
Why Do Teachers Quit? - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-do-teachers-quit/280699/
======
groovy2shoes
One reason, at least in North Carolina, is the aftermath of the No Child Left
Behind Act. There are teachers here who are passionate about education. Many
of them feel as though any creativity and skill they have as an educator has
been revoked by the state. They no longer have the freedom to create their own
lesson plans. Efforts to encourage students to reach beyond the curriculum are
stifled. All that matters is what grades they get on some multiple choice test
that was mandated by the state.

Even students enrolled in more demanding programs like AP and IB are expected
to pass the standardized end-of-grade tests. Now that's two (sometimes three,
for students enrolled in both) standardized tests students need to be prepared
for.

The people who've dedicated their lives to teaching no longer get to decide
what's best for students. Only politicians get to do it now.

To put it in software development terms, imagine a customer giving you
requirements that specify not only the desired product, but _exactly_ which
programming languages, design patterns, and frameworks you have to use. Now
imagine realizing that the tools mandated by the requirements aren't quite a
good fit for the solution, and you have 9 months to ship or you fail. How
quickly would you drop that client?

The No Child Left Behind Act has led us to a school system where the
government -- rather than the students -- is the client of the teachers. More
like All Children Left Behind.

~~~
fossuser
I've heard this argument before, but I've never really understood it.

Aren't the mandated exams extremely easy? Isn't the barrier to pass so low
that they don't really matter that much anyway?

Why would this be that big of an issue?

I'd also assume that having some sort of standard by which to judge public
education is difficult, but I can sense the need for some sort of standard. I
went to public school, and while personal anecdotes aren't that valuable - the
quality of teacher varied wildly from great teachers who made memorable
impacts to teachers so damaging I still remember how horrible they were years
later.

If standardized testing is the issue then what's a better way to work towards
improving it? Better teachers? Being able to fire bad ones? It's a complex
problem.

~~~
groovy2shoes
It's more than just standardized testing. A letter of resignation was
discussed on HN about a year ago [1], and that sentiment is far from unique.
Teachers, _especially_ the ones who are passionate about education, are
leaving the school systems in Mecklenburg and surrounding counties in droves.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713000)

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bmy78
I taught for over 3 years, high school social studies. At times it was amazing
(usually when you recognize you made a breakthrough moment with a student),
however it was mostly brutal.

Grading is endless. Lesson planning is also non stop. I would always look at
my plans and wonder -- is this good enough? Can I make this better? How can I
engage the students?

What pushed me over the top was a brand-new principal who tried way too many
initiatives all at once. At that point I knew I had to get out -- and do
something else.

And now I'm in web development, making way more money that I did as a teacher,
and actually enjoying my work!

Oh, and that first-year principal? He was fired a year later.

------
JamieLewis
The complaints I hear centre around grading, lesson planning and of course
bureaucracy.

Now, I believe that the education system of the majority of the world is
fundamentally broken - and I am cheering on the likes of coursera, khan
academy and the like to get to fixing it.

But in the mean time...can we take the first of these...grading. At the risk
of trying to find a technical solution to everything this sounds like it
should have a nice technological solution to it...

I can see some of the issues in English and the like where answers may not be
0 or 1 but if google can instantly translate English to Swahili...someone
should be able to find a way to grade English assignments of high school
student efficiently.

Or is this a money issue? The technology exists or could exist but there is no
funding, so instead we are wasting hundreds/thousands of teacher hours a week
while they repeat the same manual chore over and over again?

I would be interested in hearing some teachers comment on this.

Reminds me of this:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools...](http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools_enough_is_enough.html)

~~~
lmartel
It's entirely within our technological grasp to automatically grade high
school English papers, but a big part of paper writing in high school (in
theory) is getting feedback and improving as a writer and thinker. Getting
accurate, clear and detailed feedback on your writing from an autograder seems
like it would be extraordinarily difficult.

Disclaimer: my own high school had a phenomenal English department. Do many
teachers simply plop a score at the top?

~~~
JamieLewis
A very good point that I did not consider, I remember getting very good
feedback from my teachers - It would appear I underestimated the size of the
problem.

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vinceguidry
Teachers are the anvil on which the hammer of public policy gets constantly,
ineptly struck in the vain attempt to turn raw stock into... some kind of
shape the smith can't even define.

It's no wonder enthusiasm dies out so quickly.

~~~
a3n
My ex-wife teaches high school, and I hear her talk about the hours and the
mandatory extra-curricular activity support, for the same low low price.

I tell my high school age kid never ever be a teacher, unless God himself
comes down and puts his finger on his heart. America hates teachers.

------
Jemaclus
Former teacher here. I can sum up the reasons why I quit below:

* Dealing with kids has hard. Really, really hard. Computers sit down and shut up when you tell them to; kids don't.

* Rules. Rules rules rules. It's easier to list what you're allowed to do than list what you're not allowed to do.

* I was a 25 year-old male teaching high school. Lots of teenage girls flirting with me => lots of risk for sexual harassment lawsuits. It's not enough to just write them up or ignore them. You have to document _everything_. If even once it might be implied that you're encouraging it, game over.

* For a vast majority of my kids over the course of 2 years teaching at two different schools, their parents simply did not care. One phone call ended with "I can't control my kid." With all due respect, ma'am, if you can't control your kid, why do you think I can?

Money wasn't really on the list. $41K/year in Alabama (Masters) is more than
enough for a single 25 year-old bachelor. Although I will admit the way they
pay teachers is fucked. It's based on years of work and degree level. The
crazy part is that 1 degree level = 5-ish years of work. I started off making
$41k salary, but that's just because I started teaching with a Master's
degree. To get to $41k salary with a Bachelor's, you'd have to work 5+ years
in the field. Are you telling me that a rookie kid out of college with a
Master's is worth more than an experienced teacher with 5 years under her
belt? C'mon.

I loved teaching. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. But I
just couldn't do it any more after the second year. It's not teaching that
sucks -- it's everything else. It's the paperwork. It's the threat of sexual
harassment. It's the pressure from administration. It's the parents who don't
care. It's the kids who don't want to be there.

Frankly, I'd rather code for a living and tutor on the side.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
I'll base this on NJ, but your reference to the salaries is largely to do with
unions. Union reps negotiate the salary guides with administrators and since
most reps/heads are senior staff members they negotiate the guide to favor
themselves. This may not be the case everywhere but if you look them up
(public record FYI) you will often see later years see significant bumps in
salary while lower level years are small COL increases.

The main ways they're usually negotiated are: 1. high starting salary, but
more steps to the top or 2. low starting salary, with less steps.

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cecilpl
My wife is a high school teacher.

She taught full time for 3 years, and burnt herself out with 70 hour weeks of
planning, marking, parental communication, and miscellaneous bureaucracy.

Now she's working as an on-call substitute, working 8:30-3 whichever days she
wants, and (get this) making more money than she was teaching full time.

~~~
zarify
Presumably it's the same where you are here where substitute teachers are paid
at a higher rate due to lack of benefits, so that isn't that surprising.

Although I definitely see the advantages of the stability of knowing who your
classes are, sick and long service leave and paid holidays over the freedom
from preparation, marking and report writing and other paperwork. I think
being a substitute teacher you miss out on a lot of the benefits of the actual
teaching too, like building a relationship with your students, and being able
to teach long-term concepts instead of a period at a time.

One of my co-workers makes most of her living from substitute teaching (she
teaches a part time load) though and seems to be fine with it, so different
strokes I guess.

~~~
cecilpl
She doesn't get anything in lieu of benefits, but she gets a full 1/180th of
the annual salary per day she works (there are 180 teaching days in the year).
On top of that, she still contributes to the pension and can claim
unemployment during the summer.

She does occasionally get longer-term assignments for teachers who are away
for a couple weeks at a time, so there's a bit of relationship-building and
long-term-teaching here and there. She also likes that she has a less
authoritative role and can relate to the students on a friendlier level.

------
tehwebguy
My wife taught at a small for-profit high school for one year. Long hours,
extra BS like babysitting the lunchroom, dealing with parents, low pay, having
to write her own curriculum: she quit because it totally sucks ass.

Seeing how hard it is made me appreciate a few excellent teachers I had
through school more.

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NIL8
Whenever I read something like this, I struggle to formulate a response that I
hope will add value to the discussion. I get so disgusted considering the many
facets of the issue that, after wasting too much time, I close the page and
move on with my day. I suppose that's why we're in this mess.

------
TarpitCarnivore
I decided to enter the teaching field and decided to never go back after I
finished my initial 3ish month fill-in. Among most of the stuff that got
mentioned, the single biggest thing I couldn't accept was the rigid structure
of the course work. I was teaching computers to elementary kids and throughout
the entire year of lessons there was nothing about what actually makes a
computer work. When I approached the supervisor about this I was told "As long
as it fits the curriculum". This struck me as odd that in a computer class, in
2006, the district had not built anything in for discussion of what a computer
actually is. Instead, kids were spending 4-5 weeks typing for 40 minutes as
their lesson.

This, in the end, was what did me in with teaching (aside from the
bureaucratic and nepotistic BS). That in 2006 the biggest factors in exposing
kids to computers was by having them play Dr. Seuss games and typing all day.
I'm not saying kids should be programming by age six, but the there needed to
be something better. NJ's curriculum standards are still pretty terrible and
could be a lot better
([http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/standards/8/](http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/standards/8/)),
but they're far better than what they were six years ago.

------
djillionsmix
Somehow nobody ever says that people who love investment banking or running a
multinational corporation should do that for peanuts.

------
kriro
I never really understood why teachers and preschool teachers make so little
money (and recognition/work environments etc. aren't great). As a society I'd
expect we'd put a higher premium on educating our children.

It's an interesting double whammy because in many countries there's mandatory
school attendance until a certain age. So basically you "force" kids to attend
school and then don't even try to create the best learning environment
possible.

From my very limited samplesize of being an exchange student in the US back in
high school I have also noticed that the situation in the US is actually
worse. There's quite a different level of respect for teachers. In Germany
being a HS teacher is a fairly respectable job socially (they also get
lifelong tenure which may or may not be a good thing, I'm leaning the concept
is flawed because I'd rather be able to fire people).

------
steveplace
Love the kids, hate the bureaucracy.

------
aidenn0
Nothing really surprising here; assuming there are alternatives for workers
(even a homemaker is a serious alternative to teaching at some of the pay
rates), then when you make people work long hours with poor pay and no agency,
they will quit.

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speeder
By the way, in Brazil most teachers get mininum wage (currently around 300 USD
mo for 44 hours of work every week, summing classroom time with preparation
time)

Because it is not enough to pay even basic living expenses in many cities
(like São Paulo) some teachers here fill all their waking time with classroom
time, and hope they will figure the homework somehow (thus they end having two
or three jobs, working 60 hours at classroom or even more)

Public Universities here are the best stuff you can have without being a 0.1%
richest (when you can pay actual Ivy League on US like Facebook founder
Eduardo or when you can pay Ivy League-like stuff here, like Fundação Getúlio
Vargas), to get in one you must pass a test that is a competition, Computer
Engineering for example usually has 45 candidates for every spot.

The public university course to teach children (I forgot the name) is the only
course that has more spots than people wanting to get in (last time I checked
there was 0.3 candidates for every spot), usually they cannot even fill the
classroom, because beside not having enough candidates in first place, many
fail the test completely (ie: although the test is a competition and you
usually do not have to bother with mininum score, most universities do not let
you in if you go abysmally bad on the test, like having a zero in any subject
or having a average below 30%...)

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goggles99
I have never worked at a school of any kind, but I have worked in several
different city, state, and federal jobs. Again, I cannot speak from personal
experience in actual schools - but if the government jobs I have been exposed
to are any model, I would say somehow privatize education. If by vouchers or
other means, do it somehow.

Government entities in my experience are the most wasteful and ineffective
organizations that I have ever seen. Couple that with the teachers unions and
who is actually surprised that the education system gets worse every year?

No government agency would survive if it were a private company. The quality
and quantity of work that it produces and for the huge sums of money that it
costs/wastes - would cause it to go belly up in a matter of months.

There has got to be a better way.

