Years of dumping on teachers, blaming them for outcomes that are beyond their control and throwing them under the bus have taken their toll. Teacher job satisfaction is the lowest it's been since the Reagan years.
The 28th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, found that 44 percent of teachers are "very satisfied" with their jobs. That's down from 59 percent in 2009. The last time job satisfaction dipped this low was in 1989 — which was the final year of Ronald Reagan's teacher-bashing Presidency. Worse still, 29 percent of teachers say they are likely to leave the teaching profession within the next five year. That's up from 17 percent in 2009.
Simpletons compare superior standardized test scores from nations such as Finland with weak kneed American scores and blame the deficit on US teachers. They never bother to compare Finland's superior social environment with that of the US. Nor, more importantly, the stringent requirements for becoming a teacher, Yet when this is done the unhappy comparisons are striking.,
Another reason U.S. teachers leave the profession is that that they often are only casually committed to begin with. The entry price is so low that casually committed candidates make it all the way through. In Finland only the best and brightest are selected for training and then it takes years of graduate study to qualify. Here you're in if you can pee a hole in the snow.
For more on U.S. teacher preparation see www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/HeyBuddy.html
