The New York Times education reporter, Motoko Rich, wrote an article about the national teacher shortage and ignored the real cause of the reason behind the teacher shortage, the demoralization of the teacher profession by the education deformers and their media alliesalong with the politicians of both parties. In the article the New York Times points out how nationally there has been a 30% reduction in teacher preparation applicants and a 55% reduction in California. In one of my earlier posts and an even earlier one I was informed by a friend that his college's education program dropped almost 50% since 2011 and many of his education students have no intention of teaching in the classroom.
While the Times article claims it was the cutting of education jobs during the recession, the real reason is the education deformer organizations like StudentsFirst, Democrats for Education Reform. Students For Education Reform, and politicians like Michael Bloomberg, Chris Christie, Barack Obama, and Jeb Bush who buy into the education deformer mantra that bad teachers are the reason why children struggle academically, By blaming teachers for society's ills, it has demoralized teachers and disrespected the entire teaching profession. As the Perdido Street School blogger RBE stated in his blog to the seniors he teaches:
"I teach seniors and I tell the ones who say they want to be teachers to think twice about the major - that teacher bashing and odious accountability measures (most of which simply add more work to a teacher's load without making them better teachers) make the job miserable these days"
Few teachers are recommending to their students the teaching profession, this is a turnaround from a generation ago when teaching was looked as a highly professional and respected profession. Who in their right mind thinks teachers should be held accountable for children who are three or four grades behind academically, just learning English, or have learning disabilities, be it academically or behaviorally? That junk science in the form of a value added method can count for up to 50% of a teacher's rating despite the highly respected study that showed that a teacher is responsible for 1% to 14% of a child's academic ability? In Indiana, ground zero for education reform, the results have been a worsening teacher shortage with veteran teachers leaving the classroom due to low pay and the State's teacher evaluation rules, including tying high-stakes testing to teacher effectiveness.
The bottom line is that the mission of the education deformers and their political and media allies want teaching to be held accountable for all society's problems, make it a temporary job, with low pay, and no pension, and it seems that they are succeeding in advancing that mission to destroy the teaching profession as we know it. That's why there is a teacher shortage and its only going to get worse as long as the education reformers have the upper hand as they do presently.