More than half the nation’s teachers are Baby Boomers ages 50 and older and eligible for retirement over the next decade, a report says today. It warns that a retirement “tsunami” could rob schools of valuable experience.
The report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future calls for school administrators to take immediate action to lower attrition rates and establish programs that pass along valuable information from teaching veterans to new teachers.
After the depressing record of public education, it would be a blessing if the Baby Boomer teachers did NOT pass on their experience. What is really sad is that they refused to accept the previous generation’s experience. Statmann
Statmann, I think that is less true than that the current generation of parents have delegated, with all the responsibility and none of the authority, parenting to others. There are problems aplenty in public education, but IMHO the buck stops at home.
BlueOntario: I agree; however, it was the Baby Boomers that passed on their parental experience to the current one. Statmann
Who was it that said “..we must learn from the mistakes of history or we most certainly will repeat them..”
4. Not certain about that, but I do know this one:
Those who CAN remember the past are condemned to live among idiots repeating it.
Steve Setzer
Remember the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) Loans used by the Federal Government to provide enough teachers? It created a glut and then teachers couldn’t find employment. I suspect the Federal Government will respond in a similar fashion this time around. By the way, the two year payment grace period expired while I was in the Army after having been drafted.
Oh! Another crisis! We need to spend more government money to fix it!
Don’t believe a word of this article. I remember reading similar stuff like this back in the 80s when I was in high school and none of it ever panned out. I’m confident that, then as now, it’s just a ploy to fool people into thinking that their services will be valuable and pay will go up. In fact, it’s just a trick perpetrated by government school boards, administrators and unions to increase the supply to (1) keep wages down and (2) maintain union membership, and the need for a union.
Plus, it gives liberals an excuse to spend more government money on scholarships/funding for future teachers – which is good for revenues in academia.
Don’t fall for the trick, folks. If schools want quality, they can pay the salaries required to get it. It’s not complicated.
More than half the nation’s teachers are Baby Boomers ages 50 and older and eligible for retirement over the next decade, a report says today.
Oooh, such scary stats. Let’s see – probably half of teachers over 50 are over 55 – which means in 10 years they will be over 65 – hence – presto – eligible for retirement!
ok, on second thought, I think I read that sentence on boomers over 50 incorrectly, but my main point stands.
Yes, this falls more into the category of “blessing” than “crisis.”
I retired early due to illness and after 28 years teaching HS. However my wife, who is 51 (and also has been teaching for 28 years) is also ready to retire from public school teaching, and is retraining herself to work with children out of the classroom. She’s already had an offer to run a children’s museum. Now there are not too many of those jobs but a majority of teachers in her school would like to leave teaching and switch careers. What is more scary is how many of the young teachers in her school are looking beyond the classroom, disillusioned. In every case, my wife says that the issue is the stress from increased, state required, ‘teaching to the test’ which is squeezing creativity and individuality out of curricula, and from the difficulties stemming from more and more children coming from disfunctional homes. The parents of those homes are the children of Boomers so what goes around, comes around.
I taught many students at university who aimed to be teachers. All but one (who teaches Latin, and is therefore rather sheltered) have left the profession. The reasons: nasty, undsciplined, spoilt kids and aggressive litigious parents. They could take the silly tests and bureaucracy at a pinch, but they did not feel they were making any impact on the students. Public schools are becoming child warehouses.