Panel questions on teacher morale and an answer in my in-box
I participated in a PAGE panel today on education, along with my AJC colleague Nancy Badertscher, TV reporter Donna Lowry of 11 Alive and Macon Telegraph editorial page editor Charles E. Richardson. (Georgia school chief John Barge and education guru Phillip C. Schlechty were among the speakers at the PAGE program, and I will write up their comments later tonight.)
Several audience questions to my panel touched on the current state of teacher morale. When I returned to work, I found this email waiting for me in my in-box. It spoke directly to the questions asked by the panel audience.
The teacher who wrote it asked to remain anonymous:
I just wanted to express my thoughts on the most recent “Get Schooled” blog message to the President.
I am a high school special education teacher. I also work with many general education students. I have taught for 11 years and have many friends and acquaintances who have taught anywhere from three years to 20-plus.
In my 11 years as an educator, I have never seen such a demoralized group of people in my life. We teachers feel that we are under attack, that everything bad about education is our fault and that we need to change how things are done at the expense of losing many good teachers.
Many teachers would leave the profession if the right opportunity came their way — more than half. I know many students over the years who wanted to become teachers, thought it was their life’s calling, come to me later and say they had changed their mind and were no longer pursuing teaching.
Basically, this new idea that we can improve education by giving students a standardized test and use that grade to determine the quality of teaching they received is absolutely ridiculous. This idea will ruin our educational system.
Don’t get me wrong. We teachers love our job when it comes to teaching our kids. The politics of “gotcha” has gotten to the point that we have simply had enough. The politicians who have never been in a classroom or ever taught a class in their life think they know everything there is to know about fixing the problem. Ninety percent (and probably more) of teachers say that evaluating us on student test scores is not a cogent measurement. It does not predict teacher quality or student success.
Unfortunately, the time has come for many of us to look at other options. I’m not going to sit around and wait for these lawmakers to ruin our educational system by diverting money to charter schools when the public schools are strapped already and then continue to blame us for poor quality education. Charter schools generally do no better than their public school counterparts. This is absolutely true. I have the data to back it up so there is no room for argument on this one.
Anyway, many of us have gone back to school/ trade school to learn other fields of work in the event we are pushed out of education, which looks like it is about to happen. It is unfortunate as I consider teaching my life’s calling.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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80 comments Add your comment
Entitlement Society
September 18th, 2012
9:29 am
@Already Sheared. Wow. Crazy story. Wonder how many more like that are out there? How long would that have continued if the parents hadn’t complained?! What an example of complete and total mismangement.
Entitlement Society
September 18th, 2012
9:30 am
@ William Casey – to satisfy your curiousity, my children attend Westminster.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
9:44 am
@ entitlement
truly, if I used the exact words to address you as you deserve, I would be banned and never allowed to return.
but there are a few which seem to fit that will be deemed acceptable
-hypocrite: critical of others for doing what you do. either put your name out publicly and post under it, or in this matter stop posting.
-ignorant: you obviously have no clue what occurs within the system you criticize.
-obstinate: you obviously have no desire to learn what you do not know
-bigot: Delta is ready when you are. don’t like us dumb ole southerns-get the hell out. we survived before you, and will do at least as well when you’re gone.
-troll: you offer no solutions, just criticisms. nor is there any evidence you have any interest in offering any if you had them
-coward: you toss lots of bombs, flame hard working educators, and yet have offered zero evidence
you have anything to bring forward (besides yapping, which doesn’t help) to help
all of which equals one last word
-problem: yup, you are the problem. much more than any stupid government regulations, idiot supervisors, cronyistic administrations, the main problem is you and everyone who posts like you.
you don’t walk your talk. if parents like you put 1/5 the energy into fixing the system that you do in bitching about it, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
9:47 am
@ William
its time for us to fold the tents and let entitlement and jarvis have their way.
trying to save education is like Lee just before Appomattox.
BlahBlahBlah
September 18th, 2012
9:51 am
What do teachers think the answer is? What’s a proper way to evaluate them? I understand their frustration, but it seems like they just want to keep a system that appears to just blindly declare 90% (or more) of the teaching population are “excellent”, “outstanding”, “above average”, etc.
That’s just not possible.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
9:54 am
@ William,
in the long term, getting dumped by GPC is gonna prove to be the best thing for me long term. I was -WAS – a committed educator, determined to do my part to help fix the system.
all it got me was a shove out the door at the first convenient opportunity.
when I land on my feet, and I will land on my feet (sorry Jarvis, us ex educators do just fine in the “real world”. perhaps you should review your hiring practices) it will take me a couple years to fill the hole I’m in now, but I will ultimately do better for myself and my family if I had remained in education
trying to hold back the tide.
AlreadySheared
September 18th, 2012
9:58 am
Body of the story indicated that SW Dekalb HAD 15 math teachers but needed 17 to teach the additional math support classes students signed up for. They just finished hiring in 2 additional math teachers who start soon.
In my opinion, a “digital option” for math support students is a joke – kids that struggled with a teacher leading them are NOT going to succeed with a self-paced, independent study digital instruction program.
Maureen Downey
September 18th, 2012
10:00 am
@Already, I saw that but what I don’t get is why those kids weren’t in one of the core math classes as DOE says a math support elective should be taught in conjunction with a regular class.
I have asked DeKalb to clarify whether it was following DOE policy on this issue, which means those kids should have been in some math class.
The research on Khan math tutorials suggests that online math tutorials actually work quite well. If the option was no math versus some quality online program, I would have gone with the online option.
Maureen
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
10:07 am
@ blah
what do we want? how long you got?
here are a couple of things we’d love.
1-parents who actually are involved, not just whining when Johnny doesn’t get an A.
2-either a union, or some legitimate form of watchdog to keep the state and administrators from using and abusing us for personal and petty reasons.
3-the ability to actually put disruptive kids out, and keep them out.
4-the ability to issue the grade the kid actually makes without administrative pressure to inflate it
5-an end to the endless crap which flows from Washington. we are not social petri dishes for someone’s latest fad.
6-for legislators like Fran Millar to put facts where his mouth is.
7-a seat at the table. contrary to what Fran & co tell the public, we’re not opposed to merit pay. we all know dead weight making the same amount as some highly motivated achiever down the hall. what we DO want – Fran, you listening this time- is a seat at the table setting the criteria. what we will NOT accept is people like Fran setting politically motivated criteria to evaluate us
jarvis
September 18th, 2012
10:36 am
@bootney farnsworth, in my humble opinion no public workforce should be allowed to unionize. Collective bargaining has no place in the context of tax dollar allocation.
AlreadySheared
September 18th, 2012
10:36 am
@Maureen,
1) I really like the Khan tutorials, and
2) a really strong student can actually learn math mostly on his/her own from a good textbook.
Again, however, it looks like this is an issue with math SUPPORT. To learn math, the students have to learn the material and then DO THE WORK to reinforce their learning. If they were capable of doing that on their own, by definition they wouldn’t have ended up in math support in the first place.
cris
September 18th, 2012
10:55 am
I am demoralized….I still enjoy my time with students and I still feel like I am an effective educator with students. What demoralizes me are the hoops that we are being asked to jump through to “prove” we are doing our jobs – come into my classroom – anytime! – and you will see I’m doing my job! The fact that federal dollars that cause the hoop-jumping never actually make it to the classroom – money is used for tests and to hire people to tell us how to 1)administer the test 2)grade the test 3) use the data from the test. Have 10 years to go…..hope I can continue to keep a good attitude around my students and just let the NCLB/RttT/Common Core/assorted other “miracles” that will come down the line within my time (hey – 10 years! Maybe, just maybe Common core is the LAST “solution” I will be subjected to!)
Entitlement Society
September 18th, 2012
11:01 am
@bootney – I didn’t read your blabber past #1, as in my comment I admitted to using a moniker rather than a real name. You also don’t use your real name, so I don’t understand why that’s a problem for you that I don’t when you do the same… true definition of the word…
teacher&mom
September 18th, 2012
11:35 am
@Maureen: Wait until Oct. and then contact TRS. Rumor has it a large number of teachers will be retiring mid-year. We have several in my small system. As a general rule, mid-year retirements are a rare event.
10:10 am
September 18th, 2012
12:27 pm
Get Schooled remains the mouthpiece of anti-choice, anti-reform reactionaries … and drama queens who forever threaten to leave teaching BUT NEVER DO.
William Casey
September 18th, 2012
1:12 pm
@Entitlement: I DO use my real name so I can call you out on the pseudonym issue. Perhaps I’ll start using “Silver Spoon” and claim that my degree is from Harvard. I’m sure that you get the point. BTW– Westminster is a fine school. My son is a math guy, so Northview was plenty good enough for him (and a lot less expensive.)
Just A Teacher
September 18th, 2012
1:54 pm
It just isn’t worth the trouble to complain anymore. I’ll just work here until a decent job opens up somewhere else and then leave with no fanfare and only one regret: that I didn’t get out earlier.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
1:55 pm
@ entitlement,
of course you read it. so we can add disingenuous to the list.
the reason I use a pseudonym is well known. GPC wanted to hang my scalp on the wall for making public several things they wanted kept quiet. like Digger, who posts here occasionally, I am in the middle of exploring all my options, including possible legal action, with the USG.
if I went public, the full fury of the system would come down against me, and probably blackball me.
I protect my identity to protect myself.
you?
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
1:58 pm
@ jarvis
regarding unions: you are entitled to your opinion. in mine, the state of Georgia has lost that bargaining chip by due to corruption, back room dealing, and plain old fashioned stupidity.
as state workers, we did not surrender our civil/constitutional rights. including the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
1:59 pm
@ Teacher/mom
retiring by choice, or forced out?
Beverly Fraud
September 18th, 2012
3:37 pm
“But, some people continue to join groups like PAGE and GAE which is like chickens supporting Chick Fil-A.”
Given their longstanding lack of advocacy for teachers in cases where administrative feathers (no pun intended) might be ruffled, you could even say it’s like gay chickens supporting Chick-Fil-A.
And who could ever take Donna Lowery seriously again after a decade’s worth of shilling for Beverly Hall?
teacher&mom
September 18th, 2012
4:10 pm
@Bootney: retiring by choice. The change in the 3% income tax just ain’t worth the aggravation of sticking around.
LillieGirl
September 18th, 2012
4:33 pm
@Bootney. I was forced out of teaching after putting in 24 years in this state. To add insult to injury, I was offered a position as a parapro. I miss the kids but I don’t miss dealing with slimey administrators or helicoptor parents.
bootney farnsworth
September 18th, 2012
7:14 pm
@ lillie,
I feel you. I served this state across 4 decades only to be told by people making more than twice what I did I was too expensive to keep around.
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
Pride and Joy
September 18th, 2012
7:44 pm
This statement is just wrong “Charter schools generally do no better than their public school counterparts. This is absolutely true. I have the data to back it up so there is no room for argument on this one.”
Show the data. Show especially how Drew Charter school, almost all black and all poor outperforms its local school, Coan, in every measurement. So go ahead and bring your data. It’s one thng to say it, another to prove it.
Just A Teacher
September 18th, 2012
7:52 pm
At least i know I’m not alone in what I’m feeling. We public school teachers did not cause the economy to crash in 2008, but we have been dealing with the garbage left behind by those Wall Street idiots and their political lackeys ever since. I don’t understand the problem. We educate children. It is the most important and most patriotic job anyone can have in our society, but we are demonized for asking for the respect and compensation we are due. People who can’t even rear their own children are constantly trying to tell us how to teach dozens of kids at a time. But don’t ask them to actually pay for our services. Any warm body can fill our positions. That’s just funny to me. We are a highly educated, specialized and elite work force, but the respect afforded to us is more on the level of a grocery clerk than someone with an advanced degree. Like I said, it’s time for us to be given the respect and compensation we deserve or leave the field en mass.
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
September 18th, 2012
8:23 pm
@Pride and Joy “Show the data. Show especially how Drew Charter school, almost all black and all poor outperforms its local school, Coan, in every measurement. So go ahead and bring your data. It’s one thing to say it, another to prove it.”
You do realize that ONE school does not disprove the statement that Charter schools (in general) do no better than their traditional counterparts, right? As to the data – just Google “Charter schools verses public school performance.” There are numerous studies.
As it turns out, findings are mixed. Charter performance varies from state to state. Charters runs by management companies tend to do better that those that are not. At the elementary level, traditional public schools tend to do better – at least in California. Low SES urban students seem better served in Charters, but other populations do not …. etc.
Here are a few exeprts from various studies.
From Newsweek: “…a study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) found that 37 percent of charter schools produce academic results that are worse than public schools, while only 17 percent perform significantly better. Earlier studies sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union, had produced similar results, but they were suspect, since unions stood to lose from the charter-school movement. CREDO, on the other hand, is part of the Hoover Institution, known for favoring free-market solutions. “The perception that charters are per se better than other public schools has been belied by the facts,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT.
From CS Montior: “When you take a look at our findings and then look back at previous studies, they start to follow a pattern,” says Philip Gleason, the study’s director and a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, which produced the study. “Studies that have focused on the largest set of schools find either no or negative effects, but schools in larger urban areas, serving the most disadvantaged students, do have an effect.” ….the charters that work best are those serving lower-income students, especially in urban areas.
From Data First: On average, nationally, students in 17 percent of charter schools performed significantly better than if they had attended their neighborhood traditional public school.
On the flip side, students in 37 percent of charter schools performed significantly worse, and students in the remaining 46 percent of charter schools did not perform significantly better or worse than if they had attended their neighborhood traditional public school. However, research also shows that students in charter high schools score higher on college entrance exams (e.g., the SAT or ACT) and are more likely to graduate high school and attend college than similar students in traditional public schools.
So, as you can see. Mixed results. Rather like traditional schools!
teacher burn out
September 18th, 2012
9:11 pm
Well, my morale is in the toilet. It’s been in the toilet since school started, and I can tell you it didn’t start that way. I started this school year on a positive note. They did not need to trash my morale, and yet they went right ahead did it, and they seem hell bent on continuing to flush it down the sewer. Everything from continuing to insist on installing administrators who possess little to no real leadership qualities (what dark cave are they GETTING these people from??) to throwing 20 new things at us all at once and then refusing to even give us hints as to how to correctly implement them much less incorporate them into a teaching day…which now needs to be about 6 hours longer anyway, so I can do all their new initiatives I’ve not been given any training to do.
I’m tired. I’m overworked and undervalued. I’m not going to complain about the pay–I didn’t get into this profession to make a 6 figure salary, and I’m okay with what I do make (but then…I’m not a young teacher who’s been pulling down $35,000 for this level of stress since the economy collapsed).
And I’m also not going to lie–I take my summers off. Maybe a staff development class here and there, but I take a good 6-7 weeks off for myself. And not one of you ridiculous trolls I see pop in here to create havoc and mayhem can say a single thing to make me feel bad about it or raise my dander about my decision to do that. From the second I start the school year, to the second it ends, I bust my butt for those kids (the same children that I know and you know–and I know you know and that’s why you leave your sad, ignorant anti-teacher flames–would eat less experienced people alive and in a fetal position in a classroom corner in a matter of mere minutes).
How many CEO’s would go in over the summer and set up their office in the dark and the heat–no electricity over the summer months allowed due to company budget cuts.I get in at 7:30 am, sometimes sooner, and don’t leave until 5:30, sometimes later. There have been times over the last 7 weeks I’ve worked from 7 am to 7 pm straight, gone home, had scrambled eggs and toast for dinner, and gone to bed. My 3 year old is getting the short end of the stick, and I’m having to make the most of our weekends–I’m resentful and angry about that, but we do need my income and so I do what every working parent does. My best. I take work home on the weekends–usually about 5 or 6 hours’ worth. I’m always looking for new ideas and materials to teach–especially now with Common Core. It’s intense…it may not have to be; I don’t know. I haven’t had any training, so I’ve been having to train myself during my off duty hours. So with the kind of salary I earn + the kind of work I put in? August-May equals, I figure, about a 12 month contract in Corporate America.
My Corporate America exec friends agree with that. Maybe because they put in the same hours for on average $20,000 more a year…or maybe because they’re constantly horrified by the amount of money I regularly spend out of my own pocket on my job (due to GA austerity cuts, I now must buy all my own copy paper, laser printer cartridges–I don’t technically have to do this, but if I do not, I will not have enough supplemental materials with which to teach–and I hate teaching out of teacher manuals and student textbooks, snore. And I’ve always bought my own extra craft and special holiday materials, classroom decor items, supplemental teaching materials, because most teachers love their students and want to make school a fun, comfortable, colorful place to be. And I also buy student supplies because I work in an area mommy and daddy just assume they’re entitled to them…or just because they’re entitled; entitlement is a huge and growing problem, and I see it in *all* socio-economic areas, not just the one Mitt Romney wants to point at).
In other words, what I’m saying is: burn out is always just around the corner for me and always has been. I fight it constantly. Teaching is a rough profession; it is not for the weak or naive. For the last 18 years, I’ve managed to beat the burn out. Summers help. If I had to work summers, I’d be heavily medicated or institutionalized at this point–which, right now, both sound far more enjoyable than dealing the increasing amount of bull manure and bureaucracy that has become American Public Ed. But this year, it’s starting to beat me….I’m starting to look for jobs in the public sector. And I’m fine with working in the summer…I just want my frickin’ life back.
But I’m RESENTFUL about that! I’m so *expletive* resentful, not because of losing summers off–I’d work year round for even less money if I could have autonomy, parental/public support, and could do what I know is in children’s best interest and not this educational malpractice we’ve been forced into over the last 12+ years. I love(d) this job. Children are my passion, and the teaching part of the job brings me intense, explosive joy. But I cannot continue to work under the current conditions. Under the current conditions, I can barely drag myself out of bed each morning, and throw a low barometric pressure day into the mix and I’m just done. And if somebody adds something new to my plate this year or next, I may just walk out on my contract and go work as a meter maid or something the public agrees is just as deplorable as teachers. In fact, if somebody came to me tomorrow and offered me a job making comparable to what I make now, I *know* I’d walk out on my contract, and I wouldn’t look back. I would deeply miss working with children, and I would long for those fun, THIS-is-why-I-do-this moments. But I would know in my heart I did the right thing. American public education, pre-NCLB, had its problems. But it was not the quagmire it is now. I would LOVE to do something different but just as worthwhile. Even writing parking tickets for a company with questionable ethics. THAT’S how bad it is right now.
So throw me a bone, Georgia politicians and public. Let me know you care whether a teacher with 18 years’ experience, who is pretty skilled and qualified at what she does, matters to you. I read comments sections of blogs like this all the time, and the general attitude of some of you in the general sector disgusts, amazes, and disheartens me. Sometimes it gives me hope. But if you’re blaming teachers for what’s going on in public education right now, you’re part of the problem not the solution. I promise, and swear on my only child’s life you are.
If I knew the vast majority of the American public had my back, I might have a little more fight in me. But right now, I’m just tired. I worked an 11 hour day today, and it was a rainy day. We were cramped in my tight little classroom trailer, and I got to deal with one of the most passive aggressive, entitled parent notes ever. And more nonsense information about the 10 new initiatives I’m expected to be awesome at this year.
It’s exhausting. I want out more and more every year. And I really hate that.
Jordan Kohanim
September 18th, 2012
10:09 pm
teacher burn out-
I care. I appreciate you. THANK YOU for doing what I cannot. Thank you for sacrificing.For my part, I will continue to write and advocate for teachers like you.
Hopefully you won’t leave, but please remember you are only human. Do not feel bad for being resentful. It is understandable in times like these.
Again.You aren’t told it often enough, but thank you to all the teachers that brave/rejoice/stress/love and come back again every year.
CharterStarter, Too
September 23rd, 2012
12:50 pm
To the teacher who wrote the letter:
I want you to know that I agree with you on almost every point. It is extraordinarily troubling at the morale issues facing our educators in public education today. Teachers in public schools deal with more and more discipline issues in the classroom, greater burdens of paperwork that adds nothing to instruction, continued accountability with less support, and shrinking resources.
I believe, however, that the reasons for these issues lie in poor leadership at the district level – districts don’t enforce and support their educators regarding disciplinary matters. Paperwork is created by the central office staff inventing processes around “accountability,” “data,” and “rigor” and invest in programs – none of which get at the heart of what drives learning: engagement of students, excitement and skill of the teacher in the room, and the overall school and classroom culture. Rather than asking for teachers’ voices in what would help THEM to be be successful, more accountability measures are piled on top. Teachers lack a voice in what happens in their schools, and in large part, in their classrooms. And resources are certainly shrinking overall in our state, and especially in classrooms. If anyone would take the time to research where their districts are SPENDING their money, you will see that these district decisions to invest in travel, lobbying, and salaries at the central office are the culprits driving furlough days, reduced instructional days, and reduced classroom resources.
Charters are generally started BY teachers and community members – their voices are extremely important. Without central administration in most charters, more can be invested in the classrooms. Generally the leadership teams in the school drive processes that happen in the school. You’ll find high morale in most charters and very unique school cultures.
As for performance – in our state, charters are out performing districts schools from where they serve kids in almost every case. For those who haven’t, they have been non-renewed or shuttered. You can go off averages, but when you compare apples to apples – that is, the same community, you will see that our charters here are very successful with the children.
Charters are PUSHING districts to do better – NOT in denigrating the teachers, but in shining a light on the district priorities and issues that negatively impact educators and the impact they can have on children. We are not the enemy. if charters succeed in pushing districts to make positive changes, your experience as an educator will greatly improve. Thank you for your commitment to the children you serve.