Teacher burnout? Blame the Parents.

That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping.

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...

All that girl talk could be bad for teens

Dwelling on boy trouble, party snubs

could lead to depression, study says

NEW YORK - Girls who discuss their problems extensively with friends may be at increased risk of developing depression and anxiety symptoms, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed 813 children and teenagers for 6 months, found that girls who devoted much time to talking about their problems with friends were more likely to develop depression or anxiety compared with those who did not.

Researchers suspect that such “co-rumination” causes some girls to dwell on fleeting problems like boy trouble and party snubs, leading to persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness or worry.

On top of this, girls who spend time hashing out their problems may leave little room for positive activities that could make them feel better, according to Dr. Amanda J. Rose, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

“Talking about problems in moderation definitely is healthy,” Rose told Reuters Health. But, she said, ”co-rumination seems to be too much of a good thing.”

The good part, Rose and her colleagues found, was that girls who tended to co-ruminate also tended to say they felt close to their friends. However, they were still more likely to show increasing depression and anxiety symptoms than other girls were.

In contrast, boys who discussed problems with their friends reported more positive friendships and had no increased risk of developing emotional difficulties...

This from MSNBC.