

The upcoming teacher crisis - rafaelc
http://www.learnboost.com/upcoming-teacher-crisis/

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idoh
I'm not a teacher, but my wife is and I've been able to see how dysfunctional
the school district is.

\- teachers across subjects get paid at the same rate table. Math & Science
teachers have a higher opportunity cost but they get the same wage as a PE
teacher. I've talked with people in the union and other people, and basically
they don't believe that free market principles should dictate how much people
get paid.

\- new teacher burnout: new teachers get the worst classes to teach, while the
most experienced ones get to pick out their favorite ones. In addition, new
teachers will have to teach many different classes compared to more senior
ones, so this adds a lot to the load. In addition, at least at my wife's
school, she was laid off every year for 5 years based on the seniority system.
She got very high teacher evaluations but that doesn't matter in the seniority
system.

\- layoffs hit the young, cheaper and more energetic teachers, while keeping
the expensive older teachers.

\- it is nearly impossible to fire bad teachers. Some of the teachers slept in
class, took field trips to the mall, or spent half a semester teaching
handwriting. Everyone knows who the bad teachers are, but it is a bureaucratic
nightmare to do anything about it.

\- it is really hard to switch to different schools or districts. If you have
a personality conflict you are sort of stuck with each other. Compare this to
private industry - I've seen many people who were bad fits at one company do
really well once they moved on.

... and I could go on. Basically, if someone wanted to be a teacher and asked
for my advice, I'd tell them to stay away from the field unless they really
really really want to be a teacher.

~~~
kenjackson
What you've described, almost across the board is the problem of teacher's
unions. Their mission is to help teachers. And in some cases, this also helps
students, e.g., teacher's unions do a great job of ensuring teachers have safe
working conditions. But in many instances it hurts students.

Probably the best thing they can do is move away from a seniority based
system. Give the principal a lot more leeway in how teachers get
assigned/paid. And make the school extremely accountable for performance.

Of course, the teacher's unions, which are run by senior teachers, won't go
for this. I think we're kind of stuck with the situation we have, for better
or wose.

~~~
idoh
I agree that unions can be blamed for a lot of the issues. I'd add that a lot
of the issues are caused by conflicts between the administration and the
teachers. If you remove the unions then you'd have to reform the
administration as well.

What I mean is that in a normal environment you'd start off as a teacher, and
if you were capable you'd get more management responsibility, and could
conceivably smoothly transition from junior teacher to senior teacher to
department head to assistant principal to principal.

The way it works now is that they are two tracks - basically the workers (the
teachers) and the management (the administrators), and the two don't mix.
Teachers will organize staff parties, and it is controversial if
administrators dare show up. In the past administrators would also teach a
class or two - that practice is really frowned upon now.

So the above is a long-winded way of saying that there is a bizarre structure
between the union and the administrators, and the whole thing would need to be
untangled, not just the union side of things.

~~~
ktsmith
Sounds like your wifes district is severely dysfunctional. My wife is also a
teacher and her experiences aren't like this. There are bad teachers that are
still around because of tenure but I've yet to hear of anything as extreme as
sleeping in class. That's not to say it doesn't happen, just that every
district has different problems.

Administration vs teachers. This can vary school by school from what I've
seen/experienced. At the school my wife just finished four years at staff
parties were staff parties, even administrators came. The teachers and
administrators had close bonds and when half the staff and 100% of the
administration at the school were fucked due to district level bureaucracy and
the requirements of a federal grant this year there was very clear solidarity
between the two groups. The principal that will be taking over the school for
the next year however immediately alienated all of the staff members and
replaced a bunch of them with people from his previous school. The mans
reputation preceded him of course and it wasn't a good one, regardless of his
reputation his actions were very discouraging and in many cases poor
judgement.

As far as tracks for progression and salary for teachers I don't think a
traditional corporate structure would work just as it doesn't often work for
engineers or programmers. I know plenty of programmers that never ever want to
enter management and struggle to find companies that will pay them according
to their experience and not their position on an org chart. Additionally with
teachers many teachers, my wife for example, there may be zero desire to
become an administrator. As such we should be willing to pay teachers that are
good, and have experience accordingly regardless of their moves into
administration.

This may not be the case where you are located, but here the teachers union
represents the teachers who have one type of contract, and there is no body
that represents the administrators. Administrators have individual contracts
and can be terminated quite easily by the district. Teachers are on
standardized contracts created by the teachers union and so it is harder to
remove them. Unfortunately you don't see many administrators removed because
there's a good old boy system in place. The people at the district level
overseeing administration all know each other and have been around forever.
People owe each other favors or their kids play ball together and other bull
shit. A new superintendent was hired a year ago from another state and the
first thing he did was eliminate a lot of positions that were filled by
unqualified individuals or that shouldn't have even existed. Some times a
little fresh blood at the top is necessary to clear out administrative
problems. I don't envy him though, he'll probably be tossed out on his ass in
another year or two due to problems beyond his control. The school districts
budget shortfall for next year is over 50%.

------
catone
Shortage doesn't seem like the right word. That implies that there are more
job openings than applicants, which simply isn't true. According to the New
York Times, this is one of the weakest job markets for teachers in decades:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/nyregion/20teachers.html>

The applicant pool is plenty well stocked, so there is no "shortage" of
teachers. What there is, perhaps, is a shortage of qualified teachers _in the
classroom_. In other words, due to budget cuts, layoffs and position cuts
(i.e., not hiring a replacement after someone retires or quits), there are not
enough _employed_ teachers to adequately teach all the students in the states
with a so-called shortage.

But there are plenty of qualified people looking for teaching jobs -- more
than enough for current openings and then some. So what this is, is a money
problem. There's no teacher shortage, there's a budget shortage. We're not
allocating enough funds to adequately fill needs in schools across the
country.

Or at least, that's how I see it.

~~~
roboneal
I'm not quite sure it's a money problem - for example in FY 2008 - Milwaukee
Public schools spent $14503 per enrolled student and has a 46% graduation
rate.

There are plenty of Milwaukee area private options that exceed the outcomes of
the public school system for well under $14K.

~~~
jshen
It's easy to exceed public outcomes when you can refuse students who are
severe behavior problems or bias the selection in some other way.

My wife is a teacher, and a severe behavior problem impacts the entire classes
performance, but it takes so much of her attention away from teaching.

~~~
roboneal
I don't necessarily disagree, but the premise of the parent post was that this
was simply a spending/budget problem.

Spending per pupil has risen every year over the last 20 in Milwaukee and
performance & outcomes have dropped dramatically. Logic dictates that there
are many other forces in play.

~~~
catone
I don't think I'd say my premise was that this was "simply" a budget problem.
I was just saying that calling it a teacher shortage is a poor choice of words
to describe the current problem -- we don't have a shortage of qualified
teacher candidates, we have a shortage of capital necessary to hire them.

The education system and the problems therein (i.e., issues affecting student
success) are certainly far more complicated and nuanced.

------
roboneal
In school districts with strong teacher unions, the first to be laid off are
less tenured, young teachers. Generally, without regard to ability or merit.

I'm thinking this isn't a strong "attractor" to our country's best and
brightest and results in the impending demographic bomb of the teaching
profession.

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starkfist
This is great, maybe the system will completely disintegrate when 50% of the
teachers retire in 5 years. Then we can figure out something worthwhile for
kids to with 12 years of their youth.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Suggestions?

~~~
wake_up_sticky
Maybe we could--GASP!--teach them trades based on their interests and
aptitudes. The current system is best described by the following Marilyn
Manson lyrics:

"Trained to be stupid/Taught to be nothing at all/We're taught to be nothing"

------
misterbwong
This really brings up a question that has been bugging me for years. Why must
aren't HS (and below, really) schedules more college-like? Instead of 1hr of a
subject every day for 5 days, couldn't they do 2.5hrs of a subject twice a
week? This would allow teachers to teach their preferred subject in multiple
schools within the district. The current schedule just strikes me as
_inefficient_ ; it forces teachers into picking up subjects they are not
specialized in.

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SamAtt
Isn't this a good thing for us? Teacher is still a pretty low tech job even
though technology could do a lot in the classroom. So wouldn't a lack of
teachers force school districts to look towards technological solutions?

There was an article just today about teaching methods that don't require
teachers in the classroom at all:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1521077>

I'm not saying we go to that extreme but there's a lot that can be done in
education and technology and a teacher shortage is exactly the type of thing
that would jump start that development.

~~~
idoh
I think tech in the classroom is highly overrated, in that the funding in
schools is so short that even basic things are lacking. Let's start with paper
in classroom for tests and water & coffee in the breakroom.

~~~
tomjen3
Ha, you are lucky.

Danish schools have maps so old the Soviet Union is still on them (they are
still in process of facing them out).

3 Years ago my school still had a couple of 386s for the kids to play on (they
did also have a few more modern computers, but still)

~~~
bitwize
Oregon Trail still works on them, so who cares? :)

