The latest Phi Delta Kappa poll about education was released, and it shows the damage that so-called reformers have done to the teaching profession.
On the one hand, public esteem for public schools is high. But most parents do not want their children to become teachers. Thanks, Bill Gates. Thanks, National Council on Teacher Quality. Thanks, TFA. Thanks, Michelle Rhee. Thanks, TeachPlus. Thanks, Educators4Excellence. Thanks, Walton family. Thanks, Ron DeSantis. So many to thank for smearing a great and noble profession.
Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years in this year’s PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, while fewer than ever expressed interest in having their child work as a public school teacher.
Results of the 54th annual PDK Poll tell a tale of conflicted views of public schools — local ratings are at nearly a five-decade high and a majority have trust and confidence in teachers, yet there’s wide recognition that the challenges they face make their jobs broadly undesirable.
Just 37% of respondents in the national, random-sample survey would want a child of theirs to become a public school teacher in their community. That’s fewer than have said so in a similar question asked 13 times in PDK polls since 1969. It compares with 46% in 2018, a high of 75% in 1969, and a long-term average of 60%.
The reasons for this reluctance are varied: Among the 62% who would not want their child to take up teaching, 29% cite poor pay and benefits; 26%, the difficulties, demands, and stress of the job; 23%, a lack of respect or being valued; and 21%, a variety of other shortcomings. Just among public school parents, slightly more, 38%, cite poor compensation.
This is the case even as 54% of all adults give an A or B grade to the public schools in their community, the highest percentage numerically in PDK polls since 1974, up 10 points since the question was last asked in 2019. The previous high was 53% in 2013; the long-term average, 44%.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Whether intentional or not the resultant denigration of teaching is the same. It’s been an obvious outcome of the last 40 year of bipartisan “education reform”. One can only conclude that for its perpetrators, some mix of strident ideology, racism, green, religious intolerance, etc. trumps any damage to children, parents, communities, and educators.
“religious intolerance” Are all the sects equal in right wing promotion and political power?
Interesting video from Dallas Texas, in the news today- the apparent car of the woman ranting her racism against women with Indian accents (and appearing to slap at them) had the sticker of a Catholic high school on it.
“I felt a little bit unsatisfied with education, with our system, for a long time.”
When he started his new Catholic high school in 2019, that’s what Matt Birk, father of 8, said. Birk is the GOP nominee for Minnesota Lt. Gov. He gave a speech, in 2018, at St. Thomas College (conservative Catholic) in which he joked about women driving and voting. His school will be “vigorously Catholic.”
At the St. Thomas conference, Birk linked contraception to sexual freedom and the road to hell. The Conference celebrated Pope Paul IV’s letter, Humanae Vitae that opposed contraception.
It’s imperative to unflinchingly name the source that threatens women’s rights and democracy. A major threat is conservative Catholics and the massive political apparatus of the Church when it steers congregants to GOP voting.
Btw- Birk went to a private college, Harvard
Media reported that the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis prohibited his priests from voting in a Democratic presidential primary.
The state’s Catholic Conference was cited as the authority advising it was legal.
I was a public school teacher for thirty years, 1975 – 2005, and even I do not want my children or grandchildren to go into teaching so they can be abused and bullied as most teachers have been ever since President Reagan declared war on public school leachers and labor unions back in the 1980s.
Until 1983, when the Reagan administration released the lying, misleading, weaponized A Nation at Risk report, it was a much better time to be a teacher. It was still a tough, underpaid job without enough support but it was more rewarding.
It was easier to manage a classroom. Parents were more supportive.
But after that war was declared on teachers and publics school with the A Nation at Risk BS, students and parents started to blame teachers for everything, making teaching much more difficult instead of just challenging. And most of the rewards from teaching ended up fading away until all that was let was frustration and pain of all kinds. By the 1990s, I wanted out but couldn’t find a job that came with benefits that paid enough to match our living expenses so I stayed another fifteen years until I was ready to retire.
Oddly, my mother was very upset when I informed her that I was going to teach High School (maybe almost 50 years ago). She was, “After all your education?”. To her (product of the Depression) worth meant money.
The benefits of teaching (like the benefits of music) do not appear with dollars attached. Instead, they produce a feeling of warmth from knowing that you helped so many people, gave them confidence,, moved them to a different perspective and promoted a society (as a whole).
Sadly, the ‘business ethic’ entered, and that is something I never had to endure. Had I been forced to ‘teach’ someone’s curriculum that I found to be nonsense, I would have quit and gone to work in a steel mill (back when we had such things).
Don’t forget Jeb Bush. Like Jennifer Berkshire said in a recent Tweet, Ron DeSantis is getting credit for a system Jeb built.
I actively discouraged my son, who considered teaching, into not pursuing it. I am on my 22nd year teaching and my husband taught for 20 years and both of us discouraged him. He would have been great, and I come from a long line of teachers, but the line will stop with me as long as I have a say.
Personally, I think ‘teaching’ is the most human (and humane) thing we can do. However, the conditions imposed upon us by the current administrative structure (controlled by MBA’s and others) makes it very difficult to follow the profession.
I’m sorry you son will not feel the joy of knowing he made a difference in at least a few young lives. If your son has a ‘calling’, he needs to follow it.