I taught middle school science in Houston for five years. I decided to leave the traditional public school system for many of the same reasons the author makes about his experience. This was over a decade ago so it's sad to hear the same problems persist.<p>Alternatives like charter schools have not always fared well, but some, like YES College Prep (<a href="http://www.yesprep.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.yesprep.org/</a>), are serving low income areas and achieving profound success. They've been able to replicate a model where teachers, students and parents all buy into the same mission: that all students must gain acceptance into a four year college or university to graduate. YES began with the hard work a few enterprising teachers who became tired of a broken system - not much different from a tech startup in a way.<p>I've often felt if the teaching profession was prestigious as, say, law or medicine, we could eventually solve the problems in education. That's not to say we don't have problems with our legal system or healthcare - but it'd be hard to argue there is a shortage of good lawyers or doctors. Imagine if we had no shortage of good teachers... But we don't pay teachers well, there are stigmas ("Those who can't...) and a lack of long term benefits outside of the daily joy of interacting with young people and helping them grow - we'd all be crazy to leave tech to go teach, right?
Great points.<p>This, I think is one of the fundamental problems:<p>---<p>If parents and local decision-makers really value education (and there is a small portion of the community that does), student and teacher morale would be much different.<p>---<p>The overall environment matters more than the teacher. We've mentioned it here not too long ago as well.<p>Doesn't matter how fancy the workbooks and new materials or how hard we flog the teachers. The environment is anti-learning. Sure there is tons of lip service of "children are our future". All the best for the children, etc, etc. Except that actions and reality doesn't reflect that.<p>Many students come poor and/or bad families. No new "Common Core" tests are going to help that child learn if they are afraid they might not eat dinner that evening or they will be beaten up by their drunken family members. Just flogging the teacher to teach harder won't work.<p>It would be nice if "teaching" was considered just as a prestigious profession as laywer, doctor, astronaut, CTO of startup. Besides attracting more talent, it would send a cultural message -- education is very imporant and only special people get to do teach.<p>Heck look at the stupid Breaking Bad show. If Walter would be just teaching chemistry vis-a-vis his rich startup-owing friend he would be totally pathetic and uninteresting. Media like that tends to condense, distil and reflect back cultural attidides. Well thank god Walter started cooking meth, and killing otherwise he would have been the most boring person ever.
I taught high school for 5 years and made the same decision. The biggest factor for me was how the schools were being administered; just a few examples:<p>- Competition among students, instead of being used as a motivator as piles of research suggests, was specifically DISALLOWED because it might make certain students feel bad.<p>- When a student fell behind because they were slacking off in class, it was the teacher's responsibility to put in extra time and make sure they caught up, stopping just short of doing the work FOR the student.<p>- Double standards, administrators demanding that classes be "rigorous", but then when students complain that the class is too hard, or students get bad grades because they can't hack it, that of course is the teacher's fault, and it is reflected in our official evaluations.<p>- Turf wars among teachers who only care about protecting their own jobs.<p>- I never had a full time job. Schools will hire for, say .6 FTE, or even .2 FTE, which no one can make a living on. I tried holding 3 teaching jobs at once to put together a full time salary and that worked for about 4 months before things fell apart.<p>- Working hours of 60-70 hours per week during the school year leads to burnout.<p>- I make 3x as much as a software engineer.<p>If it was truly about the students, I'd still be teaching, But it's not.
No raises in six years as inflation marches steadily on is a 10% paycut. Criminal. It's a disgrace that our college-educated professional teachers are so under-valued they have to take on multiple side-jobs just to maintain their economic status quo.
Honest question:<p><i>We lived with one car (a car that was given to us) for 4 ½ years. During that time, I walked or rode my bike to school to save on gas. We recently bought a second car with money I saved from my web design business.</i><p>Is the US really structured so that owning one car is (seen as) a problem?
<i>Do we care more about student progress or our appearance?</i><p>We care about both, and we have to. Proposed solutions will have to cater to this reality to have any hope of success.<p><i>Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests?</i><p>Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable bare minimum.<p><i>Why can’t we shift our focus to critical thinking and relevant educational experiences?</i><p>Because while great teachers exist, they are sitting on top of a pile of good, decent and bad teachers that largely can't be fired or forced to improve. Kids in those teachers' classrooms need to come out with some bare minimum of quantifiable education.
The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is precisely what conservative groups strive for, in their "starve the beast" agendas. As more quality staff leave, they [conservative groups] can claim greater and greater failures in the public system and siphon more tax dollars into private voucher schools.
> SOL tests are inherently unfair,<p>I regularly see claims that tests are at odds with learning. What I don't understand is how anyone can tell what kids have learned without some sort of test.
I REALLY wish teaching was as prestigious as say, being a doctor, or investment banker. I read a very interesting [1] book on this and it really just opened my eyes regarding the mediocrity of teaching (not quality per say, but as a profession, which eventually leads to poor education).<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/145165443X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1420782654&sr=8-3&keywords=education" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/14516...</a>
> I stepped into the classroom around the time of a major worldwide recession. As the individuals and institutions responsible for this recession escaped accountability for their actions, school districts like ours went into survival mode.
> Six years later, we’re still there. We have no plan for the future.
> Earlier this year, the school board held its annual budget meeting. I left my second job early to attend and asked board members one simple question: “Is there any cause for optimism?” Each school board member, searching for a silver lining, effectively answered “no” by the time their reasoning caught up with them.<p>I think that's quite the same everywhere. Here in Austria school budget gets cut every year, local media are always bashing the teachers so the social standing of teachers isn't very good, therefore it is hard to get good/motivated teachers and you're struck with unmotivated teachers (and even motivated teachers don't hold their motivation for a lot of years).<p>Most important would be for the community to recognize that education is the most important thing we have for future generations and start investing (financially, socially, ...) into it. However I have no idea how that could be reached.
I don't think there is another profession who's need is so widely advocated for, yet so pathetically enticed. Put some money on education, make it a desirable job, and then watch the world change as talented people try for those positions. Now, just figure out how to get the money committed to education instead of people giving RollsRoyce, Bentley, Ferrari, etc their best years ever.
Good read. I remember a few dedicated influential teachers. Unfortunately, they are but a few and surrounded in my memory by a large number that were simply going through the motions.<p>That was 20 years ago, and it sounds like maybe things have not improved. Quality teachers are just about one of the most important things a society can have. Not sure why we haven't institutionally figured that out.
In what way is this person the "Virginia Teacher of the Year"? The word "Virginia" never appears in the body. He was the Waynesboro (pop. 20K) Rotary Club Teacher of the Year.
The Reason Education Sucks: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98</a><p>Edit: for those wanting something less cynical and more serious, I recommend some John Taylor Gatto: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CeWip5BpU#t=1m" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CeWip5BpU#t=1m</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCuc-2tfgk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCuc-2tfgk</a>
The American political system is broken. Here is a middle-class family that can barely make it. The GOP harp on about lower taxes and immigration, and the Dems talk about economic equality and healthcare. The ACA helps the middle-class but the political gridlock ensures that the president, or anyone else, can't force through effective change.<p>Commonly cited are campaign finance and lobbying and polarisation but those are merely the symptoms of the deeper problem which is the US constitution. A messy compromise, the US constitution effectively gives veto to tiny states (Senate seating). Gerrymandering at the state level ensures that safe seats, and worse, incumbents who have to defend themselves from the ideological 'purists' of their own party. Not a recipe for pragmatic government, vide Brownback, Kansas.<p>I still look forward to the spectacle of the 2016 general but even if Warren were to be the president (a far off prospect, even though she is what the US needs), little real and effective change would come about because she'd be stymied at ever corner. In view of the fundamental alignment of forces political and economic (increasing inequality in both), we can expect a return to a Victorian economy.
My wife is a school teacher and so I see this from her constantly. She argues that people don't value her work but that it is vitally important.<p>So my question to her is, if it is so valuable then why aren't people willing to pay for it? The answer seems to be, because they can't afford it. People with money spend egregious amounts of money on schooling and private school teachers are reasonably well paid.<p>Publicly funded schools however are like every other major bureaucratic organization, they have to prove their worth and are all competing for a shrinking pot of money. That is where all these bullshit requirements come from.<p>Schools are trying to prove that their teaching is effective. The problem with this however is that the community around the school, the engagement of parents in education and the economic opportunity in the community has as much if not a larger influence on educational outcomes than the actual school day activities do.<p>In my opinion schools should be kind of a seat of knowledge for their communities, not just a place that kids go to during the day and then go back home - like a glorified day care (or prison).
I was surprised that he mentioned the global financial crisis. I think 'too big to fail' was one of the biggest frauds ever committed against society. There is no such thing as too big to fail.<p>I think the 2008 financial crisis was an evolutionary mechanism for society to rid itself of excessive greed among its leaders (natural selection). The bailout was an unnatural intervention and will only serve to propagate the genes for greed in our society.<p>I think it's only a matter of time though before the next crisis - And I think it will be the same people who will take us there - This time the cause will be more clever and more complicated than the last time.
I honestly don't know how people stay teachers for more than a couple years in most places. The people who I know who are teachers not only get paid fairly poorly, they work 60-70 hour weeks, have less and less control over how they are allowed to teach and also have to deal with crazy parents (ie. parent stalking outside school, sending books/emails, because they apparently aren't teaching in a way that is pro-conservative/pro-christian).<p>It just seems like it takes a lot of effort to get into a field that treats you like crap almost as a general rule.
I thought all of the points were naive, except for fair compensation. What we need is extremely high compensation (the level of doctors) for teachers who can inspire their students to teach themselves.
Oh, my. Education in the U.S. is as broken as it gets. If you have to pay for being able to afford a job as a teacher, that spells doom for a whole profession. Not to mention a nation's future.
> When we have a desperate need like football bleachers that have to be replaced, or turfgrass that isn’t up to par, we somehow find the money. We — through public or private avenues — meet those needs. Why can’t we find funds to address the areas that seem more pertinent to our primary mission?<p>> Stop by the high school for a sporting event (and I love sports) and you’ll be impressed with the attendance and enthusiasm. Stop by the high school on a parent-teacher night and you’ll see tumbleweed blowing through the halls.<p>Living in China, the expat community often criticizes how parents are fixated on trying to make sure their child does well; for most Chinese children, every waking moment of their life from elementary school on is focused on trying to get into a university. Childhood often consists of going to class, coming home to eat, going to class, coming home to do homework, and then sleeping.<p>The irony in the critique is that most Americans (I float around with a mostly American expat community) are unaware how weird their own sports fetish is. I'm American and I love sports too! But it wasn't until recently (like in the last 10 years) it dawned on me how weird it is that Americans love sports so much.<p>Look at our university system. The university system is just a proxy for a professional sports league, except the participating athletes are not paid and are not allowed to hold jobs. Instead many of them are required to study things they have no interest in, in the hope that they can get by long enough to be able to graduate to a real professional league to begin making a living wage. Meanwhile many schools go bankrupt trying to field a winning team, while the teams that do win make millions that go to university officials.<p>When a university is mentioned in the news, it is most likely in the context of some sporting event. Imagine what would happen if, instead of focusing on sports, people focused on the actual mission of the university. I think this is a microcosm of American culture and the way we treat education needs to change dramatically. All of these tests and metrics smack weirdly of "sportsification" or "athelitis", where we try to turn education into some sort of game because it makes it easier to understand even when there is little correlation with the original mission.<p>I don't know if the situation is as dire as I write it to be. This rant is the result of years of incubation in my mind. Hopefully things will change so I don't seem so grumpy or anti-social (like seriously, it's hard to make friends with other guys unless I can say something intelligent about the Big 10).
Make all schools compete for students. And if you can't pay teachers lots of money, at least give them some trust. They're in it for teaching.<p>It works relatively well over here.
I know this is easy to say from abroad but something that keeps coming to my mind when reading these statements is: what is needed are (also) teachers with the guts to act freely and teach what they deem necessary DESPITE whatever the government says and scraping the bureaucracy. Be not afraid of being fired.<p>Yes, very easy to say but, as I see it, the only weapon against the Leviathan is your conscience.
A calm rational deep and insightful explanation that will be completely ignored and forgotten.<p>Oh I know, let's spend more money on weapons for police and the military while draining all resources from schools, that will solve everything.
Good post and a lot of interesting points, some of which I've seen raised in the uk too. But one thing that confused me, in the US is <i>only</i> having one car and walking or cycling to work considered a big sacrifice?
I read the fine article kindly submitted here and a great many of the comments here before commenting. First of all, the headline of this submission (which is the original article headline, and thus expected by Hacker News rules) is a misstatement of fact. The author of the submitted article is a Virginian who has been teacher of the year at his little-known high school, but NOT the "Virginia Teacher of the Year."[1] The exaggerations go on from there.<p>The author writes, "But public education is painted as a career where you make a difference in the lives of students. When a system becomes so deeply flawed that students suffer and good teachers leave (or become jaded), we must examine how and why we do things." Well, yes, but he could have asked different questions, and come up with the different answers earlier reached by John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year decades ago.[2] Teachers should never kid themselves about how much the school-system-as-such is designed to enable learners to learn well. That has hardly ever been its main purpose.<p>Meanwhile, I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Virginia needs to catch up with all those reforms. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[3] Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[4] You don't have to live in a wealthy neighborhood in Minnesota to have adequately funded schools in your neighborhood.<p>The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[5] and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.[6] And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.[7]<p>Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.<p>The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better. (P.S. Many of these school system reforms in Minnesota were sponsored and championed by supporters of the state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but most are also supported by Republicans here too. Choice is good for everybody and helps schools have incentive to improve.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/recognition/" rel="nofollow">http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/recognition/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.php</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf</a><p><a href="http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html</a><p>[5] <a href="http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...</a><p>[6] <a href="http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...</a><p>[7] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter/dp/1592984762/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...</a>
The other day there was a "best-of" on Reddit where a teacher said that "only martyrs teach now in America."<p><a href="http://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_want_to_be_a_teacher_but_im_afraid_of/cngetgc" rel="nofollow">http://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_wan...</a>
<i>"Bad teachers can game any system; good teachers can lose their focus trying to take new requirements seriously."</i><p>This is a major point and it applies to educational 'systems' across the world.
More like "Waynesboro Rotary Club Teacher of the Year"?<p>Looks like this is blogspam with a linkbaity title. Original was "The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom": <a href="http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom/" rel="nofollow">http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom...</a>
The original post is over here:
<a href="http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom/" rel="nofollow">http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom...</a>
Here is the non-mobile (and from what I can tell, original) article: <a href="http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom/" rel="nofollow">http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom...</a>
Maybe do some job research before getting an education degree in the US. I think most teachers would have told you it's pretty shitty in general. In Canada, teachers make more than most software developers, ~90k/yr. Still, much of the same bureaucracy exists here as well.