Teacher Burnout "Concerning"
Educators leaving teaching, no one lining up to replace them
Another school year is underway and stories of a persistent teacher shortage abound.
FOX Business recently reported:
With mounting responsibilities and stagnant pay, teachers are continuing to feel burnt out and leaving the industry at a concerning rate.
Not only are teachers leaving, but also there’s a shortage of qualified educators available to fill the empty positions:
The FOX story explains why the exodus from the teaching profession persists:
Evan Stone, who co-founded Educators for Excellence, a teacher-led organization that advocates for shaping education policy, says he's tracked teachers leaving the workforce over the past seven years, due to the creation of "an unsustainable set of conditions for them in the classroom."
Teachers also no longer encourage others to join them in the teaching ranks:
Today, only 16% of teachers said they’d recommend the profession to others, according to the poll.
Teachers are begging for help - not just more pay and better working conditions, but HELP - and they aren’t getting it. Instead, those making the policies around our public schools are repackaging failed “solutions” that make enterprising edu-preneurs rich while leaving kids and communities behind.
The problem appears to be getting worse. Back in 2022:
Just 37% of respondents in the national, random-sample survey would want a child of theirs to become a public school teacher in their community.
While money doesn’t solve every problem, data indicates boosting teacher pay significantly could go a long way toward addressing the current teacher staffing challenge:
In this case, a school district boosted starting pay from $38,000 to $60,000 and gave every existing teacher an average pay bump of 15%.
The result: Principals were able to choose from multiple, qualified applicants for their open positions.
Not providing teachers with the pay and support they seek and deserve is a policy choice. The consequences of continuing down this path are potentially disastrous.
Thank you for posting these articles. Our students are paying the price. MNPS says it wants "Every student known," but what about having "Every teacher known" too? Has anybody looked into teacher absentee rates in Nashville? Everyday we have teachers absent at our school and no sub. This is true at many schools. We also have a sub shortage because the pay is so bad. Thus, we teachers are asked to give up our planning period to sub. We get sub pay, meaning that after various deductions are made, we only make about $23 extra dollars for watching a class. Many of us think it isn't worth the stress of giving up a planning period.
If you teach at a "failing" school ("failing" according to standardized test scores), the state of Tennessee subjects teachers to increased oversight. These "failing" schools are SOI schools- Schools of Innovation. I had to turn in 9 weeks of lesson plans in a subject that I had never taught before, before school for students had even started! I didn't dare to work on lesson plans on my own time during summer break, because I have had my subject area changed before at the last minute and my plans went to waste. So in basically a day I had to submit plans for 9 weeks of lessons complete with assessments.
Now I am subject to weekly walk-through observations. I had 5 in my first 3 weeks of school! This doesn't help teachers. It sends us the message that we are incompetent. For the record, I have taught in MNPS for 18 years and have been at the same high school for 13. We teachers are constantly critiqued and given feedback for improvement, but the message we get is that we will never be good enough. No wonder people are leaving.
Our planning time is inadequate. We are expected to attend as many as 3 meetings a week during our planning period and complete numerous paperwork types of tasks. We are still expected to give kids re-do's on tests, which means that we must make 2 tests (4 if you teach EE or EL students) for every standard that we teach. We are expected to contact parents of failing students and document it, despite the fact that we post grades on line. Bottom line: You can't do this unless you do this at home outside of your contracted hours.
We are expected to be attendance clerks and contact parents of absent/tardy students and document that we have contacted them. We are pressured to work for free after school at ball games. The message we get is : If kids fail, it is because you aren't working hard enough.
This is why teachers are quitting and people don't want to enter the profession.