My high school, Mumford, has more than 2,000 students. This year, the administrative staff was replaced, we gained some new teachers, and we are losing others. Eight teachers are retiring this year amid the chaos within the school and the system.
As of Jan. 29, two teachers had already retired. And on that day, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, 19 teachers out of 91 were absent. A school counselor told me that the Board of Education would not send that many substitutes to Mumford, and that counselors had to cover for them. Students who did not have teachers that day were sent to the auditorium.
There, students were divided up by classes. Some students listened to music. Others talked to each other or tried to talk on cell phones. Counselors watched to make sure students remained seated. The air roared with conversation. Some students decided not to go to the auditorium and either played around in the hallways or left school.
I was one of the students in the auditorium. I tried to do work for my other classes, but with the noise swirling around me, I couldn’t get anything done. It was a waste of my time. And it is worse for students who have teachers for longer periods of time. Without teachers, school becomes simply a social gathering and a waste of educational time.
Yes, Ugghhhhhhh!
But I’m sure that from the point of view of many students, spending hours chatting instead of in class was a dream come true (wink).
Alas, modern huge high schools like Mumford in Detroit often function more as warehouses for teenagers than as real schools.
Besides the student drop out rate, there’s a less well known problem, the teacher drop out rate, as mentioned in this sad article. No womder it’s hard to recruit and keep good teachers, when their pay gets “deferred” due to a huge budget shortfall, like Detroit’s massive $200 million deficit.
Further evidence why home schooling and private schools are bound to keep attracting more and more students and parents.
David Handy+
As you discover when you stop working in corporate life and start working at home, the actual productive work you accomplish in a day can be compressed down to about 3-4 hours. The rest is fluff. In public schools that’s probably more like 1-2 hours. All of that youth and energy boxed up doing pretty much nothing day after day. What a waste.
Although I have not personally investigated the actual facts surrounding this, I’m going to take an educated guess and say that the school district is probably run much like the rest of Michigan, extremely top-heavy. When schools are run top-heavy (with lots of paid positions on things like councils, administration, and study groups) it is no wonder they don’t have money to pay teachers or pay for adequate supplies for students. In other words, cut unneeded administration, council members and other fluff and put the money where it really ends up doing something helpful, into the people who are actually educating our students. Teachers rarely get recognition, but what they do usually get is a very low income for the amount of education they must go through.
This is an example of why I prefer the Texas system of Independent School Districts, no teacher’s unions, and laws/requirements of teachers and subs. While there are a few districts I wouldn’t work for (Dallas, Arlington), for the most part the education system in Texas has fewer major flaws than most states.
Be sure to note that I am not saying the system is perfect, it is far from! Just better, IMO.
I gave up teaching high school after three miserable years. To make it through the year without losing your hair, you had to go in each day with the mindset that nobody will appreciate a single thing you do, including the administration. That said, you are expected to perform as if your life depended on it. On top of that, the primary indicator of your “success” was someone else’s performance. I asked my students last year how many of them didn’t try on the standardized test because they knew it didn’t count towards their grades, and most raised their hands.