If you believe that "many of the demands of teaching (including disruptive students, high expectations from school officials and close scrutiny from parents) are universal" you may also be interested in a recent German study of teacher burnout.
Of course, if you are a veteran educator in Kentucky, you already know the impact of management factors (like high-stakes assessment) on the schools. Any study that fails to account for the powerful effects of a high-stakes testing environment is not likely to mean much.
Since about 1995, school reform has created a philosophical shift in the schools from Equality of educational opportunity to equity of student achievement outcomes. This occurred when schools began disaggregating student achievement data - a much more powerful tool for reform than many people initially realized.
Teachers (and principals) are on the front line. They meet the parents daily. They eat what the public feeds them. In that sense, much of the pressure teachers feel under high-stakes assessment is delivered by parents whose expectations are not met by the schools.
But we should all care about this.As the New York Times reported,
...The issue of teacher burnout is important because American schools today are experiencing high levels of teacher turnover as baby boomers retire and new teachers leave the field. According to the most recent Department of education statistics available, about 269,000 of the nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers, or 8.4 percent, quit the field in the 2003-2004 school year. Thirty percent of them retired, and 56 percent said they left to pursue another career or because they were dissatisfied. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future has calculated that nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone...
The New York Times story concludes,
To be sure, many issues play a role in teacher burnout and turnover. Dwindling school resources, low pay and high expectations for test scores from school districts are just some of the challenges teachers face. But the data from the German study also show that parents can have a big impact on a teacher’s happiness and stress...
1 comment:
From the outside looking in, it seems that it is the students who need the the attention when it comes to managing stress. I have never seen a statistic on the stress of the teachers. I can imagine almost all teachers, especially in big cities, contemplate quiting their jobs. However, I am supprised to see that parents are such a stressor on teachers. Maybe schools should be responsible for stress management programs for teachers.
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