In the News
Coinciding with Teacher Appreciation Week, Valerie Strauss, Washington Post reporter who writes the Answer Sheet blog, explored how many educators feel the teaching profession lacks the respect it deserves. The article, which includes a number of quotations from MƒA President John Ewing’s Huffington Post piece, highlights how the gestures of Teacher Appreciation Week, while thoughtful, do not address what teachers really want – actions and policies that treat teachers as experts in their profession.
If that sounds good to you, it doesn’t to many teachers, who say that what they really need isn’t free food and a once-a-year exercise in flattery. What they want, they say, is a profession to be respected in a way that accepts educators as experts in their field. They want adequate funding for schools, decent pay, valid assessment, job protections and a true voice in policy making.
In recent years, polls have shown teacher morale to be dropping, and teacher shortages are common in state after state. Many educators say that corporate school reformers have targeted teachers as the “problem” with low-performing schools and have attempted to remove teacher autonomy.
Read the full piece via The Washington Post.