You Aren't Going to Retain Teachers

if school districts continue to treat them like shit, like easily replaceable cogs on a wheel. As long as there is still a massive glut of teachers, even if colleges aren't graduating as many teachers as before, this dismal state of affairs will continue.

The author seems to think that "struggling" schools are the problem. Actually, they are not.

The problem is nationwide and is found in all kinds of schools.

The fact is school districts are highly political places. Teachers don't realize when they start out, and what many STILL don't understand, is that they have absolutely no rights in the workplace, with very, very rare exceptions like in NYC. Their "unions" are mostly junk when it comes to helping individual teachers, and teachers find out, often too late, that they must have access to an outside lawyer to keep their jobs and must have a speed dial to EEOC. This is especially critical for teachers over 50, whether new or veteran, because they are the most vulnerable of all to being railroaded out of a career. The truth is teachers are totally at the mercy of school principals, who have unchecked power to destroy careers. Teachers might be a tad more vulnerable in Title I schools than in others, but the problem is still there. Few people whose lives have not been damaged or destroyed by school principals and other administrators even have a clue what it is really like to be targeted and destroyed by school districts with their bottomless pits of money. School districts target and destroy teachers because their lawyers tell them, go ahead and get rid of teachers, force them to sue or settle for a dinky severance package, blackball them forever, and to heck with how much it costs taxpayers. There is also the reality there is still a massive glut of teachers without jobs. While colleges may be experiencing declining enrollment in teachers' colleges, the fact is the job market is still full of unemployed teachers. Most school districts have hundreds of applicants for a single opening--only the least desirable school districts have any real shortages at all--and therefore they can treat teachers like garbage.