Re What Happened To All The Teachers?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: 
> Date: August 25, 2017 at 1:25:59 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber IP <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] What Happened To All The Teachers?
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Please withhold my name from this message. If I choose to re-enter the public education sector, I'd prefer not to 
> have this attached to my name.
>
> As much as I'm sure your readers might like to attribute these trends to one of the last three presidential 
> administrations, depending on their political inclinations, I'd like to point out that this is not simply a US 
> phenomenon.
>
> I've seen plenty of commentary on the No Child Left Behind Act, and I'd counsel anyone who wants to jump to blame the 
> Act that it is merely a symptom of global problems with the educational industry. Even if there were not a US federal 
> NCLBA, the states may have similar policies. 
>
> I have friends who are certified teachers from several other countries, from Canada to the UK to South Africa, and 
> they've all told similar stories. When I was in school in the 1990s, many of my teachers had been there for several 
> decades; in the interval, I've heard of high schools in Canada with an average three-year teacher turnover. Students 
> and parents are chasing certified, experienced teachers out of schools in the UK and elsewhere. Teachers are leaving 
> public schools and moving to private schools or adult education programs. I bumped into one of my English teachers 
> years after graduation, to learn that she left the profession in order to home-school her own children.
>
> As an educator, I would be tempted to consider the Lake Wobegon syndrome, where we expect all students to be above 
> average. I'd look at public policies that don't understand statistics, leading teachers to spend all year playing 
> catch-up while dropping standards - or to become burned out and apathetic. 
>
> We can try to fix it on a state-by-state, country-by-country basis, but until we start investigating the root of the 
> problem /globally/, we are not going to make any lasting changes.
>
> Best,



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