Good teachers forced out of the classroom by bad policy

It happens in many ways. But bad policies, policies that target teachers for blame, that lower their pay while increasing their workloads, that treat them not as valued professionals but as test proctors, that ignore their experience in the classroom in favor of the whims of billionaires, are driving great teachers out of the classroom on a regular basis. New York University professors Eric Klinenberg and Caitlin Zaloom write that "the clear finding" of a recent study they conducted was that:

Many new teachers in the United States are committed to values that extend beyond expediency, narrow self-interest, and the present moment. These are precisely the kind of people who can help young people learn, not just how to make a living, but how to live and what to live for.

But the system almost forces these new teachers toward other occupations.

New teachers lack mentoring and resources for training and professional development, while teachers are pressured by test-based evaluations, all for a profession that's increasingly devalued and under attack. But these pressures don't just hit new teachers.

In Wisconsin, Whitefish Bay High School teacher Christine Kiefer was working on a master's degree and had been teaching math for 10 years when Gov. Scott Walker's infamous Act 10 eliminating collective bargaining for public workers went into effect. She's been forced to abandon both. The master's degree went first, because of funding cuts. With that route to higher pay cut off, and with increasing class sizes, Kiefer told the school board she was resigning:

"Here's my problem: When I started, I had all these incentives to improve and now I am completely stuck," Kiefer told the board. "I have no master's degree, I have no way to increase my salary and there are no incentives in place for improving my practice. Others in my department and in this school make a lot more money than I do and I produce the same, quality results." [...]

"I love teaching kids and I love the kids' families and I love my colleagues and I love Whitefish Bay, but I cannot wait any longer," she said. "I can't stay at a job that sacrifices all my time for my own family'at least two hours every school night and between six to 12 hours every weekend'time after the bell rings, time that produces such good results when there is no good faith effort on the part of the district to pay what I am worth, to pay me what you would probably have to pay an equivalent replacement for me."

Christine Kiefer isn't the only Wisconsin teacher to leave in the wake of Act 10'retirements skyrocketed after the law was passed'and Act 10 isn't the only bad policy pushing dedicated teachers out of the classroom, though, as we'll see below the fold.