Why Public School Teachers Burn Out
Teachers are victims of the dysfunctional government school system just as much as students. In a new Friedman Foundation study, my colleague Christian D’Andrea and I use federal data to document the poor working conditions for teachers in public schools, and the superior teaching environment in private schools.
Reformers normally focus on the mediocre results we get from the government education monopoly — the millions of children who lose their futures because we entrust their schooling to a bureaucracy with little incentive to provide good services. But you aren’t likely to get better learning until you get better teaching, and reformers would be wise to pay more attention to how the government monopoly warps the teaching profession.
In our study, we use data from a huge federal survey to compare working conditions for public and private school teachers. Public school teachers have lower job satisfaction, less autonomy, less influence over school policy, less ability to keep order, less support from administrators and peers, and less safety. Just about the only thing they have more of is burnout.
Public school teachers lack autonomy and influence. They are much less likely to have “a great deal of control” over selection of textbooks and instructional materials (32 percent v. 53 percent) and content, topics, and skills to be taught (36 percent v. 60 percent). And they are much less likely to have “a great deal of influence” on performance standards for students (18 percent v. 40 percent) and curriculum (22 percent v. 47 percent).
They get less support from administrators. They are much less likely to strongly agree that they have all the textbooks and supplies they need (41 percent v. 67 percent) and are less likely to agree that they get all the support they need to teach students with special needs (64 percent v. 72 percent). This in spite of the fact that public schools get nearly $11,000 per student and private schools charge an average tuition of only $6,600. They are less likely to strongly agree that their principals clearly communicate what kind of school they want (56 percent v. 69 percent) and recognize staff who do a good job (33 percent v. 45 percent). And they are less likely to strongly agree that their principals back them up when they need support for disciplining students (55 percent v. 68 percent).
They also get less support from peers. Public school teachers are much less likely to strongly agree that there is a great deal of cooperation between staff members (41 percent v. 60 percent), that their colleagues share their values and understanding of the core mission of the school (38 percent v. 63 percent), and that their fellow teachers consistently enforce school rules (29 percent v. 42 percent).
The stronger support for student discipline among both principals and peers probably helps explain why public school teachers are much more likely to report that discipline problems impact their work. They are more likely to report that their classes are disrupted by student misbehavior (37 percent v. 21 percent) or tardiness and class cutting (33 percent v. 17 percent). Acts of disorder are far more common on a daily basis; fights, theft, vandalism, drug and alcohol use, and bullying all occur at least three times more often in public schools.
And public school teachers are less safe. They are more likely to be threatened with harm by a student (18 percent v. 5 percent) and more likely to be physically attacked by a student (9 percent v. 3 percent).
All this helps explain why public school teachers are less satisfied with their careers. Private school teachers are much more likely to say they will continue teaching as long as they are able (62 percent v. 44 percent), but public school teachers are much more likely to say they’ll leave teaching as soon as they are eligible for retirement (33 percent v. 12 percent).
And there’s a reason why “burnout” has become a staple topic of discussion when it comes to public school teachers. For example, they are twice as likely as private school teachers to agree that the stress and disappointments they experience at their schools are so great that teaching there isn’t really worth it (13 percent v. 6 percent).
That is really a shocking number. One in eight public school teachers says teaching just isn’t worth it. By those odds, if you get twelve teachers in your twelve years of schooling, you have an 80 percent chance of getting at least one who thinks teaching just isn’t worth it. Many will get more than one.
Everyone knows a monopoly is bad for the people who rely on its services. But monopolies are also bad for the people who work for them. Just like the monopoly’s clients, its employees have few alternatives. If they’re not treated well at work, they can’t go work for a competing employer. That means the monopoly doesn’t have to worry about keeping them happy.
And the education monopoly also locks out parental pressure for better teaching, which is probably a factor in improving working conditions for teachers in private schools. Public schools are government-owned and government-run, so the main pressure on them is political imperatives. The main pressure on private schools is keeping parents happy. Given that parents primarily want better teaching, which of those two options do you think is better for teachers?
Unfortunately, we’re not accustomed to thinking of the government school system as a monopoly. But that’s what it is. Of course, private schools do exist. However, the term “monopoly” applies to any dominant provider that maintains its dominance not by providing better service, but by making it impossible for other providers to challenge its dominance, forcing them to survive by serving niche markets. The classic example of monopolistic behavior is providing a service for less than its cost so that no one else can seriously compete — and that is exactly what the government school system does.
Milton Friedman once made this point by asking what would happen if government gave away free hot dogs on every street corner. Most private vendors would go out of business, and government would have a hot dog monopoly even though private stands were still legal. This, Friedman said, is exactly what has happened in education — the private schools we have now are the rump left over after government has demolished the market.
Friedman’s example could be expanded. Let’s say government couldn’t sell kosher hot dogs due to First Amendment concerns. And some wealthy consumers would pay extra for hot dogs with prestigious brand names. So religious hot dog stands and high-priced premium hot dog stands could stay in business in spite of the government monopoly by serving niche markets. That’s the private school sector today — the large majority are low-cost religious schools, and virtually all the rest are either high-cost prestige schools or schools that serve other niches, such as special education.
For decades, Herculean efforts to improve the government school system without changing its inherent incentives have failed. The government monopoly simply will not reform as long as it stays an unaccountable monopoly.
Meanwhile, the evidence consistently shows that vouchers deliver a better education to those who use them, and the competitive effects improve public schools as well. The results so far have been moderate in size, because the trials so far have been moderate in size. But the prospect for dramatic reform is there, and the political prospects for getting it are good, even in spite of the shenanigans we’re now seeing in D.C. and elsewhere. The older, more narrowly limited voucher experiments (D.C., Milwaukee) are vulnerable, because few benefit from them. But the newer, broader programs (e.g., two programs in Georgia) are blazing the way towards universal choice.
Right now, teachers and parents are usually at odds with each other. That’s because the monopoly system leaves parents with no way to control their children’s education other than to harass and pester their teachers. But parents ought to be the best friends teachers ever had. When you compare the working conditions for teachers in public and private schools, you see that school choice isn’t just about saving children from the government monopoly. It’s also about saving the teaching profession.
Unfortunately, since you’ve drawn the conclusion that school choice is good for students and teachers, your study will be dismissed out of hand by most “experts” and discredited before the ink is dry. The education establishment in this country insists that the only thing that we need to solve our education problem is *more* money. We already pour ridiculous amounts of cash into the system, but we need to start adding zeros to what we spend if we want to have a serious impact for our children. Millions of dollars per child are necessary if we’re going to compete in today’s marketplace. When it doesn’t work, the public will simply be told that it’s the fault of the mean Republicans, who withheld the funds needed to make the program a success, and we’ll simply start again, with even more money wasted.
Well, I can second all of this, except that surprisingly, there is one additional thing that Public School teachers have more of. That is money. Public school districts pay better than private schools. Often that is true even for prestige private schools.
The only other thing I ever found better about public school teaching was the satisfaction of helping hardluck kids who didn’t already have a life full of advantages. Private school kids sometimes feel like they don’t even need you, because they are going to do fine no matter what. The good poor kids always appreciated when you went the extra mile for them. Of course, there sure were a lot of chances for heartbreak when their lives crashed and burned.
I now teach in an overseas private school. I miss the kids and a few colleagues, but I sure don’t miss the school.
Unfortunately, the study left out a couple of vital parameters. I did a study 25 years ago as part of a doctoral dissertation.
The biggest cause of dissatisfaction for urban teachers is lack of student progress. In many schools, many students barely put in an effort. If you come to the classroom, prepare well and find your students do nothing, it creates a very strong anomie.
Even worse, administrators are being judged on statistics and they push for acceptance of low performance.
In suburban schools, the lack of power balance between parents and teachers is enormous. A really difficult student in a private school will be handled by the administration. In the suburbs, problems are often handed back to teachers.
And, above all else, we should remember that most schools who can select their students avoid the most difficult: the Special Education students. Special Ed. teachers (and my wife was one for years…a very good one) live in a “Through the Looking Glass” world. Careful objectives are made that can never be met. Most are ridiculous. But the teachers suffer.
It is not money that prevents burnout. It is motivating factors. And in too many schools, they just don’t exist. Private school teachers, who generally get paid less, often are in life situations where the extra money is not as vital.
Are you saying that the wonderful, loving nanny which the government has built up (and parents have subjugated Junior to) isn’t functioning? The hell you say!
How can this be? Haven’t we convened a focus group, or a committee or received a federally funded grant for further research into this topic? Haven’t we started an after school program for teachers offering massages and therapists? Where are the parents who can assist in the loving and caring of their tax-subsidied and union-organized mother by proxy?
This is simply outrageous, because for years I have been under the impression that the Dept of Education had the wants, needs and concerns of teachers foremost in it’s list of priorities.
Maybe I was wrong….
This report does not discuss the history of the downfall of the public schools in such places as Washington, D.C. The public schools used to be very good. I went to public schools in Washington, D.C. from 1939-1951, and they were so good that the children of government employees living in Maryland or Virginia came to them, as they were entitled to do. This was true of both the white and colored schools, for the schools in Washington were racially segregated. I do not know what happened to these schools. There are still excellent public schools.
Does this lack of authority to discipline disruptive students, pushed by the ACLU, have anything to do with this?
As much as I am not a fan of the current unionized and increasingly inferior public schools, I think the ‘monopoly’ argument is not entirely accurate because to a large (though decreasing) degree, schools are locally run. Different districts are run differently, have different socio-economic characteristics, and, in some cases, have different philosophies of education. Many parents (though, admittedly, not the poor and often not the lower middle class) have the option, through relocation, to select among a reasonably large number of school districts in order to find one that is least offensive. The ability to ‘vote with your feet’ also includes home schooling and, for the affluent and religious, private and parochial schools.
It seems to me that the two factors which have most weakened the quality of public education are (1) the growth of public employee unions, and, even more importantly, (2) the requirement that all students be accommodated.
This second point bears serious examination. Private and parochial schools prosper, in part, because the school is in a position to demand compliance with behavioral norms it believes are conducive to education. In evaluating candidates for admission, they can select those they think will prosper. And, if students are disruptive, they can be dismissed from the school.
Public schools, on the other hand, must accept every pupil who resides within the district. That, in itself, suggests a less motivated student body. However, what is far more damaging is the difficulty of expelling students whose behavior does not meet whatever standards the school sets. It was not always so. Historically, when public schools were more informal, teachers could exclude misbehaving students at almost any level. Well into the 1960s, at least, high schools could reasonably easily expel those did not meet behavioral norms. Even the credible threat of expulsion had a salutary effect at lower levels. And, without social promotion, often times the worst trouble makers did not even get into high school as they reached the statutory age (often 16) while still in 7th or 8th grade in grammar or junior high school. We had a very few in my junior high school, young thugs kept from the rest of the student body with some care wherever possible, who were gone the day after their 16th birthdays. Not a bad thing.
The single most helpful reform in public education would be to allow school boards to segregate students with behavioral problems beginning in elementary school, and to allow them to expel students beginning in middle school. Any student who physically threatened or actually attacked a teacher should be permanently expelled.
While I agree that there is something “right” in the private school model that is largely “wrong” in the public school, I’m not sure that it can be so easilly identified based upon self-assesment statistics. While they may provide useful information, especially with regard to things such as “burnout” or determining motivational patterns, a problem with self-assesments is that they are always colored by the expectations of the participants. For example, the fact that 41% of public school teachers “strongly agree that they have all the textbooks and supplies they need” may be more indicative of the expectations shared by these teachers than actual material availability.
An upper middle-class kid living in Beverly Hills will always perceive himself as being poorer than a lower middle-class kid living in Compton would.
I have an old family friend that taught, and is now a dean, at one of the best private schools in the East. Teachers there make about 10,000 /year less than their public school counterparts like myself.
I asked her what benefits you get from that, and she said, a “great deal of professional autonamy, the ability to design and teach your own material without interference from administration.
I almost choked, “Is that it?” That is not worth ten grand a year.
#8 “Teacher in Texas”
I am not an educator, but was one briefly at a Catholic high school when I was a Jesuit seminarian and later on for a year teaching college freshman while still a seminarian. Not exactly the profile from which one could speak authoritatively. However, one observation in response to your comment. One of the most salient features of public education today is the philosophy of education taught to ed majors in the universities. Specifically, the standards are being “dumbed down” – and this, coupled with not being able to select your own objectives and textbooks has predictable effects. The subject of textbooks and course material could be a topic all its own here on PJM. Anyway, as I’ve learned from the public school teachers I do know, the enervation of the learning environment can be partially laid at this doorstep: students are less challenged and bored. I know some kids who one could describe as “above average” to very bright and they have told me that much of the time they are bored beyond belief. The process is designed so that the dolts can pass and be promoted to the next grade. In a lot of high schools these kids seek refuge in the AP courses, where they are at least challenged. But again, the teachers have to work with pre-approved materials. If I were in that situation, I would feel like a cog in a machine. A robot.
The other comments about student behavior are spot on. I can see that as a major stress factor and a reason for burnout. In fact, I have met former teachers who cite that as exactly the reason why they got out of it.
In the public schools, often all the worst elements come together to drive the process: society tolerates bad behavior, PC rammed down everyone’s throats through the pre-approved books and instructional materials, lowered expectations, etc. If it isn’t pandering, it is outright destruction and demoralization – brought to you by the ones who have designed the thing: the socialists and “progressives” who dominate the education departments of the universities which train the new generations of cogs in the machine.
Teacher in Texas: you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
When teachers have to become ‘parents’, schools (public or private for that matter) will fail.
Now that many women work, some parents treat public school as a ‘surrogate parent/babysitter’ instead of a learning insitution. Parents who stop being parents and don’t properly discipline their children leave their parental neglect for the school to deal with.
As easy as it is to blame a child’s illiteracy or poor math skills on a teacher, the buck still stops at the parent. What kind of parent would let their child fall behind or not be able to even read a book?
Teachers can’t have it both ways. In what
union do members at the lower levels feel
empowered? You basically sell your soul
for better wages, benefits and job security.
The poor performers usually devote their
efforts into capturing union exec positions.
From there they further their own agendas
of power and wealth while manipulating the
membership through fear mongering and subtle
lies.
From positions of power they recruit the like-
minded and weed out boat rockers. Next they
exert or capture political power to solidify
or expand their influence while eliminating
threats[vouchers etc].
The US is behind some other jurisdictions
in this sense but is catching up. So to
Mr./Ms. teacher quit bitchin, you can’t
have your cake and eat it too.
#10 Cato: Huh?
Don’t you dare to presume to determine what kind of teacher I am, merely on the basis of a sound economic decision.
I teach both AP and regular classes and I demand excellence from both sections. I often use my own materials, real world situations, more advanced readigns and extend them beyond the basic guidelines of what I am required to teach. My regular students have often said, mine is the hardest general ed class they have ever taken.
This is what the rest of us can look forward to if Teh One gets his way.
If you suggest that one should, on the purely economic basis, choose to teach in the government schools rather than in private schools, you are part of the problem without regard to the kind of teacher you are. You may well be an outstanding teacher. Or not. I have no idea. The government, with its public sector unions and the printing press, can almost always outbid private schools for teachers. Yet, no one with half a brain would argue that the public schools, with all of their expensive teachers and pricey resources, produce more academically prepared, well-educated students than do the best private schools – or even than most mediocre private schools. The problem is the system – the unions, the bureaucracy, the inability to discipline, the political correctness and multiculturalism (in most places). Even good to excellent teachers in public schools are like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill everyday.
13. Teacher in Texas: “My regular students have often said, mine is the hardest general ed class they have ever taken.”
Are you trying to tell us that this is good?
I can’t be responsible for what others teach. I take personal pride being the hardest general ed class they take, so yes, I think that is good!
11. Delia: “What kind of parent would let their child fall behind or not be able to even read a book?”
The kind who don’t like to read themselves and who have ‘better’ things to do like hang their faces into their 54″ flat screens from the time they get home from work until it’s beddy-by time.
Anyone interested in education should read the recent article by Dr. John Rosemond. He made the excellent point that the demise of hte public schools began, developed and will continue until such time as PARENTS learn to be parents and teach respect and discipline in the home. Schools, both black and white produced better quality students during the 50′s and into the 60′s, before the permissive child raising era of Dr. Spock. Until parents re-assume responsibility and teach and demand respect within the home you will not see improvement in public schools. The only reason that private schools are preforming better is that there is parental involvement.
Teacher in Texas: I can just see you waddling down the hallowed halls of some god-awful Dallas PS. You weigh 300 lbs, dress in sweats and sneakers, and show videos to your AP classes on the rise of the Soviets in Russia and the burgening rise of Communism in the hated USA. Your classroom has pictures of Obama, Che, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and yourself. Frankly, you disgust me.
8. Teacher in Texas: I asked her what benefits you get from that, and she said, a “great deal of professional autonamy[sic], the ability to design and teach your own material without interference from administration.
I almost choked, “Is that it?” That is not worth ten grand a year.
I am no teacher but if I were, those things mentioned above would be priceless to me. Not to mention the peace of mind of not being a glorifed babysitter for a bunch of out-of-control hooligans would be worth the sacrifice of the $10K.
To each his own though, as they say.
Teacher in Texas: are you taking a “sick day” today? Why are you telling us about your wonderful self instead of doing that wonderful teaching? Hum, maybe this is a holliday in Texas. You and your ilk really disgust me.
Cato – “If you suggest that one should, on the purely economic basis, choose to teach in the government schools rather than in private schools, you are part of the problem without regard to the kind of teacher you are.”
Barack, is that you?
Why should teachers sacrifice pay to teach in a private school and why would you consider teachers who seek the best situation to be part of the problem? As a teacher and firm believer in free market principles, I will take my services to the employer that provides me the best opportunity for my family and me. I teach a large suburban high school and choose to work there. There are a number of factors that go into this decision and pay is only one of them. Benefits, comfort, autonomy, student body, devotion and loyalty to the students, peers, and administrators, are all factors that play into my decision. Like any job, there are a host of factors that keep me at my place of employ and I am always puzzled by those who believe that teachers and their families should sacrifice for the general will.
You are quite correct in your other assessments of the ills that plague our public schools.
“The problem is the system – the unions, the bureaucracy, the inability to discipline, the political correctness and multiculturalism (in most places). Even good to excellent teachers in public schools are like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill every day.”
Add to that the categorical requirements that federal and state governments attach to funding. We spend an awful lot of money on our public schools but much of it goes to administration, on programs for the disabled (ADA), those not fluent in English, and those with problems beyond the scope of the public school system.
“Many parents (though, admittedly, not the poor and often not the lower middle class) have the option, through relocation, to select among a reasonably large number of school districts in order to find one that is least offensive. The ability to ‘vote with your feet’ also includes home schooling and, for the affluent and religious, private and parochial schools.”
The problems in our public schools are typically not in those public schools that service our affluent communities. It is the less advantaged communities that our students suffer and those schools are where students have the least choice. Why does Obama send his kids to the Sidwell School and has eliminated choice for those students trapped in their neighborhood schools? Look at the school rankings in any state and you will find the public schools that service the affluent, equal or better many of the local private schools. Before you get in a huff, know that I send my daughter to Catholic school. I work as many extra jobs as possible to pay for my daughters schooling because I want her to have a good education, with a religious background, and want her to be in a competitive environment with a peer group that has caring and concerned parents. Our local school seems to do a good job with what they are given but my wife and I want more for our daughter and that is our choice.
There are a host of ills plaguing our public schools, but teacher pay and teachers who make employment decisions on an economic decision is not one of them.
There is a great dislike of teacher unions amongst educators for the GOP and the conservative movement to seize but attacking us for pay is not the way. Bringing free market principles to the public school system is the best way to reform our education system. Unwittingly supporting the policies of the Obama administration is not.
18. bobbcat,
AMEN! -And, the thing that improved my mind the most as a teen was when we moved to Alaska one summer and had NO TV, NO RADIO, and only books from the library to read. I read voraciously that summer and my learning and comprehension skills improved exponentially.
A young, growing brain responds and learns very rapidly with reading [all the synapses fire off the charts]. To deprive a child of this very basic skill is not only cruel and neglectful but will potentially retard that child’s brain and make learning that much harder.
God help us if home schooling becomes illegal.
#22 – Suzy – She is already out of school. Check the calendar of a public school in Texas. I have a one day break before summer school starts and I live in California. We strt eralier and finish earlier than our neighboring districts. As a conservative I am saddened by the ignorance many of us display concerning the pubic school system. Five minutes of thinking for one minute of writing is a good rule of thumb for most people. For you, we might want to extend that a bit….
One more thing before I go to prepare for the summer session. I worked in the corporate world for five years before becoming an educator. Teachers have no down time during the day. Sad to think but I think we are much more productive than the typical cubicle dwelling corporate drone. This observation is based on experience not feelings.
#11 Delia – you hit the nail on the head. Though many of the under achieving children come from homes whereas there is only 1 working parent in the household. The stay at home parent is unable to assist or grasp the student’s material. i.e. Immigrant households. Inner city homes.
What was once a balanced dynamic for both parent and child: ‘The Nuclear Family’, is now an absolute and total failure.
As for Teacher in Texas – I don’t know you but can only speak of friends who’d attended college in College Station and Austin.
Coming from Colorado high schools in the early 90′s, my friends told me TX higher learning was a joke. My friends weren’t PolySci or Sociology but Physics and PreMed.
For Suzy – My apologies, I didn’t proofread what I wrote. Please note post # 24 should read, “We start earlier and finish earlier than our neighboring districts.”
Post #25 – should read “Sad to think but it is my observaion that we are much more productive than the typical cubicle dwelling corporate drone. This observation is based on experience not feelings”
27. paul_unalaska,
That is why reading is so crucially imperative above all else because reading is such a fundamental part of learning! If you can read, you can pretty much learn ANYTHING if you have the motivation to do so. It is very disheartening to know that there are children who go through the public system without even knowing how to read [I say 'public' school system because I highly doubt that a child in a private school would be shuffled through without knowing how to read]. Insanity!
P.S. Learning ‘English’ should be a priority for anyone wanting to be a United States Citizen. This ‘press 2 for Español’ crap is a mockery and only serves to perpetuate more illegal immigration by pandering to people who have no intention of assimilating.
Greetings:
As the beneficiary of 13 years of education in “low-cost religious schools”, it always amazes me how discussions of our public school education system manage to minimize or ignore the contributions of the Catholic parochial school system. As the nomination of Judge Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice winds its way through our political process, we see another example of the benefits of that system to an urban “minority” group member.
Similarly, one never seems to read of the benefit, to the public treasury, of the assumption of the cost of educating these students by their parents and their co-religionists. It is not unusual to see quoted public education costs per student of 8, 10, or 12 thousand dollars per student per year. Multiply one of those numbers by the number of students in private schools county-wide and you have a substantial amount of money that the polity is absolved from having to provide.
I would count myself among those who agree with Milton Friedman’s analysis. This article’s information is a confirmation of what many people have known for at least a half-century. And yet, all these discussions of vouchers and charter schools seem to overlook a role model of educational success that extends all across our country.
@ very large and simple issues. Students and their parents don’t value progress and education. Lot of males expecially drop out and their dads weren’t around or didn’t go anywhere either
Gubment schools don’t value America. They don’t praise homes, families, values and success. The teach some cosmic humanism junk and expect keds to have sex, get abortions and try to abstain from religion.
The product put out by schools is the product the parties decided to produce.
I’m so tired of our politicians telling us that we need to educate “all” students. I’m in the trenches trying to do just that! Schools are failing because parents are increasingly failing at their jobs as parents. No discipline and structure at home results in none at school. I know not a single slacker teacher, but I have a laundry list of slacker parents. I don’t pick and choose which students to teach every day, as our government officials imply by the previously mentioned statement. Unless things improve at home, results at school will be continue to decline.
I went through the Detroit Public school system in the 1970s and early 80s.
The teachers just didn’t give a damn and gave us little better than busy work (when they even bother to do THAT).
Mass corruption at every level, starting with the school board. By the time the federal money passed through all the layers of thieves and got to us students, little was left. We had to share textbooks, there were two functioning microscopes in a class of 40, never enough of even the most basic supplies.
The classes were 50% larger than the rooms were designed for (try climbing over rows of desks just to get out of the room sometime!).
Most of the doors chained shut to prevent students from skipping class. That didn’t prevent gunmen and rapists from getting in, though.
Filthy conditions. Cockroaches, rats the size of small cats, and bats in the ductwork.
Asbestos hanging out of the broken walls.
Broken windows, snow coming in on my desk.
Anarchy in the hallways, making it necessary to carry a knife for self-defense.
Total barbarism.
All with two inept “security guards” to watch over things, who were just as apathetic as the staff.
I graduated with woefully undereducated people, three of whom who couldn’t read at all.
“Push ‘em through, gotta get that federal funding”!
Public schools? What a joke.
Let’s not praise private schools by default. I taught at a few that essentially managed itself like a public school. Crowded classroom, decaying computers and books, etc. The salary was especially bad.
Parents still have to do the research if they want to escape the public schools. I’ve heard some great things about Sylvan Learning Centers and Kumon.
I had some friends that worked in the Philadelphia School System and they quit as soon as their agreements ran out because, while the School Board had chauffeurs, they didn’t have books, a copying machine or paper to replace the missing books.
Not having books is inexcusible.
I teach children with autism in a dry western state. The problems with education have deep roots, although Obama will do his best to nourish them. Many readers are experts on the political and economic aspects of fascism. I do remember from university days that Mussolini wanted to design society that he could control all social, cultural, and economic life with a series of phone calls. Society was to become vertically integrated from Cabinet offices to factory floors, and in my case, classrooms. Such in the case in education today. I do not attend PTA meetings or any community forum. I watch local news roundtables on education with jaundiced amusement. I only need to care about the policy line that starts in the Federal Education Department, gets re-written as “state regs” in my state, is distributed by school district bureaucrats, and absorbed (for fear of retribution somewhere along the line) by school administrators. At no point along the line do the promulgators dare waive or ignore the instructions from above. It would be a career ender. I do not think the story is much different in general education. It is–in my state–about as vertically-integrated as special education. Imagine: so many thousands of people passing along a single set of instructions to every school in the country. Mussolini, Soviet Central Planners, Chavez: they would all attend a seminar to learn how to do it.
I have always felt uncomfortable with teachers who wanted to be friends first & authority figures second; an art teacher–who is still at my high school some 20 years later–wanted to be friends with her students. My reaction was to pull away since it made me uncomfortable. Furthermore, several students took advantage of her need to be friends instead of authority figure. I took her class for several years regardless. But I always kept my distance from her.
I preferred friendly teachers such as my 12th grade English teacher. She never crossed the line in wanting to be friends with her students until they were no longer her students. Sometimes, she overreacted or overcompensated in trying to not play favorites. I grew up with her daughter since 1st grade. And did not find out her mother was a teacher until 9th grade…
mshatto: the question is what is the “best situation” for a teacher? Is it slightly more money and/or benefits, or is it a school environment in which the teacher has more independence and control, and in which students are either playing by the rules (and learning, perhaps in spite of their precious affluent selves, in some cases) or they’re no longer students at that school? To emphasize the money strikes me as going to the heart of the problem of the learned professions: yes, one wants to do well, but the desire to make money does not motivate the exceptional doctor, lawyer or, as i meant to suggest, teacher.
You say teacher pay is not the problem, but on many levels, I would argue it is, because the guild members are well-paid regardless of whether they are any good. It may be rational for any individual teacher to prefer higher wages for less work, but that’s not what’s good for education.
BTW, the public schools of affluent areas may be less negatively affected than those of poor areas, but they are negatively affected by the unions, the mandates, the bureaucracy, and the politically correct nonsense.
Agree with 35. Particularly problematic are the voc-level diploma mills, such as ITT. This market is no different from any other; you still have to kick the tires.
For those people who believe that unions are the downfall of the schools, I reply “Bah.” My wife and I both worked in New York City which had a strong union.
My wife now works in Florida where the union is very, very weak.
The real problem is not that teachers sell their souls when they are at the bottom so they get more benefits it’s that they get nothing very much for being excellent.
Do school boards rush tp pay brilliant teachers? No! A veteran teacher who moves for one reason or another can bet he or she will lose money down the line.
In New York I knew a man who was a superb teacher of physics. Taught kids in the Bronx Advanced Placement Physics and they did well on the national exam. But school boards in Westchester County were not interested in hiring him. They preferred some kid who would be paid much less even through it could be predicted the kid would not do as good a job.
Let’s face it. Teachers get very little respect even when they do deserve it. Good teachers are often let go when administrators, often very poor ones, have their own issues.
I once worked for a principal who was clearly insane. He tried to fire a dozen teachers one year and walked around the building ranting and raving at them. It took two years for him to finally be removed and by that time several of the teachers had simply left.
Unfortunately we get the schools we deserve and our kids suffer through them.
I have lots of teachers among my family and friends and homeschoolers too. Foster hit a bulls-eye,and why hasn’t someone been making this obvious point for 30 years? Duh. And the Obama-DOE-NEA-Fed-UN Ed will increase all of these problems memtioned by Foster and on this web site for teachers ,and burn out too.
11B40. So,you are saying,Sotomayor going to a Catholic school is something to crow about,right? I bet you were for “abort all the American you can,hate the rest” Obama speaking at Notre Dame,right?
#34 Sabina’s testimony should be read by every conscientious citizen in this nation. I have heard many stories like this. It’s criminal and evil to the core, these apparatchiks who oversea this failed system and who take their generous cuts along the way.
Administrators and superintendents, not to mention the NEA reps, are the worst of these shuck and jive artists. They get big bucks to do little work, and they have lots of admin. assistants to do the real work. The teachers do get reasonable salaries, but everything else suffers. The people who run this racket make very large salaries and they add almost no value to the final product.
This is what socialism is really like. The administrators and superintendents are part of the new nomenklatura of the socialist state. They are the privileged ones who have the dachas and all the perks. The ones on the bottom are the kids themselves.
This is a crime that cries out to heaven.
School choice may possibly improve the outcome for some students. If you allow the “parent who care” to pick some optional school, you may end up with a group of children, whose parents are involved in their education all together in one class. But at what cost? How is the public school supposed to cherry-pick IT’S students? Plus, the Choice-school will keep it’s disruptive students just long enough till they are counted for funding purposes….then boot them out back to the Public School!
So HOW is that going to improve the system as a whole? Some mothers are in JAIL for not waking the kids up for school. How does “choice” help that?
There is nothing in what Teacher in Texas said that justified the thrashing that some of you gave her, especially those of you who extended it into speculation about her ethics and even bodily appearance.
An additional 10k in salary is pretty significant. If one actually believes in a capitalist economy, then an individual choosing to maximize their own earning is an essential right.
I made that exact same choice for many years until the right opportunity came along.
As an ex-teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School System, I have a lot to say. I was an inner city teacher with mainly Hispanic, Black and Korean students. My students ranged from those who couldn’t read to those who would go to college and do well. Also, my students ranged from people who were total missfits, killers, thugs, rapists, whores, unwed mothers to students who will be leaders, lawyers, doctors( one who became a brain surgeon) accountants, police, soldiers, firemen etc.
In the very least the students were fun to deal with, interesting, and reachable. For every student I hated, yes hated, there were twenty that I loved. We could do nothing to rid our selves of those we hated: the disruptive, the dangerous ones, the ones who didn’t care, the ones into drugs. We had to deal with them regardless with no support from administration, parents, or the law. Instead we all walked around with a target on us. We were the target of administrators who’s idea of administrating was to destroy a teacher on a whim, we were the target of students who were violent disruptive and letiginous, and we were the target of parents who saw us as an easy mark for letigation. Our time was eaten up in useless meetings that professed better teaching, new approaches, and grand ideas. When I spoke up about the wasted time out of the classroom in meetings, unnecessary standards testing, fire drills, announcements I would get blank stares.
If you want to have good teaching, make the teachers spend every minute possible in the classroom. Keep administrators out of the classroom and let the teacher alone. Back up the teachers in regards to discipline. Get rid of the stupid standards imposed by the those who haven’t been in the classroom in decades. (Let me explain what the administrators refer to as standards. They are a list of topics to be covered in a school year. Always too many to cover properly with no time given for remedial work. You are always on a new topic before the students have properly digested the last one.) Let the teachers teach and give them back the power in the classroom.
Those of us who teach or taught can tell you if you like kids, teaching is fun, exciting, and very rewarding. There is nothing like seeing a kid learn something new and difficult and really master the topic. The bond it builds with the kid/kids can not be explained, it can only be felt. Here is the biggest secret. Most kids want to learn and most teachers want to teach.
Couple of points:
1. There are excellent public schools in this country. I teach at one. The “secret”: hire good teachers, treat them like professionals who know what they are doing, and stay out of their way.
2. Most “problem children” are bored children. They know busy work when they see it, they know when rules are stupid, and often, they know that what they are being asked to do is irrelevant to their lives. If you want to reduce discipline problems, stop wasting kids’ time. Give them relevent, challenging classes or let them go. If we’re going to have mandatory babysitting for teenagers, at least make it something they want to do. You can give kids opportunities to learn, but you can’t force them them to do it. If you try, you just make life unpleasant for everyone. Better to release them into the world and let them come back for a GED when they’re ready to learn. If you run a school like a prison, you shouldn’t be surprised if it has the air of a prison.
Uh Suzy #20 and #22; its amazing how utterly, completely and stupidly wrong some people can be from first impressions! I mean you take the cake, for snap judgments.
1, I am a male, 43 years old. 5′ 10″ 205 libs, in decent shape. I run, row and bicycle. (Bet I am in better shape than you)
2. I teach in a fairly well to do Houston suburb And to be fair here I thank God every day that I don’t have to break up fights every day or deal with a lot of the problems with discipline etc. that occur in poorer districts.
Oh BTW oh judgemental one, I cut my teeth teaching sixth grade social studies in a poorer small town district, with a much bigger LSE and Spanish speaking population. And you know what? There are times I miss my poor and working class kids. Yes, I like teaching advanced subjects in a school where most kids want to succeed, but there is a dark side to that as well. But each school has its own set of problems. When I taught in my first district I never dealt with helicopter parents who would cut my throat if I looked at their perfect little darlings the wrong way or a kid staring back at me with eyes that said, “The car I got for my birthday costs more than you earn in a year…so F YOU!”
3. Pictures of Che and Lenin in my classroom! Although you don’t know me, I can’t believe how unbelievably stupid you are.
Briefly:
A Reaganite conservative who is a certified Indpendent now, thanks the Republicans in Congress becoming as bad as the Democrats in the last twelve years, in addition to our Democrat president Bush.
I actually am offended when kids wear Che shirts in the halls. I often stop them and ask them what they know about the guy whose visage they sport proudly. YOu would not belive the responses I get, as they display their utter ignorance of the man. Mostly I get, “Uh, I don’t know, its a cool shirt….heh heh!
Also my dear Suzy, you might be enlightened to learn that when I taught world history I made sure to stress the “forgotten Holocaust of the 20th Century, Stalin’s butchery of the Ukranians in the great famine. I use a reading from Robert Conquest and a great video from “The People’s Century” series. My kids were always in shock at learning this. One kid even said, “We have the Holocaust shoved down our throats every year, but never talk about how this killed over twice as many people as were murdered by Hitler.” I once said in class, “We wer allied with a bigger monster than Hitler to defeat Hitler!” And a very liberal student gasped in shock saying, “You CAN’T say that!”
I teach economics to seniors and often have to de-program them from their semester or government with a teacher who worships FDR and places her hand on her heart anytime she mentions his name, and asking the kids to do the same. Me, I make a quick salute anytime I mention Reagan, BUT I don’t draw attention to it, and see how long it takes a kid to notice.
I love seting up the first semester kids before they go to her, as I quote Amity Schlaes and others that the New Deal progams actually prolonged the Great Depression, and that Keynsian economics is not proven.
I loved shutting down a litle Obama kool aid drinker this year about the stimulus package. He kept going on about how it would stimulate the economy and yadda yadda yadda. I walked over to him, pulled out a 20 and said, “I have twenty dollars that I can buy thing with.” I handed it to hime, and said, “You have twenty dollars to buy things with. Where is the economic growth?”
I love the fact that I am NOT UNION. I am from Pennsylvania, a heavily union state. I love that a part of my salary does not go directly into the coffers of the Democratic Party.
One of the first things I learned in grad school was that you can’t change the system, but it will bend, and you should know where you can push back at it and where it will give, and I always look for ways to do that.
So tell you what Suzy, don’t make judegements about me and my career and I won’t tell you how to flip burgers or say “Hello and welcome to Walmart!” Nor will I speculate on your lack of a personal life.
BTW: Thanks Class Clown, I appreciate the kind words, although I find it interesting to see that you thought I was a woman too. Kind of like the old “boy dies in a car wreck, Doctor can’t operate on his son” riddle.
Sorry, man. I was just following the lead of the other comments.
Look folks, public schools are a fact of life, and unlike some of you, I’m not willing to write off a whole segment of the population just because they aren’t getting a private education. If you are serious about having an impact on the world as a whole, and not just preaching to the choir, any teacher who is a true conservative should go where they are needed most. That is public education, and that was me.
I spent years in low-income public schools. Sometimes I was the only young father who was actually married and raising his own children that any of my students knew. I was also one of the few alternatives those kids had to the moon-landing and 9/11 conspiracy theorist, the “La Raza” nationalists, and the “alternative lifestyle” proselytizer.
I loved those inner-city kids, and they paid me back. I miss them terribly. There still are conservative public school teachers who go into the breach and help kids see through the PC muck, and there are even still liberal teachers who are on our side when it comes down to the principles that matter.
And for those of you who are sitting back and carping about how we are turncoats, maybe you just need to go join the battle where it actually needs to be fought, rather than just drop comments on message boards.
Fight the good fight, Teacher in Texas!
I’d like to add some memorable moments in the classroom. I had one student pass out from drugs/alcohol, then vomit when he was awaken. I had two attempted suicides. One slit her wrist in my class. Another attempted to jump out of my third story window when her lesbian lover rejected her. I had one student confess that he had killed somebody. Another with a gun in the classroom, another with a large knife. My classroom was broken into and completely trashed by a gang affilated kid who I must have offended. One student stabbed me with a pencil. I was punched a number of times, each time unexpectedly. I had personal items stolen from me. My car’s paint job was carved into with gang signs. All things aside the whole experience was worth it because the kids I reached. Being told how good a teacher I was by them personally. Making a difference. Being there when they needed me. And, finally being begged not to retire by students and staff.
I knew I was good!
By the way, the pay and the benefits sucked.
OH BTW Suzy, you laid out so much ad hominum idiocy that I had to refute, I missed one of the biggest insults that you levied. “walk down the hall in sweats and sneakers.” I will have you know that I am one of the last of the dying breed of male teachers who still wears a NECKTIE almost every day.
I have done so since my student teaching 13 years ago. I believe I have a responsibility to serve as a role model to my male students in terms of dress and deportment. When I taught in my first distict, where a lot of the kids don’t have fathers, have part-time fathers, or unfortunately abusive fathers, I think that made a difference that they had a male figure in their classroom who wore a tie and dressed professionally every day.
My little Hispanic girls loved me. I often heard from parents who said that their daughter gushed, “Momma, I got a man teacher and he’s NOT A COACH. He wears a tie.”
Man OHHHHHHHHH man!
I’m so glad I home schooled my one and only. *phew*
I taught at a public school where most teachers expressed their efforts as “rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic.” I really disliked the entire environment. Most kids were on free lunches and free breakfasts. School was the only place many of them had a hot meal. Parents expected the school to cough up money for school uniforms. The teachers would collect money to buy extra uniforms for some children who wore the same unwashed uniform every day. I joined the union so that I would at least have legal counsel if a student took a swing at me. Between classes, we were expected to stand guard in the hallways. The janitors would make sure they were in the hallways between classes to watch out for the teachers.
I don’t think school administrators are really trained to be good managers or administrators. Many of them are bad teachers who went back to school. When I went to speak to the principal about a difficult student, she told me that, “if they are not in your classroom, they’re out harassing the community.” She wanted to keep expulsions and suspensions down so that the school could get reaccredited. Degrees in education at the undergrad and graduate levels are jokes. Academic standards are weak. How could this happen in my country? My America?
You want better schools?
1. Expel students who are chronically disruptive and violent. Have a strict and enforceable conduct policy. Kids want and need structure. They feel safer and will perform better if they know they are protected.
2. Offer school vouchers to students at failing schools.
3. Demand high academic standards from colleges and universities that offer education degrees.
4. Pay teaching professionals a professional wage. Grant tax incentives/cuts to educators.
5. Send students to schools in their neighborhoods. Stopping busing them across town.
6. Require mandatory parental involvement. Parents/guardians must meet every teacher that teaches their child. They must come to parent/teacher conferences. Failure do so should result in legal action or fines.
7. Require school uniforms and implement year-round school calendars. Shorten schools days. Like most of us, kids don’t get enough sleep or exercise.
8. Stop bad-mouthing teachers with phrases like, “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” Teachers play a huge part in the development of our children emotionally and academically. Give them some credit.
9. Understand that the failing public school system is only a symptom of a larger disease within our society. We all should give more of our time to mentoring young children. Most of these kids don’t have enough people in their lives that truly care about them.
Interesting that Teacher In Texas got all that flack simply for stating that an extra $10k/year- not an insubstantial amount by teacher salary standards- was reason enough to stick around even it meant that he did not have as much autonomy in the classroom as he would have liked.
There are a lot of people working outside of the education field who similarly decide that the extra money in a given job is worth it even if there are aspects of the job they do not like. That is real life, folks: compromises.
Suzy: since you are so concerned about having dedicated teachers, I would suggest that you join the teaching profession. Undoubtedly your entering the teaching profession will improve the quality of the teaching profession, which is what we all need.
I was ‘public’ schooled and I had some absolutely wonderful, precious teachers and some horrible, cruel, jerks for teachers. People are people after all and teachers are people too. My paternal grandmother was a public school teacher when she was young even though I only knew her as ‘grandma’ by the time I was born, she *did* teach me a lot and not just ‘book sense’ either.
During my ‘formative’ years, my mother moved us around constantly and I learned firsthand what it was like to experience the ‘differences’ from school to school. In some schools I was well ahead of the school’s curriculum and I’d be bored beyond belief and then we’d move again and I’d be behind. It was nightmarish [not to mention, always having to be the 'new girl' in class--ugh].
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere here before, my daughter aced her GED test and now she’s going to move back home with Ma and Pa and take some college courses and get a part-time job again. She’s been doing a lot of soul searching and I’ve been praying like crazy for her. I’m so proud of her and I’m glad I home schooled her even though it certainly was not always easy.
Even if parents can’t home school, they should [at the very least] try to be an active part of their children’s education rather than slacking off and leaving everything up to whatever school they enroll their child in.
That’s my rant. I’m done now [I think].
I was a public school teacher for several years, and, while teaching at the U. Illinois, taught the first year education course in the sequence leading to certification for undergraduates. It was enlightening to say the least. In the end, I got so sick of the notion of being “eligible” for tenure in college, I left teaching in 1985 and never looked back. Prior to teaching at the university level, while in the “public schools”, (to which I now refer to as “government schools”), I got so sick of never having an administrator who had any other qualification other than having burned out as a coach! Hyperbole, yes. But it makes the point. I wearied of the bureaucracy. Any one who fails to grasp this element will never understand how grating the whole teaching experience is.
There are many angles you can hit this subject. Some teachers should not be teaching at all. And some parents should not have children at all. The good teachers and students sometimes get hosed.
gucci mane dead
I am a teacher in an urban school with many poor and unmotivated students. This entire comment stream just makes me laugh. The REAL problem isn’t education. It is humanity. When will two people completely agree on every life detail? Never!
Thank heaven there are prestigious private schools and home schooling where the teachers are not all lower middle classs culturally. Let the NEA and socialists take over the public schools. Everyones’s bad grammar , double negatives, and bad etiquette can be reinforced .