Why is there a teacher shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what are the experiences of teachers at TJ or Sidwell - i.e. places with 'self-selecting' student bodies.

Is teacher satisfaction up super high in those schools?

Well both attendance at either school is probably more of a measure of how hard your parent is pushing for you to go. ANd in the case of Sidwell how much your parents are willing to pay thousands for you to attend. I think dealing with the student anxiety (esp in TJ) would be a whole other can of worms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So if merit pay comes to my district I'm going to have to hightail it out of there and into a school where students meet and exceed proficiency just by coming to school and doing the work assigned.

Why would you assume that merit pay wouldn't be adjusted to give teachers in more difficult situations a bump?
Maybe it wouldn't - and I'd see that as another argument against the school system as it stands. But just like people get a differential for working the night shift, or being on call, or any other odd thing, I can easily see there being a differential for a high FARMs school, or teachers who teach classes with a large number of ESOL kids, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So if merit pay comes to my district I'm going to have to hightail it out of there and into a school where students meet and exceed proficiency just by coming to school and doing the work assigned.

Why would you assume that merit pay wouldn't be adjusted to give teachers in more difficult situations a bump?
Maybe it wouldn't - and I'd see that as another argument against the school system as it stands. But just like people get a differential for working the night shift, or being on call, or any other odd thing, I can easily see there being a differential for a high FARMs school, or teachers who teach classes with a large number of ESOL kids, etc.

What if a teacher is at a school that has passing rates in the 90% range? Let's say 94% of the grade level passes the SOLs and then next year that number drops to 93%. Would that not merit extra pay?

[Anonymous]

What if a teacher is at a school that has passing rates in the 90% range? Let's say 94% of the grade level passes the SOLs and then next year that number drops to 93%. Would that not merit extra pay?

How about this? A teacher with an AAP class should get paid more than those with GenEd?
Or, a principal keeps discipline problems out of Teacher A's class--believe me Teacher A will have a better chance than Teacher B.

FWIW, I taught for a number of years. Classes vary from year to year--the dynamics and the chemistry with kids can affect the classroom, too. And, do you know the years that I worked the hardest and accomplished the least? It was the years that I had the most difficult classes. One year I had a dream class--had we had Merit Pay that year, I would have hit the jackpot......and, it was the easiest and most fun year I ever had. But, I had sense enough to understand that I had a wonderful group.

There are just too many variables for merit pay to be based on test scores. Do you really want a teacher who does nothing but work on SOLs?

[Anonymous]

Merit pay would never work in schools as it does in other professions because children are not widgets. We're talking about complex Han beings here. As already pointed out, there are just too many variables and factors beyond a teacher's control.

This is not a job of seeing who can put the most labels on a can of soup-something completely determined by the worker's efforts alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Merit pay would never work in schools as it does in other professions because children are not widgets. We're talking about complex Han beings here. As already pointed out, there are just too many variables and factors beyond a teacher's control.

This is not a job of seeing who can put the most labels on a can of soup-something completely determined by the worker's efforts alone.

But teachers are supposed to meet the same standards despite these variables. No wonder nobody wants to teach in Title 1 schools. The students there are expected to meet the same standards as kids in wealthy schools. My friend teaches in a wealthy school in a wealthy school district in kindergarten. She routinely has students enter her kindergarten class having already met all of the KG standards on Day 1. Some years she had more than 50% of students meet those standards while my other friend has kids enter KG below grade level. Only in America are teachers blamed for kids enter their KG class being below grade level. The student doesn't know how to hold a book and that print goes from left to right and top to bottom? Must be their brand new teacher's fault!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Merit pay would never work in schools as it does in other professions because children are not widgets. We're talking about complex Han beings here. As already pointed out, there are just too many variables and factors beyond a teacher's control.

This is not a job of seeing who can put the most labels on a can of soup-something completely determined by the worker's efforts alone.

But teachers are supposed to meet the same standards despite these variables. No wonder nobody wants to teach in Title 1 schools. The students there are expected to meet the same standards as kids in wealthy schools. My friend teaches in a wealthy school in a wealthy school district in kindergarten. She routinely has students enter her kindergarten class having already met all of the KG standards on Day 1. Some years she had more than 50% of students meet those standards while my other friend has kids enter KG below grade level. Only in America are teachers blamed for kids enter their KG class being below grade level. The student doesn't know how to hold a book and that print goes from left to right and top to bottom? Must be their brand new teacher's fault!

How are K teachers blamed? For what? K isn't even a required year I thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Merit pay would never work in schools as it does in other professions because children are not widgets. We're talking about complex Han beings here. As already pointed out, there are just too many variables and factors beyond a teacher's control.

This is not a job of seeing who can put the most labels on a can of soup-something completely determined by the worker's efforts alone.

But teachers are supposed to meet the same standards despite these variables. No wonder nobody wants to teach in Title 1 schools. The students there are expected to meet the same standards as kids in wealthy schools. My friend teaches in a wealthy school in a wealthy school district in kindergarten. She routinely has students enter her kindergarten class having already met all of the KG standards on Day 1. Some years she had more than 50% of students meet those standards while my other friend has kids enter KG below grade level. Only in America are teachers blamed for kids enter their KG class being below grade level. The student doesn't know how to hold a book and that print goes from left to right and top to bottom? Must be their brand new teacher's fault!

How are K teachers blamed? For what? K isn't even a required year I thought.

What you and others don't get, and why there is a looming teacher shortage, is that teachers are blamed for everything. They are blamed by everyone: parents, admin, central office, news media, etc. It isn't fun being the ultimate fall guy. So, yes, when children enter our classrooms and they are not socialized, they don't know how to hold a pencil, and they do not know how to hold a book, it IS the kindergarten teacher's fault in the eyes of admin. The blame ratchets up for each year that the child moves up a grade in school. By the time the child reaches middle school, it is a full-on frontal assault on teachers. And we are paid a pittance for our efforts. In a riff on an old Waylon Jennings song, 'Mama's, don't let your babies grow up to be teachers'. (And, yes, it was a really tough week at my school.)

[Anonymous]

11:20 here. I regularly see teachers who have been crying after data meetings with an admin. Why can't little Larla read? She is absent twice a week, she was below grade level when she entered KG and it's December. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-disproportionate-stress-plaguing-american-teachers/503219/?utm_source=atlfb

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:20 here. I regularly see teachers who have been crying after data meetings with an admin. Why can't little Larla read? She is absent twice a week, she was below grade level when she entered KG and it's December. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-disproportionate-stress-plaguing-american-teachers/503219/?utm_source=atlfb

Truth. One of the most eye opening conversations we had this year was when we paired upper elementary teachers with pre-k/k/1st grade teachers to talk about what our students come in with when they start school. 4th and 5th grade teachers had no idea that kids come to school without knowing their colors, shapes or numbers/letters. Or the fact that some kids take up to half a school year to learn how to behave in a classroom and become accustomed to routines. The academic concepts don't sink in while they're learning how to function in school, so that puts them even farther behind.

There's a covert and sometimes overt sense of blame when students arrive at the next grade level. Teachers ask what the previous grade level was doing. It goes all the way up to high school. A high school teacher I know recently jokingly said that we must not be working hard in elementary school because of all the gaps her students have once they arrive to high school. Ha ha ha. She had no clue where they had started from and how much progress they had made. But like I've said a million times before--progress doesn't count. Only proficiency matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Here is my issue. Someone on another blog published the salaries of FCPS teachers and I was flabbergasted to find out some of my kids' best teachers made a lot less than some of their worst teachers. This wasn't always about longevity either. There was a new teacher with masters plus making more than a seasoned outstanding teacher who just had her BA.

Almost every other profession finds a way to compensate people based on outstanding performance. Who not teaching? As I have said before, you take a multi-modal approach so it isn't just test scores or parent reports deciding. It's parent, colleague, student and principal evaluations, test scores (as a small part), student progress (as a bigger chunk), and various other factors all coming together. You still have pay go up each year, but the outstanding teachers get a higher percentage increase or at least a bonus.

THe cause of this problem is teacher unions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Here is my issue. Someone on another blog published the salaries of FCPS teachers and I was flabbergasted to find out some of my kids' best teachers made a lot less than some of their worst teachers. This wasn't always about longevity either. There was a new teacher with masters plus making more than a seasoned outstanding teacher who just had her BA.

Almost every other profession finds a way to compensate people based on outstanding performance. Who not teaching? As I have said before, you take a multi-modal approach so it isn't just test scores or parent reports deciding. It's parent, colleague, student and principal evaluations, test scores (as a small part), student progress (as a bigger chunk), and various other factors all coming together. You still have pay go up each year, but the outstanding teachers get a higher percentage increase or at least a bonus.

THe cause of this problem is teacher unions.

Ha ha. Nice try. There are no teacher unions in VA -- it's a "right to work" state.

And for the "multi modal" teacher compensation PP, spend a few years in the profession, actually doing the job. Then you can let us know what you think.

- teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:20 here. I regularly see teachers who have been crying after data meetings with an admin. Why can't little Larla read? She is absent twice a week, she was below grade level when she entered KG and it's December. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-disproportionate-stress-plaguing-american-teachers/503219/?utm_source=atlfb

Truth. One of the most eye opening conversations we had this year was when we paired upper elementary teachers with pre-k/k/1st grade teachers to talk about what our students come in with when they start school. 4th and 5th grade teachers had no idea that kids come to school without knowing their colors, shapes or numbers/letters. Or the fact that some kids take up to half a school year to learn how to behave in a classroom and become accustomed to routines. The academic concepts don't sink in while they're learning how to function in school, so that puts them even farther behind.

There's a covert and sometimes overt sense of blame when students arrive at the next grade level. Teachers ask what the previous grade level was doing. It goes all the way up to high school. A high school teacher I know recently jokingly said that we must not be working hard in elementary school because of all the gaps her students have once they arrive to high school. Ha ha ha. She had no clue where they had started from and how much progress they had made. But like I've said a million times before--progress doesn't count. Only proficiency matters.

Why can't progress be measured instead of proficiency? Or at least both be measured? Wouldn't that be better than just measuring proficiency? Would children really need more testing just to get this data or could the current data be used to show progress?

[Anonymous]

We can use our current data to show progress. But everyone's boss comes down on them when the students don't meet benchmarks. Nobody cares that they just came to this country last year and are learning English. Nobody cares that the student is absent 20+ times by Christmas. Nobody cares that the kids are incredibly tired everyday because they don't have a bedtime. If we bring up these factors, we are told that we are making excuses. Nobody cares about progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:20 here. I regularly see teachers who have been crying after data meetings with an admin. Why can't little Larla read? She is absent twice a week, she was below grade level when she entered KG and it's December. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/the-disproportionate-stress-plaguing-american-teachers/503219/?utm_source=atlfb

Truth. One of the most eye opening conversations we had this year was when we paired upper elementary teachers with pre-k/k/1st grade teachers to talk about what our students come in with when they start school. 4th and 5th grade teachers had no idea that kids come to school without knowing their colors, shapes or numbers/letters. Or the fact that some kids take up to half a school year to learn how to behave in a classroom and become accustomed to routines. The academic concepts don't sink in while they're learning how to function in school, so that puts them even farther behind.

There's a covert and sometimes overt sense of blame when students arrive at the next grade level. Teachers ask what the previous grade level was doing. It goes all the way up to high school. A high school teacher I know recently jokingly said that we must not be working hard in elementary school because of all the gaps her students have once they arrive to high school. Ha ha ha. She had no clue where they had started from and how much progress they had made. But like I've said a million times before--progress doesn't count. Only proficiency matters.

Why can't progress be measured instead of proficiency? Or at least both be measured? Wouldn't that be better than just measuring proficiency? Would children really need more testing just to get this data or could the current data be used to show progress?

Evaluating based on progress would be an improvement although it does not account for all the risk factors and variables for our most vulnerable kids. Unfortunately the curriculum standards and systems are not set up that way so the current standardized tests, like the SOLs in Virginia, don't measure and cannot measure year-to-year progress.

Additionally, the results are being applied regardless of whether a course is a 'content' or 'skill' -set. It is possible for a student with little prior knowledge to pass a contemporaneous content-based standardized test if the child's reading skills meet the baseline for that particular test. It is almost impossible for a student who is 1,2,3 or more years behind grade level to 'catch up' those skills enough to pass the current year language arts or math standardized test without a significant allocation of resources much beyond what any school system in the area or country is consistently and comprehensively providing.

Essentially, the system is broken. That isn't to say that standardized testing is wrong - it actually is a benefit to schools with large populations of low SES and high poverty kids because it holds the school systems' and administrators' feet to the fire in terms of visibility and funding - but it is to say that the results of standardized testing are being used incorrectly.

In many ways, it would be much better to use the results of the standardized tests to evaluate administrators and central office staff rather than teachers. Central office staff and administrators are the decision makers who have developed such rigid protocols for teachers. And they are the ones who are in charge of the allocation of resources like paras and textbooks, and they make determinations of class sizes, etc. Teachers are at the bottom of this decision chain. They are the most visible to parents but teachers have the least control of anyone in the school system these days.

So, in answer to OP's question, there is a teacher shortage because teachers are getting the short end of the stick.