Thursday, March 03, 2011

New York Times article examines attacks on teachers nationwide

It is hard enough already to get people to stay in the teaching profession, but the recent attacks across the United States on the teaching profession are only going to make the situation worse.

The attacks are examined in an article in today's New York Times:

Around the country, many teachers see demands to cut their income, benefits and say in how schools are run through collective bargaining as attacks not just on their livelihoods, but on their value to society.


Even in a country that is of two minds about teachers — Americans glowingly recall the ones who changed their lives, but think the job with its summers off is cushy — education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters.

Republican lawmakers in half a dozen states are pressing to unwind tenure and seniority protections in place for more than 50 years. Gov. Chris Christie’s dressing down of New Jersey teachers in town-hall-style meetings, accusing them of greed, has touched a populist vein and made him a national star.

Mayors are threatening mass layoffs, including in New York City and in Providence, R.I., where all 1,926 teachers were told last week they would lose their jobs — a largely symbolic gesture since most will be hired back.

Some experts question whether teaching, with its already high attrition rate — more than 25 percent leave in the first three years — will attract high-quality recruits in the future.

“It’s hard to feel good about yourself when your governor and other people are telling you you’re doing a lousy job,” said Steve Derion, 32, who teaches American history in Manahawkin, N.J. “I’m sure there were worse times to be a teacher in our history — I know they had very little rights — but it feels like we’re going back toward that direction.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think that it is the teachers in general. As with any profession, therr are some that get a lot of attention. What does get overlooked in the recent news stories is that teachers from rural areas that are not part of the national union issue are included in the debate. As with any job, an employee shoud be judged on their ability and not on how long they have been employeed in the feild. Good teachers should be rewarded and bad teachers should be let go. It should be up to the local school boards to make this determination, and there should not be the threat of the lawyers and unions to alter these decisions. In my veiw, these is where I see the negative aspect of unions.