Breaking News—Interest In Teaching is Dropping!

In a shocking and completely unexpected bit of news, it appears that young people are no longer interested in the Noble Profession. The Los Angeles Times reports that 12% fewer people earned teaching credentials in California last year compared with the year before—the 8^th straight annual decline. The California commission on Teacher Credentialing said that 16,450 educators earned credentials in 2011-12, while 23,320 did so in 2007-08.

One might argue that maybe today’s breed of wannabe teachers are just too stupid or lazy to pass the already really easy teacher preparation courses, but the number of students enrolling in teacher preparation programs has also dropped from 51,744 in 2006-07, to 34,838 in 2010-11, thus indicating that interest in the teaching profession is waning.

The decline has experts baffled.

When polled, current teachers insist that teaching is still the Noble Profession. “I love my students,” said Melissa Bernstein, a 4^th grade teacher in El Cajon, California. “I’d do anything for them. When my principal calls ad hoc meetings after school to get us on board with the latest reforms, I’m the first to arrive and the last to leave because I know it’s what’s best for my students!” San Francisco High school science teacher Armando Villalobos said, “The pay may not be sufficient to live in San Francisco, but the satisfaction of knowing I helped my students’ raise their test scores few points more than makes up for it.”

Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association, said the combination of budget cuts, layoffs and slashed programs, combined with declining numbers of people entering the profession has been “very impactful” on our numbers. “Nationally, our union [the NEA] has lost 150,000 members over the last 3 years. These are good-hearted, hard-working teachers whose dues help pay my six-figure salary. This has me worried.”

While fewer young people are interested in becoming teachers, over 54,000 teachers are older than 55 and rapidly approaching retirement. This constitutes 19% of all California teachers. However, as California’s student population grows and its pool of fully credentialed teachers shrinks, considerable job and entrepreneurial opportunities will be created, which should boost the state’s lagging economy. For example, districts with insufficient numbers of credentialed teachers can always shut down some of their campuses and transfer them over to private charter school operators, who can hire Teach for America interns, and non-unionized, un-credentialed private school teachers. Districts may also choose to transfer much of their teaching duties to online “distance” learning companies, offshore call centers and sweatshops and simply hire “monitors” to make sure that students are logged on to the correct education websites during class time.

Do 50% of Teachers Really Quit Within 5 Years?

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

I felt compelled to share the following analysis of the commonly quoted statistic that close to 50% of all teachers leave the profession within five years since I am guilty of using this quote without having checked the references myself. Matthew Di Carlo does a pretty good job with his analysis and does say many of the same things I have said in previous blog posts, but adds some interesting analyses and speculations about the true extent and significance of the problem. For example, even if the numbers really are close to 50%, is this dramatically different than other professions (some studies suggest it is not). He also draws attention to the fact that the majority of teachers are women and the likelihood that many are quitting to raise families. (I would counter, however, with the fact that many women professionals, like lawyers, doctors and scientists, postpone pregnancies, subcontract out childrearing to nannies, or choose not to have families, and that when weighing whether or when to have a family, working conditions and job satisfaction are important considerations).

The following was written by Matthew Di Carlo, Shanker Blog
You’ll often hear the argument that half or almost half of all beginning U.S. public school teachers leave the profession within five years.
The implications of this statistic are, of course, that we are losing a huge proportion of our new teachers, creating a “revolving door” of sorts, with teachers constantly leaving the profession and having to be replaced. This is costly, both financially (it is expensive to recruit and train new teachers) and in terms of productivity (we are losing teachers before they reach their peak effectiveness). And this doesn’t even include teachers who stay in the profession but switch schools and/or districts (i.e., teacher mobility).*
Needless to say, some attrition is inevitable, and not all of it is necessarily harmful, Many new teachers, like all workers, leave (or are dismissed) because they are just aren’t good at it – and, indeed, there is test-based evidence that novice leavers are, on average, less effective. But there are many other excellent teachers who exit due to working conditions or other negative factors that might be improved (for reviews of the literature on attrition/retention, see here and here).
So, the “almost half of new teachers leave within five years” statistic might serve as a useful diagnosis of the extent of the problem. As is so often the case, however, it’s rarely accompanied by a citation. Let’s quickly see where it comes from, how it might be interpreted, and, finally, take a look at some other relevant evidence.
The primary source for the claim seems to be analyses by respected University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Ingersoll (presented, among other places, in this 2003 report). Ingersoll uses data from the 2001-02 Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS). The TFS is a supplement to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a highly regarded national survey of teachers conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

To read the full article, please click here

Pragmatism Beats Out Occupy and Bunga Bunga for Word of Year

Merriam-Webster is calling “pragmatic” the word of the year, saying there were more searches for this one word in 2011 than any other word, including “occupy,” according to the Daily Mail.

Congressional Super Committe (by DonkeyHotey)

 Searches for the term “pragmatic” spiked this past year when Congress voted to increase the debt ceiling and when its super committee tried to slash the deficit. This I found curious considering that the word “pragmatic” is far more useful, comprehensible and, one would think, more well-known than the words “deficit” or “debt ceiling.” But maybe Americans’ attention and curiosity glazed over once they got past the “pragmatism” that was being imposed on them by their rulers. Perhaps that was all they needed to know, that those who truly understand these things were simply creating a logical solution to incomprehensible problems, and that was good enough!

That “pragmatic” beat out “occupy” will surely be a disappointment to the 99%, who are certain that they truly are the 99% and that their favorite tactic, ”occupying” should therefore have received 99% of the votes, while “pragmatic,” which is clearly what the 1% want the 99% to be, should have only received 1% of the votes. This paradox may best be explained by the 99%’s confidence that they all know what they’re talking about already when they say they are “occupying” this and that. Therefore, the 99% don’t need to look up the word “occupy.” In contrast, as members of the 99% who are subject to the “pragmatism” being imposed by the 1%, they felt inclined to do a little homework and make sure that this “pragmatism” business really was in their best interests.

(Image from Flickr, Boris.rasin)

 While the 99% are all certain that everyone understands the term “Occupy,” and are now using the term for most anything they want to change—Wall Street, Wal-Mart, Department of Education, internet, Republican minds, couches, Sesame Street—they seem to forget that their own government—which is to say, the 1%—has been “occupying” Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, not to mention Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Samoa for much longer. So, if we add together the occupations being carried out in the name of the 99% and those being carried out by the 1%, it would seem that everyone is occupying or being occupied.

Apropos (which, alas, was not one of the contenders this year) to ending military and imperialist occupations, two of my favorite pieces of political graffiti from the 1980s were: “U.S. out of America,” and the variant “U.S. out of my reproductive organs.” There were, of course, some nationalistic feminists in those days, one of whom spray-painted the following on a San Francisco wall: “Free Tampons, Not Kuwait.” Inspired by these retro-slogans, I would like to suggest some new slogans for the 2010s like: “Free Time, Not Markets!” or “In A Classless Society We Are All the 50%!”

This double use of the term “occupy” to mean something good that “the people” do to resist the “bad governments” that “occupy” other nations for “bad reasons,” reminds me of the term “collaborate,” which is supposedly a good thing that good teachers do to help their students, even though it is also a terrible thing that the Vichy government did to help the Nazis. Both “occupation” and “collaboration” can lead to repression, brutality and death for innocent people. In fact, the terms are quite connected in that occupiers rely on collaborators to help them achieve their goals. The Palestinian Authority has acted as a collaborator with the Israeli government in the suppression of the Palestinian people. The mainstream trade unions have acted as collaborators with the capitalists to ensure that working people stay on the job and accept compromises and take-backs that keep profits high and salaries low. Scabs collaborate with bosses to undermine strikes. Spies and informants collaborate with the police and military to undermine activist groups like OWS.

Teacher “collaboration” is a funny thing. The notion of a bunch of professionals sitting down together to brainstorm solutions to educational problems, develop innovative curriculum, and discuss the issues and needs of shared students certainly makes a lot of sense and seems worthwhile. However, the term “collaboration” in the context of education is a fraught, poorly defined and often abused term. It is commonly used to mean “embrace what I say and what I’m doing and graciously assist in it, whether or not you agree.” Teachers who ask too many questions, who point out logical inconsistencies or who critique reforms and policies are often accused of being “bad collaborators.” Teacher evaluations generally include how well they “collaborate,” a subjective observation that can be used to punish teachers who aren’t cheerleaders for the reform du jour.

Charlie Sheen Has Tigers Blood (image from Flickr, by Ssoosay)

 Speaking of collaboration, what could be a greater collaboration than that between Hollywood and the public? Hollywood provides billions of dollars’ worth of mindless garbage for our consumption and we not only consume it hungrily, but stalk their stars’ every move, no matter how pitiful. Take “Tiger’s Blood,” another top contender for word of the year—a term I had no idea was now in the popular vernacular. I had to look this one up, being the out-of-touch OG (old guy) that I am and was delighted to discover that it came from a Tweet by Charlie Sheen. Tiger’s Blood, it seems, is what runs through his veins, somehow making him impervious to addiction (and likely contributing to both his inflated ego and his stupidity). The fact that this word went viral and was even considered for word of the year is testament to how desperate the American people are for a distraction to their miseries. Wetting oneself over royal weddings and scandals is pathetic enough, but following every ridiculous tweet by drunken Hollywood bottom feeders like Charlie Sheen??? Come on, people, get a life!

Speaking of getting a life, I would like to humbly (or humblebragly) request that those esteemed billionaires who seem to know so much about how to do my job, kindly eat feces and die. Yes, “humblebrag” was another top contender. According to Urban Dictionary, it means to subtly let other people know how fantastic you are by doing it in a self-deprecating manner, or self-promotion of the most despicable and loathsome sort, generally delivered via social media. An example of a “humblebrag” would be if I posted the following to my blog or Twitter feed: ”As everybody knows, teachers all come from the bottom one-third of their graduating classes. So the 4.0 GPA I earned was nothing compared with the 12.0 GPA’s earned by the overachievers at my university.”

Would Anyone Care To Bunga Bunga? (Berlusconi caricature by DonkeyHotey, flickr)

 My vote for the word of the year, however, has to go to an antiquated, but very evocative term that made a recent comeback. “Bunga bunga” dates back to 1910 or earlier, according to Wikipedia. However, it grew in popularity last year when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi used it to refer to his infamous orgies. Wikipedia says that “bunga bunga” may mean an underwater orgy, an African-style ritual performed by naked women for male spectators, with pole dancing and competitive stripteases by women dressed as nurses and cops. My guess is the term is a variation on bung or bunghole, as in having one’s head in the bung or “Whoops, Silvio’s stuck his tongue in the bung again.” Or, as Gargantua recited to Grangousier at the tender young age of five (In Rabelais’ political satire): 

Thy Bung

Hath Flung

Some Dung

                --On us

Homework and Student Stress

The following was submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle in response to their Sunday opinion piece on student stress and homework on 8/14 and printed in their Sunday paper on 8/21.

Thanks for drawing attention to the issue of student stress and homework. I’ve been teaching in the Bay Area for 14 years and the problem does seem to be getting worse. The main causes, however, are structural and political, not teachers assigning busy work.

The high stakes testing mandated by NCLB, for example, takes class time away from content, increasing pressure on teachers to cram more content into fewer days. Combined with the overwhelming number of standards teachers must cover each year, students often have to pick up some content at home through reading and other assignments. Sadly, some schools now require test preparation and homework for kindergartners, thinking this will prepare them for the ensuing 12 years of testing and standards overload.

School structure can also exacerbate students’ work and stress loads. High schools, for example, typically have six or seven periods, each with daily homework. In contrast, some schools offer block schedules, with classes that meet three or four times each week, with homework only assigned on days classes meet.

Another stressor is the intense competition for admission to top universities. Many now look for students with grade point averages (GPA) that surpass a perfect 4.0. This leads many students to take multiple Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses which are worth more toward GPA than standard college preparatory classes, but which also require considerably more homework and studying. This competition also leads many to add extra-curricular activities like school government, drama, athletics or internships to their already overloaded schedules, adding to their stress and exhaustion.

Students who are reading well below grade level or learning English as a second language might spend two or three times longer on a reading assignment than peers. Some students have poor time management skills or have trouble following directions, thus increasing time on assignments. I have been shocked to hear students complain about spending hours on an assignment that should have taken 15 minutes, only to realize that they had not followed the directions.

Teacher Outsourcing in Ohio

Private charters turn a profit by taking in tax dollars like other schools, but then “streamlining” operations and “running their school like a business” (i.e., downsizing, union busting and low wages). The money saved on low wages can go into profits or, in the case of “nonprofit” charters, toward hefty executive salaries. Concept Schools, in Ohio, took this scam a step further by illegally financing the recruitment of low wage teachers from Turkey.

The federal government began investigating the company this week for the travel and immigration expenses it spent recruiting math and science teachers, according to a report by Tanisha Mallett on 10TV. According to the report, Concept Schools paid for travel and immigration expenses for 19 Turkish employees and some of their family members.

This is not Concept’s first run-in with the feds. They were investigated in 2008 for alleged abuses of H1-B visa rules. Between 2008 and 2009, U.S. immigration documents revealed that 53 H1-B visas were issued to employees of Horizon Schools throughout Ohio. H1-B visas are supposed to be issued only for workers who have specialized skills or for jobs in which domestic employees are unqualified. Horizon’s Vice President Salim Ucan has dishonestly claimed that he tried, but failed, to find teachers and investors locally. This is absurd. There are many Ohio teachers who have been laid off and who would appreciate a teaching job (though perhaps not in his sweatshops). Ucan probably could have even recruited TFA scabs for below union wages.

Auditors also found that payments were made to people who were never even employed by Horizon schools, including some who lived in Turkey. According to Chanel 5 news, a Dayton Horizon Science Academy has paid $600,000 over the last five years to the property's owner who lives in Turkey.

One thing that has been left out of most of the recent media coverage of this scandal is that Concept Schools are part of the Gulen charter schools network, which are run by Turkish scientists. (For more on Gulen, see here). Many believe that the Gulen schools have a hidden agenda of promoting Turkish nationalism and Islamic culture and values. While neither of these agendas are prohibited (there are plenty of parochial Christian and Jewish schools, while all U.S public schools promote U.S. nationalism), they should preclude the schools from receiving any public funding. In actuality, Horizon schools receive millions of dollars in federal and local funding.