Teaching will see exodus within five years

[Scooter24]

By Ben Feller
Associated Press
August 18, 2005

WASHINGTON - More teachers, it seems, are ready to leave their schools behind.

Forty percent of public school teachers plan to exit the profession within five years, the highest rate since at least 1990, according to a study being released Thursday.

The rate is expected to be even greater among high school teachers, half of whom plan to be out of teaching by 2010, according to the National Center for Education Information.

Retirement is the dominant factor, as the public teaching corps is aging fast, say surveys of teachers in kindergarten through grade 12.

In 1996, 24 percent of teachers were age 50 or older. By 2005, 42 percent of teachers are.


http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories//index.php?ntid=50983&ntpid=2

[tom_paine]

1. And so another once-great Republic dies by degrees

Same old story, different century.

The snowball is rolling on so many fronts it seems preordained, and certainly cannot be stopped without great upheaval.

By 2008, I think, the severity of the trap the American People have been ensnared in will become QUITE clear.

[depakid]

3. My guess would be 2010

but otherwise I agree.

People don't realize what a perfect storm America is facing- and won't realize it with anything except hindsight. And even then, there'll be rationalizations and misassignment of blame.

[NorCalDem]

5. Agreed

2010 sounds more reasonable because by then we will most likely have a democrat president, and things will continue into the downward spiral. The public will finally realize that the mess BushCo (and many others as well, the problems facing our country aren't all his fault, although he has done jackshit to help them) left us with is going to follow us forever.

By far, the biggest blow that BushCo has done is to increase our foreign oil dependency, while falling 8 years behind on alternative energy research. That will be the nail in the coffin for this country!

[fishwax]

20. the perfect storm

i can't help but agree, and i've used that language before with friends to try to convince them of the severity of the problems we face. The coming teacher shortage (and the resultant implosion of the public school system) is but one (major) breath in the tempest.

[AnneD]

33. And here is another clue for you....

Nurses are leaving faster than teachers. As the Boomers start needing health care, there will be no skilled professionals to coordinate and monitor health care. More people will die from "unexpected outcomes" (JACHO's term for - well he survived the surgery but died from infection because the aid caring for him didn't wash her hands and there was no nurse to check labs and vital signs to see the sepsis coming).

[getmeouttahere]

8. And why would the repukes care?

they want to privatize the schools too!

[Canadiana]

2. The United States government

really treats its teachers badly. My mother is a teacher here in Canada. She makes $72,000/year. Mind you, it took her 25 years to get to that point. Also, completely covered by her union. Dental, medical (although all Canadians get free med), but the kicker is perscriptions...our immediate family gets our perscriptions for pennies.

[MoJoWorkin]

4. My daughter is a middle school teacher in Austin, TX

She would LOVE to make that kind of dough!!! Need any orchestra teachers in Canada? Only thing she wouldn't like is the cold. She is so used to the searing heat of TX.

[Maple]

15. It was 92 here in Ontario today

and really humid. My a/c is working overtime.

[yasmina27]

26. My husband is an orchestra teacher

at our middle/high school. He is hoping to retire at the end of this school year, but his big concern is that there is no one in the area to replace him. Our school recently had a music position open, and of 15 applicants, not one had a background in orchestra. (The position was for general music, but they were hoping for an orchestra background to prepare for Ron's leaving).

We live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, teach in Bethel Park. After 17 years experience, we're making almost $80,0000/yr., full health care w/no deductible, eye and dental care for very little premium, and a very strong union.

Unfortunately, our contract was up in June, so it looks like another year on the picket line. Been there twice already and am sick to my stomach just thinking about it. Frankly, I don't have any complaints. I NEVER in my wildest dreams - when I planned to be a teacher - imagined I would ever make this kind of money. I figure, f-'em. I'll keep working under the old contract, by law they have to continue to pay all premiums etc. until the new contract is settled. Also by law, the younger teachers still on the pay scale have to be moved up to the next step.

She might enjoy our increasingly mild winters here in PA. My cousin, who grew up in Miami, moved to Boston when he graduated from college and he LOVES the cold!

[getmeouttahere]

6. Man, I've got to get that landed immigrant status....

I'd love to teach up there!

[dsc]

7. That would be 50k here

which would be more than I make but not more than someone at the place your mother is at on the scale.

I honestly think money isn't the main problem. It is working conditions.

[TahitiNut]

10. I think you're correct.

Studies show that money has a very limited effect as a positive motivator. It's a big factor in dissatisfaction but, when adjusted fairly, it ceases being a negative.

I'm fairly certain that the working conditions (Mickey Mouse hurdles, ridiculous continuing education requirements, and oppressive resourcing) and the politicization of the schools are HUGE factors. Who the hell wants to be fought daily by people who're supposed to be allies and sharing the objective of educating our children??

I LOVED teaching high school. Succeeding was an enormous trip! Low pay was a demotivator ... but worse was the insane Mickey Mouse bullshit. Hell, if I wanted to get a high but be personally savaged as a result, I'd do meth.

[MichiganVote]

16. You are spot on the money

[Southpaw Bookworm]

23. Right on Tahiti!

In my grad school library science program, way more than half of my cohort-mates were teachers looking to get out. The central theme was that they loved helping kids learn, but that administrative bullshit and the need to teach to the test (and therefore the inability to meet kids' education needs individually) were making that impossible.

[Daphne08]

12. I taught almost twenty years and never made over $40,000!

When I started, I made a grand total of $12,000 and I had all the credentials, degrees and certifications necessary.

However, it was the lack of support from parents and administrators, the ridiculous testing policies and the unnecessary paperwork that drove me from the profession of teaching.

Despite the low pay, I loved my job... before the bureaucrats took over.

[Thurgood Marshall]

27. Pay Is Part But Not All

I wish we were back in Pennsylvania were I grew up, my wife here in Florida is in her 15th year and barely is over 36K as a teacher. Also, the medical is through the school district for a family and costs about $600/month for a PPO with a co-pay.

Thanks to Jeb and the boyz, they spend all year teaching to a standardized test with little room for thinking outside the box type learning.

The biggest education initiative here was a local congressman wanting to spend $1 million plus to make it mandatory for every classroom to have the same oversized American flag.

[Davis_X_Machina]

9. No surprises there.

You've got a president who's barely literate, and publicly contemptuous of learning.

His administration tries to blame the schools for the country's every shortcoming, from lesbianism in Oklahoma to jobs leaving the country.

At the highest levels of government actual education is considered dangerous, and likely to turn you into a freedom-hating atheist liberal faggot.

And this is all embedded in a society that shows its real priorities by how it allocates its money -- into death abroad, and corruption at home.

Now if you were 24, had tuition loans up the wazoo, would you sign up, as a lifetime profession, with an institution that you hear daily must be 'reformed' until it is ultimately destroyed?

[hatrack]

11. A president who supports teaching "intelligent design" in biology classes

That pretty much says all you need to know about the Edumacation Prezidentt.

[Bombero1956]

13. our local control board

has been hiring new teachers and paying them more money than currently employed teachers. There are 170 vacancies in the system right now with another 70 expected. Some are going to other systems that pay more but others are leaving teaching in favor of other lines of work with less stress and abuse. For the most part they feel they get no support from parents and the system.

[TahitiNut]

17. I gotta wonder how many teachers on summer break decided ...

... to shitcan the job, and won't show up when school opens, when the Chimperor came up with that coprolite gem of an idea. :eyes:

I gotta believe a lot of biology teachers decided they could get a better price for their souls ... and went corporate (or postal).

[pitohui]

14. why would anyone teach

if a boy brags about his imagined sexual activities with you, once a normal part of being a teen-age boy and dismissed as the boasting and bullshit it is...now you go to prison

i'm sorry, i'm qualified to teach but i wouldn't expose myself to a teen boy's fantasies & possibly lose my one & only life

just ain't worth it

[ramapo]

18. It is a lost profession

Teachers get little respect. They have to put up with bratty kids and brattier parents. They have to teach to the test. There are more administrators than ever. And they have to worry about trumped up charges. If somebody wants to go into teaching they're thought of as something of a freeloading loser.

On the flipside...teaching doesn't attract the best or the brightest. There are a lot of BAD teachers out there...can't spell, can't write, don't know recent history, etc.

It is a bad situation...

[SaveAmerica]

19. Exhibit A: Already happening in Charlotte NC

Farther down the article it says they are 80 teachers short as of 5 days ago.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/12376459.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Almost 170 teachers resigned the past three weeks, up from 112 during the same stretch last year. District leaders say they're concerned about the losses and are interviewing departing teachers to find out what's behind them.

Turnover rates vary in Charlotte-area districts. Cabarrus, Gaston, Union and Catawba counties say they haven't seen a change. But teacher resignations have jumped in the Iredell-Statesville and Mooresville Graded school districts, a change some pin on a new state law.

The law forces all N.C. schools to open Aug. 25, rather than the traditional three-week staggering of start times. Amid a statewide teacher shortage, that gives teachers more time to weigh offers from neighboring districts.

"Teachers are finding out at the last minute they've got jobs in other places," said Iredell-Statesville's human resources director Dale Ellis. "We've gotten about 10 (resignations) in the last couple weeks. We thought we were about done. Now we're back up to 11 (vacancies)."

[reprobate]

21. My son in law is principal of an elementary school in Orlando.

He gets regular telephone death threats and almost daily is aimed at by cars that barely miss him.

He is so frustrated by the lack of support by the administration of the school board and the parents of his students. But he continues because he still believes that he can make a difference to 'his' kids.

I tell him that with the threats he gets he should be armed, at least in public. but he refuses to recognize the danger of the situation. His 'kids' have mothers that make a living giving blow jobs while the kids are in school.


I cannot imagine working in conditions like he lives with. The stress must be killing him.

[barbaraann]

22. John Taylor Gatto is a must-read on the subject of education.

"Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern."

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm

[meganmonkey]

24. I wonder about that 40% number

I think if you ask most people in any profession if they plan to exit their profession, a large percentage would say, yes, they plan to. That doesn't mean they actually will, especially because jobs are so scarce. If you follow up with those 40% of teachers in 5 years I wouldn't be surprised that many of them are still teaching.

Just my instinct, I could be way off...

[cmd]

25. 40% will be elegible to retire

You are right. Not that many will retire at that time. It wil be a slower exodus; but they will retire. Ten years ago (Ohio) you could retire at 30 years and have full medical benefits. Medical costs have increased so rapidly that it is very hard for an teacher to retire with less than 35 years.

[Orion The Hunter]

28. RE: Teaching Shortage

Everyone I know from undergrad who taught (which is now over 10 years ago) has since gotten out of that profession and moved on to something else. No one wants to do it long term because its just a stressful job where you have to deal with bad kids and overly-demanding parents. Unless that paradigm changes (along with better pay and benefits), I would not expect to see this trend dissipate any time soon.

[noonwitch]

29. I guess that's good news for the teachers being laid off right now

They'll have jobs in the future.

I don't know what the stats are on how many ed majors are in college at the moment. My cousin recently graduated with an early elementary ed degree and is employed at a day care center. She is overqualified for that job (not that it isn't an important one, or that the kids she is working with aren't benefitting from her education)and would make more money working in the public schools.

Detroit teachers are about to go on strike. I'm not particularly sympathetic, because I have a BSW and make about 10 gs less a year than a BA teacher in Detroit. I also work all year around, and face risks as a children's service worker that teachers don't.

Not that I think teachers don't deserve a decent wage, I just get sick of hearing them cry in cases where they are getting a decent wage, like in most Michigan districts, including Detroit Public Schools.

[SoCalDem]

30. My generation was really the last one where women

became teacher/nurses/librarians in large numbers.. Back then college pretty much meant teacher if you were female.. About 5 years after the boomers started graduating, the whole thing opened up..but by then lots had their degrees, and were already in the classrooms..

Cannot really blame the younger ones who decided against teaching, what with all the crap they have to contend with these days..and get little support for all they have to do.

[cmd]

31. My daughter just got her degree

I don't think she wants to teach, and I'm not encouraging her to do it. I spent over 30 years in the classroom and watched respect for the profession plummet. It began when the media equated failing inner-city schools with public education in general. Now a teacher must wake up every day and consider what law suit may be coming his/her way.

I remember the first day of school four years ago when one of my little kindergarteners decided he wasn't going to go home on the school bus. I had earlier promised his mother faithfully that I would get him on the right bus to go to his babysitter. The little guy stood up to me and told me that he was going to tell his mother that I hit him and that she would sue me and send me to jail. Other than holding his hand on the way to the bus, I had never touched that child. That is the kind of stuff teachers have to put up with on a daily basis. I'll never go back to substitute.

[AnneD]

32. I am wrapping up the first week as a school nurse...

I have already had to file a Workman's comp claim for staff. Our social worker, who is a trained counselor, was bitten by a student. The assistant principal, special ed coordinator also suffered injuries as the tried to restrain him and free the social workers hand. I am thankful he did not rip the skin off, but she is on antibiotics and is limited on the use of her hand.......This kid is a third grader. She was kind, I would have filed assault charges. I am wanting to finish 2 more years and then begin to make plans for an early retirement. Every year it really gets worse...and I'm at a better school than most.

[TrogL]

34. It's already started

Most starting teachers I know (including me) burned out in three years.

The profession is just not the way it used to be when I was a kid. These days teachers spend most of their time dealing with social and socialization issues instead of the subject material.