Let's Scapegoat Teachers Even More

A new report with some not-so-surprising findings about teachers:

American teachers feel stressed out and insignificant, and it may be impacting students’ educations.
Gallup’s State Of America’s Schools Report, released Wednesday, says nearly 70 percent of K – 12 teachers surveyed in a 2012 poll do not feel engaged in their work. The study said they are likely to spread their negative attitudes to co-workers and devote minimal discretionary effort to their jobs.

At the same time, nearly half of teachers reported feeling daily stress. When compared to 12 other occupational groups, teachers were least likely to report feeling like their “opinions seem to count” at work. The survey also found, however, that teachers tend to be satisfied with their lives overall.
While Gallup notes that most American workers -- and not just teachers -- report high levels of disengagement from their jobs, the attitudes of teachers have a direct and tangible impact on the achievement of students.

“The problem is that when teachers are not fully engaged in their work, their students pay the price every day,” says the report. “Disengaged teachers are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires to the classroom. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their students that form the emotional core of the learning process.“

Gee, with all the changes to education policy, school turnarounds, the imposition of the untested Common Core State (sic) Standards, changes to teacher evaluation systems that tie teachers' jobs directly to so-called student performance (i.e., test scores), researchers testifying against due process protections by stating how swell it will be if states can just fire the bottom 5% of teachers every year and the regular bashing teachers take from the media and politicians every day, I can't imagine why so many feel so stressed or disengaged from their jobs.

You know what will solve this problem?

Scapegoating teachers even more than they already have been - yeah, that's it, that's what'll solve this problem.

Get rid of due process protections, seniority rights and other hard-won job rights, impose even more onerous mandates onto them even as you cut school budgets and force them to do much more with much less, and continue to tell America via the corporate media and corporate media shills how public schools are "failing" and it's the fault of "bad" teachers.

I'm sure that will attract young people to want to go into what used to be a noble job but what has lately become synonmous with "blood-sucking" and "lazy good-for-nothing's!"

Not sure when running scams at Goldman Sachs became "God's work" and when teaching children became "blood-sucking," but that's where we're at these days and you bet that plays a large part in why many teachers are feeling so stressed and/or disengaged from their jobs.

That and the 17 day lessons on one short story the education reformers are forcing them to teach.