Breaking News from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel! Teachers are leaving the profession. Seriously! It’s now true. According to a report released Friday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum, Wisconsin has a teacher leaving problem that has fueled the so called teacher shortage.
Let me start with this quote from Anne Chapman, senior researcher at the forum and lead author of the “nonpartisan” study cited above.
“If you address the reasons we have these vacancies in the first place, you may alleviate the sense of urgency about getting people into the classrooms.”
Can I call plagiarism? How many #BustEDPencils Blogs have I written over the last 2 1/2 years that stated the problem to the teacher “shortage” was a leaving problem?
Here are some quotes from blog posts over the past few years.
- “When teachers are leaving their jobs across the state and enrollment in teacher prep programs is at an all time low you don’t have a “labor shortage.” You have a toxic work place environment (Walker and Act 10). A toxicity that has spurred an EXODUS from the classrooms of our children and a plummeting enrollment in teacher preparation programs.”
- “My point is that we don’t have a shortage! We have a mass EXODUS that has been carefully planned for years and executed as an all out war on teachers.”
- “However, let’s be honest. We don’t have a teacher shortage! We have an exceedingly high casualty rate from the War on Teachers! In other words, the last 30 years and the War on Teachers have decimated the ranks of teachers.”
- “Instead of truly addressing the EXODUS of teachers and the miserable conditions driving teachers out of the profession “they” simply created a pathway into our classrooms for unlicensed and unqualified personnel.”
- “It is happening all across the country. Policy makers, pundits and idiots keep screaming teacher shortage.”
- “More specifically the proposed changes ignore the EXODUS of teachers across the state and the nation and the plummeting enrollment in teacher education programs.”
And it get’s better. According to the study, “the departure of teachers in their 20s, 30s and 40s is growing steadily and accounts for the largest share of teacher turnover, … — a trend that over time could put a greater pressure on teacher demand than that already created by shortages in the teacher pipeline.”
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the study’s findings. However, why does it take a study to verify simple observations of the dismal morale reported by teachers on social media that has led to a mass exodus from public school classrooms? Is it “real news” now? Were my posts “fake news?”
OR maybe the better question is: If you scream “teacher exodus” in the woods and nobody hears it, does a study reported in a newspaper about “teacher retention” serve a better purpose than toilet paper while you’re in the woods?
