It is a national issue that close to 50% of new teachers quit within their first five years. To many of the people who want to privatize education, this is positive news as they are succeeding in demonizing teachers and making it a temporary job.
To those who care about the public schools, there is a retention crisis. Teacher unions should be emphasizing this problem.
Yesterday someone sent me something from Conversation Ed about why so many new teachers leave.
The consensus: " lack of support by leadership."
Do you feel supported by administration in your school and at the district or citywide levels?
Many of us are lucky to be working with administrators who value teachers and other staff. Many are not so fortunate.
10 comments:
Most teachers quit because of over zealous and incompetent administrators. If you ever had pro-teacher administrators, who backed up their staffs, educators would not be massively heading for the exits. Teachers would stay in even the most difficult inner city schools if there were decent and supportitive supervisors.
You can blame this on our past mayor mr mikey bloomberg who created a school system in nyc that has become a third world hell hole. Bloomberg is a miserable miser who made the lives of educators just as miserable as he is.
Do I feel supported by my administration? Is this a joke?
Not sure what the new teacher drop out rate is for NYC- but I think I read about 5 years ago-- about 1/3 of new teachers left the NYCDOE after their first 3 years. I think about 80% of these new teachers were assigned to very challenging schools in poverty/free lunch districts. In today's reformist educational world, I would not recommend the teaching profession to any person of any age, unless they are truly passionate about this profession--and make sure they they know something--well in advance(if possible)about the school culture, students, parents, the administration and staff-before walking into the building.
I agree that incompetent administrators contribute to the exodus of newbie teachers- but that's only one piece of it. Simply put, the newbies that I've encountered lately just don't want to do the massive amount of work that this job requires. They don't want to spend their evenings and weekends grading and lesson planning, gathering and analyzing data, doing item analyses, etc. etc.
I work in a more than decent school in a good neighborhood. We got a new teacher this week to replace one that left for greener pastures (translaton: Long Island). Her FIRST DAY she announced at a teacher team meeting that another teacher had lousy classroom management. She sits in classrooms (she is an ICT teacher) with an air of vague disinterest. She clearly doesn't like children. And I doubt she is going to spend her weekend modifying lessons for her special ed students.
I have several former students who are wonderful new teachers, and love their jobs. But I also have some who bitch constantly about their students on Facebook (or wherever they think somebody will listen) and I suspect will be gone any time now.
The teaching profession has changed so much since I've been in it just boggles my mind.
Or if they are gluttons for punishment.
There's no way anyone with other options would go into teaching in NYC public schools. Those who are in, will quickly be out if any opportunity presents itself. One thing to keep in mind is that this has been purposefully planed. There maybe an aura of unforeseen consequences to these events, but they were designed and very successful. There will be a severe teacher shortage. It will be used as the reason to lower the requirements (and ultimately the salary) for new "teachers". These script readers will use technology as base knowledge in every subject.
The Conversation Ed article is right on target. Why won't the people in charge listen?
To those who care about the public schools, there is a retention crisis. Teacher unions should be emphasizing this problem.
BISE Lahore Board SSC Date Sheet 2015
Well if I'm an admin or educrat, isn't this just great news?? Keep the newbies coming! They're cheap and they don't cause you any trouble. You can always point to them for any underperformance of students. PERFECT!
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