CURMUDGUCATION: Britain Is Also Hemorrhaging Teachers

CURMUDGUCATION: Britain Is Also Hemorrhaging Teachers:

Britain Is Also Hemorrhaging Teachers

Hemorrhaging Teacher

Just in case you thought only the US had decided to gut teaching as a profession, thereby driving people out of it, here's Nick Morrison in Forbes pointing out that the UK has some issues as well.

In fact, the article hinges on one striking factoid--

According to the Department for Education’s own census, more teachers left the classroom than entered it in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, only the second time this has happened in the past 10 years.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, England's chief inspector of schools, is noted for a fairly aggressive approach to his job, having recently raised the frequency for school inspection as well as raising a fuss by threatening to inspect Sunday schools as well. Wilshaw likes the idea of golden handcuffs, requiring newly-minted teachers to serve a proscribed time in publicly funded schools until they jump ship. Because nothing enhances education like a teacher who has been forced into a particular classroom when they'd rather be elsewhere.

The ship-jumping has apparently been to well-funded high-paying international schools. Wilshaw hassounded the alarm about this before, and Morrison reported that teachers, particularly in London, cannot afford to live in the communities where they teach.

In addition to the monetary issues, Morrison notes that there are other problems

Workload, a high-stakes testing regime and the low status of teaching also help push teachers out of the classroom, as does the scrutiny of Sir Michael’s own school inspectors.

Sound familiar? Sure it does, as does the government's search for any solution other than paying CURMUDGUCATION: Britain Is Also Hemorrhaging Teachers:


 It's Not The Implementation, Stupid

How can we still be having this conversation? How??

Marc Tucker (he of the infamous Dear Hillary letter outlining the cradle to career pipeline) is over at Ed Week declaring that the Common Core are absolutely awesome and any alleged failure is actually the failure of the whole entire national education system and everyone associated with it. The Common Core Standards are genius-- it was just an implementation problem!

Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope AND nope.

First of all, Tucker builds a whole point around an invalid comparison. To see it thoroughly and accurately skewered, read this post from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider. Bottom line: his idea that putting Common Core into current schools like putting a modern fuel injector into an old car shows a lack of understanding of both education and fuel injection. It is the perfect picture of reformster hubris, the notion that, of course, I know enough about this system to overhaul it completely.

Tucker goes on to list all the many things that should be changed in order to implement the Core properly so that it can be the raging success that it truly is, from changing the way teachers are prepared to changing the way teachers teach to changing the way the publishing industry creates materials etc etc etc.

It reminds me of some freshman dorm conversations from my college days, when someone would say things like, "You know, communism would be a perfect system if only people and governments would behave completely differently." Or every professional development session in which a sales rep explained that the Shiny New Wonkometer System will be a huge help to any classroom teacher who changed all of her goals and techniques. Or everybody who ever cried out, upon being dumped, 


 It's Not The Implementation, Stupid