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Common Dreams reports
Colorado's teachers' union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that's planned for Monday at the state's Capitol in Denver.
[...] Englewood School District, outside the capital city, announced on Sunday that schools would be closed the following day as 70 percent of its teachers had indicated they wouldn't be working Monday. It was unclear on Sunday whether more school districts would be closing.
"We are calling Monday, April 16th a day of action", Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association (CEA), told KDVR in Denver.
[...] According to[1] KMGH in Denver, "The CEA estimates that teachers spend on average $656 of their own money for school supplies for students." The state's teacher salaries rank 46th out of 50, with educators making an average of $46,000 per year.
Public schools are underfunded by $828 million this year, Dallman told the Post, and lawmakers have said they could inject at least $100 million more into schools--but they have yet to do so.
[...] The planned protest follows a trend that was seen in West Virginia and Kentucky before moving west this month to Oklahoma and Arizona as well as Colorado. In all the states where teachers have walked out and rallied at their Capitols, teachers have reported paying for school supplies out of pocket, working second and third jobs to make ends meet, and coping with funding shortages while their legislators hand out tax cuts to corporations.
[1] For a laugh (or perhaps a deep sigh), check out all the whitespace in the source code of the page.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tonyPick on Monday April 16 2018, @03:06PM (1 child)
Given a third decide to quit and do something else inside of five years (UK stats), then that's clearly not true...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/24/almost-third-of-teachers-quit-within-five-years-of-qualifying-figures [theguardian.com]
In the US it might be lower - perhaps a bit less than 20% in the first five years:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/04/30/study-new-teacher-attrition-is-lower-than-previously-thought/ [washingtonpost.com]
And maybe a consistent 8% loss per-year overall:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/24/495186021/what-are-the-main-reasons-teachers-call-it-quits [npr.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 17 2018, @12:42PM
Teaching varies by state via regulation and locally via management; feds are little more than a cash cow WRT education in the USA (I see you use UK stats so I'm guessing you're a UK-ian and don't know these things about The Colonies over here); When I was a kid there were young teachers and old teachers etc etc. Then the teachers union was busted and now my sons middle school has framed pix of every teacher on the wall by the offices and ALL of them are far younger than me; certainly none much over 30, average 25 or so.
Having all your teachers under 30 for financial reasons has the impact of you're comparing adult lifestyles such as house ownership with "just outta college" bumming around "elderly-teens". When a 40 year old dude can't afford a house to raise his teenage kids, thats indeed a significant cultural problem. When a 23 year old recent grad first year of real job bachelor lives in a party apartment it doesn't matter if he's bitching about high house prices or not... by the time a youngster is old enough to want/need a house (for raising kids or whatever) they're already downsized out of teaching to save money and replaced by a younger recent grad. For some reason people care if a 25 year old kid can't buy a house in a rich suburb but don't care if the same kid at age 27 is downsized permanently out of education and now can't buy a house in the same suburb during the waitress or bartender or car salesman or real estate agent or life coach second career, or of course unemployed.
Normally this kind of churn would be a problem in an industry but "EVERYBODY HAS TO GO TO COLLEGE" so the supply of new grads with ed degrees is two or three times higher than the demand. So yes the average age of a middle school teacher at my kids school is about 25, which normally is bad for an industry to have no experience or wisdom, but the bottom 2/3 of the education grads aren't getting hired (they bartend or waitress, for example) so we have the cream of the crop, so to speak. Its kind of like the experience of 90-day wonder 2nd LTs in vietnam, take them from the top of their academic class, then toss em in the water and see if they can swim or not, and it don't matter because they're outta there in a couple years at most anyway.
There are multiple weird effects. When I was a kid "sex with teachers" was a pr0n movie or when it happened for real it was a rare national TV scandal, now that the average age of teacher is only a couple years older than the kids its happening a lot more. I would guess that virtually everyone with a MD PHD is working as a doctor, but virtually all holders of education degrees at this time are working anything other than classroom teaching. You expect that for art history or philosophy but it seems weird for a vocational teaching diploma for almost no one holding that degree is teaching. Another weird effect is teachers were rarely "hotties" when I was a kid, we only had two hot teachers at my high school, but now I go to conferences and events and they're ALL young hotties, if its distracting to dad, I can't imagine the distraction level of the male students; although I suppose in the yoga pants era and dress codes being "prostitute-casual", their fellow students are even more distracting.