Where oh where have all the teachers gone

 Where oh where have all the teachers gone?

 

School systems throughout Maryland are at a loss as to why so many teachers are leaving the field.  This summer saw the greatest number of teachers leaving in recent history.  So, the big question is way?

The easy, let’s not think about it too deeply, answer is that teachers need to be paid more money.    Let’s get real.  For the amount of education, days worked in a year, and benefits received, teachers are very well compensated.  The days of teachers earning $35,000 a year are very long gone and many first year teachers earn about 35% more than that at the start of their careers.    The average teacher in Maryland earns roughly $67,000.  They work about 190 days.   If you work 5 days a week for 50 weeks that is 255 days a year a great deal more than teachers work.   In the days of lower pay, the excuse was given that teachers needed to work summers to make up for the low salaries.  Not anymore and many school systems pay year round. 

Doesn’t take much investigating to determine that salary is not the issue as much as the easy solution folks would like us to believe. 

This summer a full 40% of the people leaving teaching left voluntarily.  They just didn’t like the job enough anymore.   These were people who had contracts for the upcoming school year, contracts that included hefty raises.  Another 25% left teaching but went to other education related employment.  Only 20% left because they had retired.  And perhaps most importantly, only 6% were terminated for bad performance.

There are several more significant reasons teachers are leaving.  First and foremost are the job demands that leave little time for REAL TEACHING.   There is strong pressure to limit suspensions for bad behavior.  Kids know that.  So there are full out fights in schools, serious bullying, not to mention weapons and drug deals.  Teachers are not law enforcement.  They do not want to carry weapons and they don’t want to be part of police state.  They want administrative support in quelling the bad behavior so they can TEACH.  But administrators are scored on how few students they suspend so suspensions are only happening in the very worst situation.  Generally badly behaved kids are transferred to other schools, not dissimilar from the "dance of the lemons" for bad teachers.

The demand for high stakes testing keeps growing.   Somehow or other someone got the notion that good test scores are the reflection of good teaching.   Good test scores are primarily the result of some kids being great test takers who know how to game the test.

If the two former reasons don’t convince you, there are pacing guides.  A teacher is supposed to be a professional educator.  He/she is supposed to be able to gauge when learning is or is not occurring and to make instructional adjustments.   Pacing guides do not allow those adjustments.   Name the date and the guide tells the teacher what he/she is teaching, student progress be damned.

If we want professional teachers paying them like other professions won’t do the trick.  We need to treat them like other professionals and that includes giving the best teachers the opportunity to earn the best money.