated hacks have
been missing it for over 150 years—deliberately so,
actually… they’re conspiring with teachers unions
and administrators union in the process.
The way to fill our country’s schools with “outstanding
educators” is to lower teacher qualifications to China,
or even eliminate the standards and requirements
for becoming a teacher.
That’s it!!!! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that until now?
What’s that, you say? The highest achieving nations like
Finland and South Korea don’t operate that way? In those
countries, becoming a teacher is as difficult and
demanding as becoming a doctor—both there and in
in the United States?
Well, that may lead to countries like those to have the best
education systems in the world, but that would never
work here in the United States.
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In case you’re interested, Ben Zimmer privately emailed Dr. Ravitch, who printed his response in its entirety here: (he “likes teachers”)
My favorite reply (in the comments section below) responding to Zimmer’s response was from a “1st grade teacher” named “Chris.”
==================
CHRIS:
“My undergrad degree is in English with a History minor. I have an MA in English and a second MA in Teaching and Learning.
“By Mr. Zimmer’s reckoning, I should apply for a medical license because I have shown talent in putting Band-Aids on 1st graders’ boo-boos.
“Or maybe I should apply to take the Bar Exam, since I have shown great talent in arguing with people in blog comments over points of law.
“Maybe I could get a pilot’s license, since my nephew flies fighter jets for the Air Force, and I’ve flown many times myself and I have a clear talent at taking off and landing without incident (so far).
“Electricians make a lot of money. I could get an electrician’s license since I’ve successfully used electricity for over 50 years without having a single electrocution incident.
“Since Mr. Zimmer relies on economists to define teacher value, I think we should also consider relying on archeologists to define the value of computer programmers. Or we could ask biologists to determine the value of musicians.
“However you spin it, Mr. Zimmer, your argument that professions only require specialized training and licensure in order to avoid competition is about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Professions have historically controlled entry to their ranks because it’s common sense that people who are experts oversee the training and work of those aspirants who want to join them. It is a very reliable and efficient system of weeding out most of the unqualified (if not all of those with bad intent), and being held accountable by one’s peers keeps most people honest and diligent.
“Licensure and certification may be thorns in the side of libertarian thinkers, but they serve a very real purpose of protecting the general population and ensuring a standard of excellence and expertise that market-based accountability is incapable of reproducing.
“If I go to an uncertified ‘expert’ doctor and he accidentally removes my liver instead of my appendix, then I can’t shop around for the best doctor the market indicates because I’m dead.
“If I hire an uncertified ‘expert’ lawyer with, say a background in pharmacology, and she puts up no defense, then I can’t shop around for another lawyer in the free market because I’m in jail for 20 years.
“And that lawyer who is an unlicensed ‘expert’ in pharmacology just poisoned me and I’m dead, so I can’t shop the free market for another ‘better’ pharmacist, can I?
“Why are you asking parents to risk the education and the future of their precious children with uncertified and unlicensed ‘experts’ who receive a special dispensation because they have been successful at something else?
“I teach first grade. Tell me who qualifies for alternative certification and licensure to teach a 6 year old how to read and write and add and subtract?
“It -is- rocket science, as Lousia Moats so famously argued, and no outsider, now matter how rich, how lauded, or how successful in business has the skills I have or the ability to do it well without being trained as I was (and am still), and by putting in the years I have to gain the expertise to do it properly.
“If I want to teach undergrad classes in Physics, then I would need to pay my dues and earn credentials in Physics.
“Why do you think experts in other fields should receive a pass when it would never be asked or expected if the movement were reversed?
“Which profession is waving their licensure and certification to welcome teachers into their fold without learning the field, paying the dues, and passing the exams?
“I totally and unequivocally reject your arguments against licensure and certification by traditional means, and through traditional schools of education because it makes no sense, would not work, and destroys the very profession of education, no matter how many times you claim to like and respect teachers. I’m not fooled.”
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Mr. Ben Zimmerman is a passive-aggressive clown who has verbal diarrhea.
Vicious, rude, disrespectful, vitriolic baloney.
Your response is transparent, hateful reform-supportive crap.
You don’t fool anyone here.
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Here’s a great video of former UTLA president,
Warren Flecther.
This is from his PART FOUR of Fletcher’s
first address in 2011 to the membership at
UTLA’s annual Leadership Conference. The attendees
are comprised of hundreds of Chapter Chairs from
each individual school site in LAUSD.
(btw, this year’s conference finished a week ago.)
In this speech from four years ago, Fletcher calls
out people like Ben Zimmer, and organizations
like the Connecticut Policy Institute:
go to 7:07
FLETCHER:
“The goal of the phony ‘reform’ movement
isn’t to CHANGE your job; it’s to ELIMINATE
your job.
“Their goal isn’t to CHANGE the teaching profession;
it’s to ABOLISH the idea of teaching AS A PROFESSION.”
————————–
Out of respect for UTLA’s current president, Alex
Caputo-Pearl, here’s his speech from a week
ago Sunday: (it’s great, too 😉 )
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The “teacher shortage” was created by groups who disparage teachers, especially public school teachers. The teacher shortage really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Enrollment in undergraduate education programs is drastically down and some states (WI) have Republican legislatures that work from the ALEC playbook. The playbook wants to have no coordination or organization of any pro public education groups so that that may advance their pro voucher, privatized, corporate “reform” where taxpayers pay more and get less. The same groups who have spent fortunes to break the American public education infrastructure are the ones who wish to profit. The want to get rid of the “bureaucracy” of the department of Ed, and state depts of education, and efforts to create standards so that the layer of bureaucracy is replaced by false profiteers.
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I don’t think teaching is a job anyone can do! I have seen teachers who couldn’t handle the behavior/emotional problems. I spoke to a young teacher from NY last night who worked in a charter for 2 years. She is from TFA. She is one of the few who wants to stay in teaching! She is now going to work for a low -income public school! In the charter, she had scripted lessons and a quota for suspensions! She ended up w/neck problems! She asked me a lot about teaching in public schools, and she was surprised how my principals had treated me when I fought for my kids. I will pray she gets a good admin!
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Of course not!
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