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posted by martyb on Friday April 07 2017, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the stifling-curiosity dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @04:41PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @04:41PM (#490340)

    You know what drives students to excellence? keeping up with their peers, the Joneses.

    That's why gaps close when inner city black kids are dumped into majority-white suburban schools; they start conforming to keep up appearances with their better-reared peers.

    This is why the other comment [soylentnews.org] about giving students a long-term, incremental monetary justification for studying is so valuable: Not only do students have an individual incentive to prove competence, but they'll desperately want to keep up with the peers who are accruing what could be a veritable fortune for an 18 year old.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday April 07 2017, @05:40PM (3 children)

    by Nerdfest (80) on Friday April 07 2017, @05:40PM (#490372)

    Perhaps they don't get made fun of for "acting white" in those schools when they do well.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:10PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:10PM (#490405)

      What their peers think is what matters.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @10:51PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @10:51PM (#490583)

        I guess you've never been a regular kid then... Even the ones who understand that it doesn't matter will get a little depressed when bullied by a massive social circle.

        So many sociopaths on here.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:26PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:26PM (#490906) Journal

          Which is the reason people should have the option to protect themselves from the sociopaths and their zombie followers.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:29PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:29PM (#490419)

    All sorts of peer interactions could be tied to GPA rank. For example...

    The dress code could be eliminated for the best students. The worst students could have a unisex uniform, maybe faded mauve velvet 1-piece horribleness.

    Good students could get to come and go as they like, testing excepted. Bad students could only walk around in lines behind an escort, even to the restroom.

    Bad students always enter through a metal detector, get sniffed by a dog, and get patted down.

    For a prom, the sum of the GPA percentiles for each couple must meet a minimum value of 100. The top student can choose anybody, an 80th percentile student can choose from the top 80%, and so on. Bad students are thus forced to be nice to good students, and good students have their pick of the most desirable (attractive, etc.).

    Good students get nice parking spaces if they drive.

    When the cause of a fight or similar conflict is impossible to determine, always take the side of the higher-ranking student.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:42PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:42PM (#490429)

      Alas, society is not allowed to evolve by variation and selection; the violently imposed monopoly tries to hold everything down in one specific shape—representative democracy means that this shape disallows any sort of distinction in social class: The bell-curve suggests that there will always be a lot of lower-class people who vote to receive special treatment at the expense of higher-class people.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:37PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:37PM (#490912) Journal

        And the smarter end of the population can always screw the less smart ones regardless of legalized theft.
        (and it starts in school where "better" students are somehow assumed to be used as free teachers)

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:32PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:32PM (#490910) Journal

      For a prom, the sum of the GPA percentiles for each couple must meet a minimum value of 100. The top student can choose anybody, an 80th percentile student can choose from the top 80%, and so on. Bad students are thus forced to be nice to good students, and good students have their pick of the most desirable (attractive, etc.).

      That would mean genocide of sport jocks as no wombs would be available to them. We can't have that :P

      Now something that would be interesting is a study rooms where the first room can only be accessed by the those that score at least 20% of max. The next room 40% of max and so on. That should keep some monkey behavior at a distance and enable students to mingle with peers. Unless you are a hacker of course, in which case all rooms will be "available"..