They believe that seniority hurts the good young (cheap) teachers and keeps old (more expensive) flat lining teachers in their jobs. In the words of Joyce Bales older teachers "plateau".
Mature experience teachers tend to move up the salary schedule, so folks like Bales hate having to pay them when there is fresh cheap meat that they could replace them with. Experience and the success it engenders in the classroom are of no import to our angry friends and to our superintendent, Dr. Joyce Bales.
Well, apparently our jobs are not so easy as our angry friends think. It seems that after a few years on the job an awful lot of California teachers decide it is not worth it any more and quit. A study by the California State University Center for Teacher Quality tells the story. Over 18,000 employed California classroom teachers leave teaching each and every year.
Why do they leave? Lack of support from administration, paperwork, discipline problems. It seems our jobs are not the overpaid cushy positions with lots of paid vacations that we cannot be fired from as our angry friends allege. No, rather it seems we are in tough, brutal, thankless jobs that only a very special few can survive in. The few, the proud, the California public school teacher!
Here is an article about this problem in the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-04-26/bay-area/17240089_1_teacher-quality-planning-time-teachers-teaching
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION / Surveys show frustration among teachers, parents / WHY EDUCATORS QUIT: Lack of support, too much paperwork
April 26, 2007|By Nanette Asimov, Amr Emam, Chronicle Staff Writers
If working conditions at the middle school where Jim Lammers taught for 11 years had not been "set up to fail," he might have stuck around. But like thousands of other teachers across California, the former Marin County teacher of the year quit the profession in frustration.
"I just finally wore out dealing with it the way it was," said Lammers, who left in 2002 to pursue writing. "Too many kids, and not enough time to feel like I was accomplishing strong academics. To me, the system is almost set up to fail."
At a time when California is short of qualified instructors, the problem of teacher attrition is largely preventable, says a new California State University study of more than 1,900 teachers.
The rest of the article is at the URL above.
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Here is another article along the same lines from Marin California:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_6215932?source=most_emailed
Mark Phillips: Why so many good teachers quit
IT'S SUMMER break for teachers but, having read a report on the high dropout rate of California teachers, I've been wondering how many of our best ones won't return this fall. This should concern everyone committed to quality public education.
The best elementary teacher I ever observed was Steve Kay, my son's first-grade teacher in Santa Barbara. His classroom was a glorious six-ring circus, well organized, stimulating, caring and challenging. My son loved every day.
Despite being young, Steve was a legend among educators and parents. He quit teaching two years later. With a wife and two children, he couldn't afford to live in Santa Barbara on a teacher's salary and went into his dad's construction business.
I wasn't nearly as legendary, but I was a good teacher. I, too, left after a few years, in spite of loving the teens with whom I worked. My decision wasn't primarily based on the low salary, although I took a second job at a university and still ran up debts supporting a wife and two children on $29,000. I left because I felt suffocated by having no time between 8 and 4 to even collect my thoughts, frequently using the 38-minute lunch break to meet with students. And, spending hours at night and weekends reading student papers and preparing lessons, I was neglecting my family.
The most obvious reason is pay. Spending time and money on years of education and training, knowing that you are doing excellent work in a socially critical profession, and then making less than most blue collar workers can eat away at your morale. Almost every teacher I know in the Bay Area who has a family and whose spouse is not working full time has a second job. Like Steve Kay, many finally decide they can't do it.
Many good teachers quit for other reasons. They enter the profession despite the pay because they enjoy working with kids, love their subject and want to make a contribution to society.
Read the rest of the article at the URL above.
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*The anti American worker, tax free think tanks aka institutions funded by the selfish super wealthy want all public education worker protections eliminated as the first most crucial step in eliminating public school unions and their tiny influence on making politics a bit more fair for all Americans who are not among the selfish filthy rich one percent of America.
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