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As teacher resignation letters increasingly go public -- and viral -- new research indicates teachers are not leaving solely due to low pay and retirement, but also because of what they see as a broken education system.
In a trio of studies, Michigan State University education expert Alyssa Hadley Dunn and colleagues examined the relatively new phenomenon of teachers posting their resignation letters online. Their findings, which come as many teachers are signing next year's contacts, suggest educators at all grade and experience levels are frustrated and disheartened by a nationwide focus on standardized tests, scripted curriculum and punitive teacher-evaluation systems.
Teacher turnover costs more than $2.2 billion in the U.S. each year and has been shown to decrease student achievement in the form of reading and math test scores.
"The reasons teachers are leaving the profession has little to do with the reasons most frequently touted by education reformers, such as pay or student behavior," said Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education. "Rather, teachers are leaving largely because oppressive policies and practices are affecting their working conditions and beliefs about themselves and education."
The study quoted a teacher in Boston: "I did not feel I was leaving my job. I felt then and feel now that my job left me."
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday April 07 2017, @11:32PM
Education is society's way of making sure there is not large pool of useless people that need to be fed, housed, and clothed, but who are totally unable of doing any of those things for themselves. [...] This is why education has become compulsory in most parts of the world.
That may be a reason for education, but it's not necessarily the rationale for state-mandated compulsory education. In the U.S. at least, the history of compulsory education is very complex, and it was first implemented in places which arguably least needed it. (America by the mid-1800s was positively shockingly literate compared to most of the rest of the world at the time, even before the introduction of compulsory public education.)
Some of it was about state control wresting children from parents and indoctrination in state values. It then became a bit about preparing good obedient factory workers who could do basic skills and be moved from place to place at the sound of a bell, and with rising immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it became about educating the "dirty" masses of immigrants. Later, once child labor was eradicated, we were left with the problem of lots of idle young ruffians causing mischief on the streets, hence the "public high school movement" to get those potential rebels, protesters, etc. off the street and locked into obedience-teaching classrooms for another 4-8 years or so.
I'd like to think that the intentions of compulsory public education were always noble and about "improving civilization," but there have been lots of ulterior motives mixed in along the way too.