Now we know the outcome of the reformers’ campaign to put a “great teacher” in every classroom (or at least a great computer). They unleashed their teacher-bashing campaign in 2010 with the release of “Waiting for Superman.” They told us our schools were overrun with bad teachers, and we could cure that by firing the bottonm 5-10% every year, based on test scores. Add “Superman” to Arne Duncan’s mandate to tie teacher evaluation to test scores and his constant refrain that teachers are lying to students by not telling them they are failures; and the Los Angeles Times publication of teacher ratings based on student test scores, applauded by Arne (“What’s there to hide?”); and the mass firing of teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island (applauded by both Duncan and I ama); and the teacher-bashing by Michelle Rhee, which won her cover stories on TIME and Newsweek; and NBC’s “Education Nation”; Bill Gates advocating that great teachers should have larger classes and defining great with VAM; and state legislatures removing tenure, collective bargaining, funding the agency for inexperienced teachers, TFA; removing salary bumps for experience and education: and guess what happens? not a great teacher in every classroom, but a national teacher shortage!
Why would anyone want to be a teacher to join the ranks of the unrespected, the underpaid, and to become the targets of so many powerful people, a strange coalition of billionaires and yahoos?
Here is the latest from Politico:
“TRYING TO FIND TEACHERS: The number of teacher licenses issued each year in Indiana dropped by a third over the last five years. About 3,800 licenses were issued during the 2014-15 school year – down 21 percent from the previous year, according to state data [http://bit.ly/1WlEx0F ] released on Thursday. The numbers reflect a nationwide trend: Many states are struggling with teacher shortages. Teacher pay is dismal. Fewer students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs, drawn to better-paying jobs as the U.S. continues to climb out of the recession. During the 2008-09 school year, more than 719,000 students nationwide were enrolled in teacher prep programs. By 2012-13, that number fell to about 500,000. And some say [http://bit.ly/1R42HtL] that fights over academic standards, tenure and testing are driving teachers away.
“- States and districts are coping in a number of ways. Oklahoma is resorting to emergency measures, for example. The Oklahoma Board of Education has approved 842 emergency teaching certificates since July – compared to 825 emergency teaching certificates total over the last four years, the Tulsa World reports [http://bit.ly/1NPIN5u]. The emergency certificates allow people to work as teachers who don’t have the qualifications usually required. Oklahoma state education chief Joy Hofmeister told [http://politi.co/1QBLzKY ] Morning Education earlier this month that she’s working to build pathways for emergency-certified teachers to get full certification. She also wants the state legislature to tackle teacher compensation this legislative session. The state announced [http://bit.ly/1NXi3BJ] Thursday that it’s forming a task force to tackle the shortage.
“- Oregon’s schools and districts are recruiting professionals without education backgrounds through alternative route licenses, the Associated Press reports [http://bit.ly/1iOV8Mk ]. More than 2,200 Oregon students completed teacher preparation programs in 2008-09, compared to nearly 1,700 in 2012-13.”
The upshot: states will have to lower standards to have enough teachers. A strange strategy for improving education!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So happy that these states that went along with the charade are now paying the price. ( I feel for the kids who are now pawns.) I hope that those in the legal profession can fire up the suits and ,make them pay. A mad scramble now ensues. Got to thank Arne and Barrack and others for this fiasco. One wonders if there is a teachable moment in this sad tale – that they and the public will learn from. Probably not. I see this happening in another 20-30 years. If we’re all still around.
Teacher shortages?
Call in TFA: they’ll find some perky young scabs to do the drill and kill.
It’s not just teachers. Ed reform is focused on teachers but the general disappointment in the “quality” of the US workforce permeates so many government/private sector policy “discussions”.
They’ve decided that all of the problems in the US are directly attributable to the poor performance of working people, which is of course really convenient if you’re a government or private sector leader. It’s not them. It’s us.
Seems like part of the plan now–discouraging teachers=less teachers=more,” guess we have to use those computerized lessons now. We just don’t have enough teachers! “
Hang in there teachers…….their scam is starting to show!
Yes, teachers, DO HANG IN THERE. We are “with” you public school teachers. Public School Teachers ROCK. And do advocate for yourselves. Again, we are “with” you.
So many media stories make it all about the pay and, maybe, all that other stuff as sort of an afterthought. But in most areas teacher pay has always been dismal, yet we’ve always found teachers. I wish more writers understood how important that “other stuff” are.
And what happens when those persons certified through the emergency process ((I hesitate to call them teachers) are determined to be in the bottom 5-10% of practitioners and are fired? Who will take THEIR place? The ripples of damage are extending out further and further with every punitive step the policy makers are taking.
I went into teaching with no concern for the pay (first salary was $6K per year-1970) Looking back I see this choice caused me to lead a meaningful, rewarding life. I would not make this choice today.
As has my daughter, who knew all her life she wanted to be a teacher. I feel sorry for her. Apparently she is good at what she does, but the price teachers pay for being teachers isn’t worth the price they are paid to be teachers.
The spin around ed reform is just unbearable. Here’s Duncan, home from his bus tour:
“The school offers dual enrollment opportunities, so high school students can earn credits toward a degree, and has launched a new high-quality charter school – a STEM academy right on campus.”
Why is it “high quality”? It got a D on the Ohio school report card. If it was an ordinary public school with a D score from the state would the Obama Administration describe it as “high quality”? Of course not. They wouldn’t even mention it.
http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/community-college-stop-on-the-ready-for-success-bus-tour/
And don’t you love it? Every time someone goes out of their way to qualify the quality of a charter as “high,” they underline that the DEFAULT isn’t high at all.
To all conscientious parents:
It is a serious problem for our children in the near future if we are not concerned the welfare of our own today democracy, and our children future creativity.
It will be too late to correct or to fight back the ROTTEN society which is driven by greed and abusively BRAINWASHED human rights WITHOUT responsibility and being considerate and self-respectful from NEW, FEARFUL, and full of ANGER IMMIGRANTS.
Business people are VERY short sighted and narrow minded. They always manipulate political situation to turn into their individual gain regardless of their background in creed, race, gender, or class.
Our gentle, caring, and NAIVE children will be MANIPULATIVELY brainwashed by UN-qualified educational background/FAKE degree people who are employed by CROOKED (receive bribery) administrators.
Therefore, it is worth to fight for our children future civility and creativity. Please take one day vacation to unite in A DESIGNATED DATE and PLACE in order to exercise our democracy peacefully in an OPT OUT SIT DOWN like a concert in Woodstock IN 1969.
Hopefully, educators will receive the support from parents and students across all 50 (52?) States in America. This is a true civility in 21st century to show that humanity should overcome artificial greed. Back2basic
Don’t lower standards. Cut class size, stop the emphasis on testing, bring back the fine arts, provide quality after school programs for students, pay teachers enough so that the can pay the rent and I believe people will once again pursue a career in teaching.
In 2014 I graduated from UCLA with 3.628 GPA (including transfer credits), a great deal of life experience, and a background of many years of volunteer teaching and literacy mentoring. Getting a California teaching credential requires nearly as many units as a masters degree, yet I seriously considered it.
However, in the face neoliberal corporate education reforms including Common Core State Standards (CCSS), pseudoscientific job evaluations via value added measures, and the nonstop cacophony of shrill and strident teacher bashing by foundations, nonprofits, and the corporate media led me to the more logical choice of law school.
Credit Duncan, Austin, Rhee, and Broad for one less person becoming a schoolteacher.
Yes, Robert, but we’ll have you on our side to sue their butts off soon!
Amazing isn’t it, improving a situation by tearing it up. Now we can have unqualified teachers in charters and public schools all to feed the charter profit makers. Sick and devastating for our kids.
Whle there may be a few (very few) people in the ‘reform’ camp who are genuinely interested in improving education, my cynical self tells me that the majority of these people see education as yet another area to be privatized for profit, and/or view education as merely training to produce obedient workers for the likes of Jeff Bezos and others in the 1%.
When the leaders of a country allow this to happen, everyone—even the minority resistance that includes me—-deserves what they get for letting those leaders continue to lead.
We have a choice of leaders under our plutocracy?
We have a choice of leaders that they offer to us, but the voters don’t get to pick the list they are allowed to vote from, and the president is not elected by the people.
What do these four presidents have in common?
John Quincy Adams in 1824
Rutherford B. Hayes in 1874
Benjamin Harrison in 1888
George W. Bush in 2000
In the upcoming elections, at this time, it looks like no matter who we will get to vote for, the majority of the people will be the losers.
When the history of the education “reform” movement is written, I believe its main cause will be attributed to the Great Recession.
Excellent histories have been written by the owner of this blog and many others. Your comment needs amplification.
I think the “reform” movement needs to be over at least twenty years for a full history of it to be written.
I think it’s been a lot longer than 20 years already.
It’s arguable that the first shot in the school reform movement was officially fired in 1950 out of the mouth of Milton Friedman.
Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman argued for the modern concept of vouchers in the 1950s, stating that competition would improve schools and cost efficiency. The view further gained popularity with the 1980 TV broadcast of Friedman’s book Free to Choose for which video chapter 6 was devoted entirely to promoting educational freedom through programs like school vouchers.
In some Southern states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a method of perpetuating segregation. In a few instances, public schools were closed outright and vouchers were issued to parents. The vouchers, in many cases, were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies.
But it didn’t really take off until NCLB in 2001
The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 brought public school choice into federal law. The Act mandates that parents with a child enrolled in a school identified as under-performing can transfer that child to a better-performing public school or public charter school. However, vouchers for private schooling proved a very contentious issue and even a small pilot voucher program was defeated and removed from the bill before it was signed into law.
http://www.pbs.org/now/society/vouchers.html
We already have that in Indiana. If you have a college degree you can teach your major subject in a public high school…and you don’t have to start to learn how to be a “real teacher” until after you have started teaching.
How convenient that we were lucky enough to have that on the books before the teacher shortage. Who woulda’ thunk it!?
So let me get this straight.. states desperate for teachers are hiring anybody as long as they work on alternative certification meanwhile making those remaining teachers who actually know what they are doing go through the arduous inane SLO process to prove they can teach? Right …Duncan… sure makes a lot of sense – NOT! Duncan’s education policy reflects his “intelligence”…
Duncan’s intelligent?!?! I thought he was a non AI android.
Please excuse this overly long addition to the thread, but the following opinion piece appeared in the Glendale News Press (Glendale, CA) today.
It fits in perfectly with the above posting.
[start piece]
The Whiteboard Jungle: Interest in teaching field needs to be increased
By Brian Crosby
September 25, 2015 | 1:02 p.m.
Every so often, like the reemergence of El Niño, the topic of a teaching shortage reappears on op-ed pages and talk radio.
California needed more than 21,000 teachers to fill positions this school year because the number of teacher candidates has declined by more than 55%, from 45,000 in 2008 to 20,000 in 2013, as reported by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
With fewer people going into the teaching field, shouldn’t the powers that be examine how to increase interest in it?
Working conditions and salary clearly are not selling points.
Much of the negative aspects of teaching stem from the lack of control teachers have over their own profession.
Schools are still structured top-down as they have been for a century, with teachers viewed more as factory workers, not master-degreed professionals who can problem-solve without the intervention of those outside the classroom.
Teachers know how to improve their profession, but do not have a voice in the matter, impotent in their subservient roles. How many college students would gravitate toward such a future career?
It wasn’t that long ago that the concept of site-based management was seriously championed as a way to involve teachers in the decision-making process at a school. But that grand idea vanished.
So, education bureaucrats continue to mandate so-called reforms such as Common Core standards and standardized testing that teachers are expected to deliver with little input.
Meanwhile, everyone goes about business as normal, not questioning why people don’t want to become teachers or why so many who do end up leaving within the first few years.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between those who work in the classroom and those who do not. Overlooked is the daily energy drain on interacting with upwards of 200 kids. Taken for granted is the amount of secretarial tasks performed by teachers: taking attendance, uploading homework, inputting grades, getting supplies, making photocopies.
And then there’s money. Teacher salaries do not reflect the education and training required nor the level of responsibility an effective instructor shoulders.
In fact, beginning teachers in Glendale can’t afford to live in the city.
Consider that the median price of a house in Glendale today is nearly $700,000, according to Zillow. After a 20% down payment, the $560,000 loan would result in a $2,500 monthly mortgage payment. The starting salary for a teacher in Glendale is $43,000, meaning the monthly take-home pay is around $2,800. Add in property taxes and the teacher ends up in the red.
Harjot Kaur, my student teacher from Cal State University, Northridge, teaches three classes, then takes three classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, plus an online course — all unpaid.
So why does she make the financial sacrifice to train as a teacher considering she would not be able to live in the community in which she teaches?
“The low pay is devastating, but this is my passion, so I push the reality aside and go on,” Kaur said.
Let’s face it. We all hope that selfless people join the military to protect our country. We all hope that decent people become firefighters and police officers to protect our society. And we all hope that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.
But hoping will only get so far. If schools expect a line outside human resources of people applying for jobs, then a major overhaul of the teaching profession has to happen. And it will take teachers themselves to blast the clarion call since those in the upper echelon of education show no interest in changing the status quo.
Is there any chance of that happening in our lifetime?
One can only hope.
—
BRIAN CROSBY is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District and the author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools” and “The $100,000 Teacher.” He can be reached at briancrosby.org.
[end piece]
Link: http://www.glendalenewspress.com/opinion/columnists/brian-crosby/tn-gnp-the-whiteboard-jungle-interest-in-teaching-field-needs-to-be-increased-20150925,0,54333.story
😎
http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/09/22/las_vegas_teacher_shortage_can_the_city_of_sin_fix_its_teacher_shortage.html
Another article about the teacher shortage here in Las Vegas where our salaries are frozen, we haven’t yet signed a contract ths year and our insurance plan is being purposely underfunded.
From: Leigh Campbell-Hale
September 25, 2015 at 6:40 pm
When the history of the education “reform” movement is written, I believe its main cause will be attributed to the Great Recession.
And from: KrazyTA
September 25, 2015 at 10:47 pm
…
In fact, beginning teachers in Glendale can’t afford to live in the city.
Consider that the median price of a house in Glendale today is nearly $700,000, according to Zillow. After a 20% down payment, the $560,000 loan would result in a $2,500 monthly mortgage payment. The starting salary for a teacher in Glendale is $43,000, meaning the monthly take-home pay is around $2,800. Add in property taxes and the teacher ends up in the red.
in conclusion, who is responsible to bring down global economy? Who causes chaos in American Public Education? Who should be penalized for destroying the credential in Teaching Profession = promoting savage robot-like future workforce?
Academic elitism or financial elitism, which is the cause and which is the effect in “controlling civilization” or “being above the law”? Back2basic
Perhaps these schools should look to rehire the teachers whose lives and careers they ruined? Nah. Reformers don’t care that there is a teacher shortage — that was by design. Now they can take over without so much pushback, open charters or send in management companies, and hire cheap temps, push digital/computer learning, and reap the financial benefits by screwing the taxpayers and the kids…and when it is all over, they get to keep everything. Tidy, that.
Another big issue that needs to be addressed is the massive amount of overtime that is required of teachers. If one adds these hours and then divides these added hours into amount paid, new teachers make around $13.00 per hour. One of my teacher friends commented the other day that teaching is actually two jobs. The first is the teaching itself and the second is everything else: the planning and lesson preparation, parent meetings and communication, faculty and training meetings, data entry and disaggregation of data. Both jobs require full time hours. All these extra hours are volunteer hours.
During the school year, I often arrive at the building by seven, leave between 5:30 or six, and do more work after dinner. I often work Saturdays as well. This week I’ve spent a little over 54 hours of time working in the building and I will be going into work tomorrow as well. Even with extra hours teachers are often feel like they cannot get it all done. It leaves us exhausted and frazzled. We have a running joke in my district. The district will leave the building open this Saturday so I can work for free. The teachers actually petitioned that the building be available on weekends as outside teacher responsibilities prevent teachers from completing the needed work during the week.
In many districts, elementary teachers get no prep time and must also do playground duty during recess. During inclement weather teachers also lose their lunch break. It is difficult to grab a drink of water or use the restroom.
I ran into a retired teacher a while back who had taught a couple of my kids. We got into a discussion about retirement and the free time it afforded us. She laughingly shared that her kids used to say that she was married to the district.
I have laughingly asked my administrator how much is the rent as I practically spend most of my time there.
Yeah, it actually was kind of nice to spend time in my classroom on the weekend with no distractions.
This is a long, ugly tunnel that education is traveling through…
Teaching used to be great. Now I have administrators half my age who can’t be bothered to read the bargaining agreement, ed code, or the IDEA. They make twice what I make as an 18 year teacher, yet I’m still at work long after they leave. If my young boss reminds me one more time how to lock the gate, I will have to retire on the spot.
I won’t be able to take much more. I’ve told my 19-yr-old son, “I love you son, but if you become a teacher I will disown you.” He’s assured me many times that he intends to make a good living, so teaching is out.
Diane, once again thanks for sharing the great news on alternative teacher entry programs. Maybe now, Oregon and Oklahoma can show us how STEM majors can be recruited into teaching and drastically improve our schools performance in STEM instruction! You truly are the source for the latest information in educational reform.
I came to teaching from working as a geologist for over two decades, and I must say that my experience as a scientist prepared me very well for teaching earth science, especially the geology part of the course. If NYS hadn’t had some sort of program for people like me, I’d never have considered this career move. That said, I still had to do 15 weeks of unpaid student teaching before I could get my cert to teach.
That amount of time, maybe even more is an essential part of ANY teacher certification requirements. You have to spend time in a classroom for a long time to see if you can do it, before you actually get hired to do the job. My experience as a geologist had nothing to do with what it’s like to actually teach. IMO, content is at best just a third of effective teaching. The rest involves strong pedagogy and what I call “performance” skills…how to modulate your voice, command attention, keep the kids interested.
So I agree that having some sort of alternative program is smart, even essential. The life and work experiences of men and women who come into education at an older age is invaluable, plus I’d venture that these people are more likely to stay around that rookies out of college. Those people aren’t just learning how to teach, they are learning what it’s like to be an employee, an adult, a new homeowner, a parent, etc.
BUT, this is not limited to those with STEM backgrounds. Everything I stated above is true for ELA, or foreign language, or social studies, or technology…it is true for anyone wishing to be a teacher.
My route to teaching worked for me. Conventional routes through teaching schools also work. What doesn’t work are alternative programs that are just 5 weeks long, or that don’t require specialized coursework in teaching methods, psychology, educational history, assessment and long periods of unpaid practice teaching.
So go ahead and recruit STEM majors, or working STEM people, as long as you also recruit former military, lawyers, accountants, private detectives, and Home Depot managers. In my school we’ve got everyone one of those professions represented, and I’m the only one with a STEM background.
It’s disappointing that Politico won’t connect the dots.
If a national cabinet office for science and technology existed, and the tenure of its leadership resulted in a shortage of professionals majoring in science and technical fields, the person would be fired.
It’s not just K-12. I teach at a community college. Like every other community college, and many four-year colleges, we rely too heaving on adjuncts (contingent labor). Ten years ago, our department chair would not hire an adjunct who did not have college teaching experience. This fall, several people without college teaching experience were hired at the last minute, with no access to college resources, no class lists, and previous little idea of what to do.