Teachers Are Leaving. Students Are Left Behind
We talk of ‘education reform’ as if there is something left to reform. July 27, 2023 3:13 pm ET Photo: Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune/Zuma Press Your editorial “The Post-Pandemic Teaching Loss” (July 21) reminds me that this year is the 40th anniversary of the landmark Education Department report “A Nation at Risk.” It famously concluded, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” What, if anything, has changed over the past four decades? We are now raising our third generation of students and second generation of teachers in this system. We talk of “education reform” as if there is something left to reform. I grew up in this system too, yet the most important books I ever read came from my dad’s bookshelf, not the classroom.
Photo: Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune/Zuma Press
Your editorial “The Post-Pandemic Teaching Loss” (July 21) reminds me that this year is the 40th anniversary of the landmark Education Department report “A Nation at Risk.” It famously concluded, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” What, if anything, has changed over the past four decades?
We are now raising our third generation of students and second generation of teachers in this system. We talk of “education reform” as if there is something left to reform. I grew up in this system too, yet the most important books I ever read came from my dad’s bookshelf, not the classroom.
Nate Braden
Denver
Your editorial rightly bemoans that teachers are leaving the profession in droves. The stresses of Covid and remote learning led to many of our experienced, master teachers quitting or retiring early.
Teaching is a stressful job with impossible goals and expectations. Teachers are expected to ameliorate all the individual, family and societal problems on top of teaching. When my 14-year-old nephew makes $21 an hour washing dishes, including tips, and with the unemployment rate so low, it’s no wonder many teachers are choosing less stressful, more appreciated work elsewhere.
My question is: Who is going to teach in all the private schools popping up to take advantage of vouchers? I’ve worked in private and public schools, and private schools pay much less and have poor or nonexistent retirement benefits. What makes your editorial board so certain vouchers are the answer if good teachers are already so hard to find?
Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas
The educational system in New York was having enough trouble before Covid. Now, serious issues face the postpandemic classroom. Where the money allocated to address these issues ended up is a mystery to me. Let me give you some examples:
In my college classroom, I have seen students who couldn’t add 50-plus-30, or compute 10% of 1,000, without aid of a calculator. Most of my students are one to three years behind in the “three Rs”: reading, writing and arithmetic.
I was told by a New York City teacher that she had a student in the fourth grade who couldn’t write her full name on a piece of paper. She was functionally illiterate.
Eric Rothenburg
Brooklyn, N.Y.
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