by James C. Sherlock
What makes teachers want to teach?
The satisfaction that comes from helping children and adolescents learn and grow into productive, mature adults. It is amazingly powerful.
What is required for them to choose to teach? Enough money to live comfortably and a safe, supportive working environment.
So that is three:
- teaching satisfaction
- salary and benefits
- working conditions
What happens when those all go badly? We are finding out.
We have far too many schools in which students measurably are not learning. Astonishingly large numbers don’t show up to school.
As for safe, supportive working environments, forget it in many schools. Feral children and adolescents attack one another and their teachers.
Teachers are disgusted and, in some cases, terrified. So are their best students. Teachers are leaving not only their own schools but the profession in ever larger numbers.
Some readers may console themselves that time will heal all wounds. It won’t in this case. As the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) reported, both the teacher retention and new teacher training curves are sloping dramatically in the wrong direction.
So, the question in the title requires an answer — immediately.
From the November JLARC report.
- “Divisions are facing substantial challenges recruiting and retaining a qualified teacher workforce.”
- “More teachers leaving profession, while fewer teachers are receiving licenses.”
- “Chronic absenteeism and student behavior were major concerns as students returned to in-person instruction.”
- “Academic achievement declined, especially among young students and in certain divisions.”
- “Mental health issues among students are concerningly prevalent.”
- Teacher morale and job satisfaction are lower since the start of the pandemic.”
- “Most divisions are planning for future disruptions to in-person instruction, but some staff still report feeling unprepared.”
The report goes on:
These pandemic-related effects, as well as other factors, are the primary reasons for teachers’ lower job satisfaction. Teachers cited the following issues as the most serious problems they face:
- a more challenging student population, including behavior issues (56 percent indicated this is a very serious issue);
- low pay (52 percent);
- lack of respect from parents and the public (47 percent); and
- higher workload because of unfilled vacancies (40 percent).
Interesting and sterile choices of words: “other factors,” “more challenging student population,” and “behavior issues.” Who says social pressure doesn’t change the language?
What do we do when, not if, teachers simply quit certain school divisions in even larger numbers?
The real question is why the teachers in our worst schools do not quit.
If they want to continue to teach, there are better jobs in more welcoming school divisions. The short answer for many is that they do not have the option of moving to access better teaching environments.
How is this for a recruiting pitch? “Work here if you have no option.”
Progressive commenters often argue the extent and priority of the problems. Perhaps, with the JLARC report, we can move past that.
Student behavior. Take the worst problem first. Student behavior problems are not linear across Virginia’s public schools. For student behavior to be at the top of the list means that in some schools it is out of control.
I am not here going to reiterate my views on the reasons, both societal and in school boards, for the breakdown of discipline, chronic absenteeism and the loss of the will to impose order in schools and enforce attendance laws.
Lines are hardened on both sides of that debate.
Conservative solutions are straightforward, well known, and rejected by the left. So, I challenge progressives to offer their own solutions.
The progressive prescriptions of restorative justice, equal outcomes regardless of effort and performance, and the effective banishing of suspensions and expulsions are present in every troubled Virginia school division in the guise of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS).
PBIS has been the standard in progressive-run divisions for years.
What is the progressive solution to achieve order and discipline in schools with the clear failure of PBIS in those schools where student achievement and supportive teaching environments are distant memories?
Chronic absenteeism. What is the progressive solution to getting recalcitrant students to school and unsupportive parents to court?
Low pay. I support a progressive solution — or what I think is a progressive solution — on this one. More money, certainly, but focus it on pay to the highest quality teachers, on bonuses and or college loan payments for first-time fully qualified teachers and on bonuses for those teachers with qualifications in shortest supply.
We also have to reconsider the current model of pay and promotions for seniority and advanced degrees rather than classroom skills. It is not working.
Lack of respect. I respect teachers beyond words. But it is pretty hard to mandate respect. Lack of respect is true if teachers think it is true.
Parents deserve respect as well. They have a right, indeed a moral obligation, to protest poor conditions in their children’s schools.
We have to figure out as a society how to keep policy issues and issues that arise with individual teachers and unions from seeming to tar the entire profession. I lay a lot of that obligation on the press. We need to keep the distinction clear.
And regularly and publicly assure teachers that we can hold two thoughts simultaneously. We can both seek better schools for our kids and grandkids and respect teachers.
Higher workload. That is the natural result of “more teachers leaving profession, while fewer teachers are receiving licenses.”
Bottom line. I strongly support an amendment to the Virginia constitution to require and resource the state to take over failed school divisions. I consider the lack of that authority and resources to be a crisis. Read the JLARC report.
But if readers assume that when I am talking about lack of discipline and chronic absenteeism I am referring to urban schools alone, they are wrong. It is happening in schools right here in Virginia Beach. And in Loudoun. I could go on. So could readers.
We stand by for progressive solutions to the factors listed and prioritized by the teachers themselves.
And all of us need to answer the question posed in the title.
Is there language in Title 44 of the Code of Virginia — Military and Emergency Laws — that would deal with such a problem? Perhaps this?
§ 44-75.1. Militia state active duty.
A. The Governor or his designee may call forth the militia or any part thereof to state active duty for service in any of the following circumstances:5. In emergencies of lesser magnitude than those described in subdivision 4, including but not limited to the disruption of vital public services, wherein the use of militia personnel or equipment would be of assistance to one or more departments, agencies, institutions, or political subdivisions of the Commonwealth;
Yeah. I hate it too.
Such an action is certainly sub-optimum, but it must be considered in lieu of better options to keep the schools open during transition to increases in remote instruction, if we can even staff that.
If there is another temporary solution to continuing teacher resignations and lack of new teacher production reaching critical mass, it is time to name it.
