Teacher respect overdue

There’s always something big to worry about. A prime example: the looming qualified teacher shortage in public schools.

While this has been a recurring fear since the late 1990s in education circles, there is compelling evidence that what the state faces is more than just concerning. The main wellspring for new teachers across the state that’s continually refreshed the ranks, our excellent SUNY system, is drying up. Since the last time we heard talk of a “looming” teacher shortage in 2009 — a shortage that did not materialize — enrollment in teacher education programs in New York has fallen by half, an accelerating trend. Meanwhile, 10 percent of New York teachers continue leaving each year for other states. Shortages are a national problem — another way of saying we can’t look for relief from the teacher preparation programs in other states. Another 10 percent or so drop out of teaching altogether annually in New York.

The number isactually much higher for new teachers and those working in high-poverty areas, rural and urban. Half of the teachers recruited every year leave the profession in five years.

The average age of a New York public school teacher is 48. A third of the 270,000 active members of the state teacher retirement system are eligible for generous retirement benefits in five years.

True, back in 1999, a U.S. Education Department study also predicted massive teacher retirements of baby boomers that didn’t happen. But what has changed significantly, is the systemic and deliberate denigration of the teaching profession driven by hedge fund billionaires promoting the charter school movement and think tank “brains” advocating a reliance on punitive standardized tests to rank students and schools while idiotically tying teacher evaluations to the test results. A rather crude code for blame the teacher, punish the teacher.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was particularly nasty in his campaign to bring teachers down a peg or three and seemed to enjoy his vindictive use of the bully pulpit. It worked. Ihave a hunch respect for teachers with the public at large remains at an all-time low, although totally undeserved.

But it does take the mystery out of why more and more young people don’t go into teaching, and why those approaching retirement age might be less inclined to stick it out for a few more years. Given the struggle teaching has become and how far removed we seem to be from the motivations that lured people into the profession in the first place, what’s in it for them?

Restoring respect for teaching is paramount. The state Regents, SUNY, the teachers union NYSUT are all aware of the “looming” shortage and the need to restore respect to address recruitment and retention. But ultimately the same political process and its notorious practitioners that took the respect away must do their share. That has to include changing recent laws on teacher evaluations into something more sensible, and allocating resources for mentoring programs, like the discontinued state program that teamed new teachers with experienced ones.

We have to make it easier bureaucratically for teachers to be teachers, while at the same time maintain high professional standards for them — including charter school teachers, who are, after all, public school teachers.

Billy Easton of Alliance for Quality Education had an interesting observation about teacher recruitment when we discussed the issue recently: The No. 1 source of enthusiastic information for a junior or senior in high school thinking of going into teaching is that student’s classroom teachers. How many of those teachers today would feel comfortable in advocating for the profession?

Easton also made the point that in successful public education programs, as in Finland, South Korea and Canada, public support and respect for teachers is high, and teaching is done by group or team effort. In the U.S., and New York is a good example, the standardized testing debacle promotes the opposite, with each teacher competing against every other. Yet, a main reason cited by young teachers leaving the profession in exit interviews is that they felt abandoned and overwhelmed facing daunting challenges of a new classroom.

We have fences to mend, sooner rather than later. Doing nothing is a gamble we can’t afford.

• flebrun@timesunion.com • 518-454-5453