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Monday, November 28, 2016

The ignored issue that will destroy Public Education. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

The ignored issue that will destroy Public Education. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

The ignored issue that will destroy Public Education.

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I have been silent for months on the issue of education. I haven’t even said anything about the election in weeks. But a Lo-Hud article about the plummeting of teacher candidate enrollments in NYS colleges and Universities revived my sensibilities. The reason public education will fall to the appointees, corporations, Eva Moskowitz’s etc. is simple. It isn’t testing. It isn’t Common Core. It isn’t whoever is Secretary of Education. It is simply this: a lack of good quality devoted teachers.
For decades the numbers of teaching candidates has dwindled. For years people have been writing about the “lowering of standards” in many schools of education. For years people like me who went into teaching have disappeared as the calling to even higher paid, more prestigious positions have stolen the best and brightest from the profession. Economics, supply, and demand have reared their ugly heads to create an atmosphere where teaching, even for the most dedicated is a terrible choice for a lifetime profession.
For years some of us have fought against this and the rise of TFA and its cooperating charter schools. We have fought against Common Core, and Standardized Tests, yet we have failed to see the bigger, long-term picture. The end result of these abominations has been to greatly decrease the number of candidates for teaching regardless of the lower pay and prestige. These abominations have created such terrible working conditions that, not only do fewer want to teach to use their talents and honed skills, but more and more experienced teachers want out because they have lost the working conditions that allow them to do what they do best…TEACH!
The net result? More vacancies, fewer qualified and expert candidates to fill them, more teacher shortages, more “trumped up” reasons to say that schools are failing. Of course there is a wealth-based sliding scale in this The ignored issue that will destroy Public Education. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing: