For most of my life, I’ve wanted to do two things: teach and write. I’ve now done both, but I’ve been more successful at one than the other. I went to college to be a teacher. It took me five and a half years to get my degree and teacher certification. It took me a year and a half of substitute teaching to get a teaching position. I taught 9th-grade English and, later, World Geography at a majority minority high school southwest of Houston. I was teaching there on 9/11. I quit two years later. I lasted all of five years. It took me longer to get my degree and teacher certification than the time I was actually on the job.
Why didn’t I stay longer? There is a very long list of reasons, far too many to list here. Had the public school system been the one I had graduated from 10 years before, I might have stayed in the classroom. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The public school system is a mess and has been for decades. People wonder why public school teachers today have purple hair and like to talk about their sexuality with their students. They wonder where the normal teachers are. The normal teachers quit like I did. It’s simple, really. When you chase away the people who want to be there, like me, you’re stuck with what’s left, including the purple hair people.
Don’t believe me? The turnover rate for the state I live in, Texas, is 12%. Twelve percent of all teachers hired do not return for a second year. In the state’s largest district, the Houston Independent School District, the turnover rate is 15% higher! Nearly 30% of all teachers hired by Houston I.S.D. do not return for a second year. This absurdly high turnover rate is one of the many reasons that Houston I.S.D. is being run by the state right now and not the school district.
What is the problem? Why do so many teachers quit? What can be done to improve the public school system, if at all? The main problem, as I see it, is that teachers are no longer valued. They’re appreciated a couple of times a year, but they’re not valued. Teachers are interchangeable. Today, teachers are seen as the hired help. If one quits, you just find another. No big deal. My school district, the district I graduated from, did not see me as a teacher. I was a babysitter at a “problem school.” The district would never say that in public, but that was the very clear implication.
Students are believed over teachers. Teachers are expected to solve all the problems thrown at them without help or backup and without stopping the lesson. If the problems aren’t solved, it’s the teacher’s fault. In fact, it’s ALWAYS the teacher’s fault, ALWAYS. Misbehaving student? Teacher’s fault, poor classroom management. Lack of supplies? Teacher’s fault, they didn’t bring enough. Not enough copies for the classroom? Teacher’s fault, they used up their allotment before the end of the month. Higher than average failure rate? Teacher’s fault, the lessons aren’t interesting enough. Do you see a pattern? I certainly do. It turns out that constantly being told you’re terrible at your job and that you’re wrong about everything is not conducive to teachers wanting to return for another year.
I would hope that this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this. Teachers do not teach for the money. I promise you, they don’t. I didn’t. I taught because I was good at it and I enjoyed it until I didn’t. Why complain? Teachers get the summers off. Surely that’s enough time to recover. It might be if teachers were paid during the summer. They’re not. Not unless they’re teaching summer school. Teachers are paid for nine months. They stretch nine months of pay to cover all twelve months. I know, I’ve done it. Who gets paid all twelve months? Administration. All the paper pushers sitting in their nice offices, making twice or three times what the average teacher makes, miles from any school, making sure they justify the continuation of their job, those are the ones who take an ever larger chunk of the money the school district receives. Those are the ones who need to go. Every last school district in the U.S. needs to be DOGED. Every last one.
There has been a fundamental shift in public education in the last twenty to thirty years, moving from student accountability to permissiveness, under the guise of equity and inclusion. Everyone, from the students to the faculty to the staff, is allowed to live their truth. Now, it’s okay for students to run wild, talk back to the adults, and assault the teachers. Anything goes nowadays. It’s not even babysitting, it’s chaos with an educational imprimatur. What happened?
Progressives happened. They rule with emotion, not logic. If they hear something they don’t like, they ignore it. Boys in the girls’ locker room? What’s the big deal? The boys identify as girls; it’s sexist to kick them out. The girls should be more understanding. It’s never a progressive’s fault, either. They mean well. They just want everyone to be happy and equal. Yes, equally miserable.
With progressives in control, there is no one to enforce standards and accountability, so there are no standards or accountability. The agency supposedly created to enforce educational standards, the U.S. Department of Education, has been an absolute disaster. After its creation, the U.S. was no longer #1 in the world in terms of education. Today, according to the World Population Review, the U.S. is 38th in Math and 24th in Science.
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