Our friend Patrick Walsh sent this opinion piece out on Facebook concerning teachers leaving the job in huge numbers in Florida. It is well worth reading and watching the video that goes with it.
From the Sentinel:
Florida politicians keep pushing good teachers away.
With a lack of respect. With obsessing about standardized testing over learning. And with cruddy salaries.
There is a price to pay for close to half of Florida public school teachers leaving within their first five years:
The constant turnover costs us money — $130 million a year, according to a 2014 study. It costs us talent. It deprives students of professionals who studied and train their whole lives to work with students.
The solution proposed may surprise some of our readers:
Ask teachers to name the top 10 ways to improve the classrooms where they spend all their time.
Not another test, regulation or byzantine bonus based on 30-year-old test scores. Let teachers teach. And don't punish those willing to teach in schools with impoverished populations.
The teachers want to stay. Some might even come back. Lein (a teacher who quit) said he would. In fact, he said "Absolutely" without even a pause.
But that won't happen until Florida politicians stop yapping and start listening.
The powers that be don't listen to us in NYC either and will not as long as their campaign war chests are filled with charter money.
Our own union won't listen, and they are the very people who are supposedly representing us. Creates a problem with politicians that think they are treating us well.
ReplyDeleteHow do we change that if we are not organized?
ReplyDeleteAs an ATR we organized and we were denied a chapter. We still meet occasionly but the UFT does nothing for us. They won't even answer basic questions and don't want our input.
DeleteYou have a point there 4:46. We can't expect the politicians to listen to us when our own union leadership doesn't want to hear from us.
ReplyDelete