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Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion: The Voices We Don't Hear: Teachers Who Gave Up
A version of this essay originally appeared on Robert Pondiscio's SubStack. Earlier this month, I was flattered to be invited to a conference at Marquette University Law School, sparked by an article I'd written making the case that education reform has misfired by prioritizing testing, measurement, accountability, and other structural reforms instead of trying to improve classroom practice. A highlight of the convening was the final panel of the day, featuring four teachers and administrators who acknowledged that many of the challenges I cited—poor preparation, chronic problems with student behavior and classroom management, and the overwhelming demands placed on teachers—were real and concerning. But they pushed back politely on my assertion that we have made teaching 'too hard for mere mortals.' I was particularly struck by remarks from Taylor Thompson, an earnest and winningly dedicated first-year fourth-grade teacher from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. '[Teaching is] not an impossible task. It's demanding. It's hard. Each day is not rainbows and singing and dancing,' she said, but it's not impossible 'if you are a collaborative person, work with your peers, and you have a community of coworkers and principals who don't allow you to silo into your own rooms and do your own thing. It can be a very, very empowering job.' Thompson brought with her materials from the Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum; having worked on CKLA's launch during my time at the Core Knowledge Foundation, I was heartened that it contributed to her success. That said, I couldn't help but wonder if her first-year experience would be different—if she'd even have had the time and energy to come to Marquette at all—had she not been given CKLA but an empty plan book, and expected to spend 10, 20, or more hours a week scouring Google, Share My Lesson, or Teachers Pay Teachers for lesson plans and materials? When it was my turn to respond, I told the audience that what they'd just heard didn't contradict my argument; it amplified it. I suggested to my hosts that what we really needed was one more panel: earnest, well-intended people who wanted to teach but grew overwhelmed and walked away from their classrooms. Their absence from the conversation—not a flaw of Marquette's thoughtful event but a field-wide oversight—limits our ability to address the issues driving nearly half of teachers to quit within five years. Those stories are legion. Related After leaving the classroom, I worked briefly at an outfit called Prep for Prep under Ed Boland, who later left the organization to teach in a New York City public high school armed with little more than idealism. His 2016 memoir, The Battle for Room 314, described the relentless student misbehavior, homophobic slurs, and physical fights he endured. He wasn't a minimally prepared Teach For America corps member or, like me, the product of an 'alt cert' teacher prep program. He had two years of graduate school and six months of student teaching that he described as 'a mix of folk wisdom, psycho-jargon, wishful thinking, and out-and-out bullshit.' After one freakishly difficult year, Boland returned to his old job. 'I had taken courses in lesson planning, evaluation, psychology, and research. Next to nothing was said about what a first-year teacher most needs to know: how to control a classroom,' he wrote. NPR's All Things Considered not long ago ran a story about Liz Stepansky, the daughter of two school teachers who wanted to follow in their footsteps, thinking teaching would be a path to a stable, meaningful life. But when she took a job teaching at a South Carolina middle school, she found that she 'had no idea' what she was in for. Her middle school students 'dialed 911, threw balloons filled with bleach and ink in hallways and constantly pulled the fire alarm.''I'd go home and sometimes I'd spend an hour grading papers. And then I'd go back the next day and do it all over again,' she told NPR. 'I remember my paycheck being $800 and something every two weeks.' She transferred to another school, faced similar frustrations and threw in the towel. She's now a speech pathologist. It's not hard to find stories of earnest, well-intended people who want to teach but find the job untenable. But I can't recall hearing from a single one at any of the education and policy conferences I've attended over the last twenty years. Inattention to abandoned careers and disappointed hopes allow false and misleading narratives to gain traction. Last summer, I was invited to give testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Senator Bernie Sanders was proposing a $60,000 minimum teacher salary to address teacher shortages. 'By all means, pay teachers more,' I testified. 'But don't harbor any illusions that doing so will solve the problem.' Higher pay doesn't fix shoddy preparation, unruly classrooms, or the ever-escalating burdens we pile on teachers' plates as we treat schools as not just academic spaces but something akin to the social service agencies of last resort. 'We are asking teachers to do too many things to do any of them well at any salary,' I said. Teaching's aspirational nature attracts optimists, but crushing demands betray them. A RAND study I cited in my Senate testimony found 99% of elementary teachers create their own materials, stealing time from honing their craft and working more closely with children and their parents. A 2024 Pew survey showed only 36% of teachers feel adequately resourced; a 2022 NEA poll revealed nearly half plan to quit due to poor school climate. These are systemic failures, not personal ones. Related Teaching is among our most optimistic and aspirational professions, drawing idealists who believe education can transform lives. But celebrating only the successes—teachers who beat the odds, schools that defy demographics—distorts our vision. As I quipped at Marquette, it's like watching Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs and concluding, 'See? It can be done!' And it can—if you're Aaron Judge. Other fields learn from failure—medicine from misdiagnoses, aviation from crashes. I urged Marquette's audience to imagine a panel of teachers who quit—not to shame them, but to learn. What broke their optimism? What tools were missing? Thompson's success shows what's possible with support. But for every Thompson, countless idealists leave because they were overmatched, felt unprepared or betrayed by poor training or simply couldn't manage chaos. A few days later, Alan Borsuk, who organized and moderated the event at Marquette, told me about a conversation he'd had with a school administrator who was in attendance who disagreed with the notion that teachers who leave are failures. 'She said one of the best teachers they have whose students have done well for year after year is leaving after this year,' Alan said. That teacher, she insisted, was not a failure. Exactly! That teacher didn't fail. We failed that teacher. Education reform must weigh frustration alongside triumph. We need convenings where former teachers speak without judgment: their failures and frustration studied, not stigmatized. There's no magic wand that will make the job easy or friction-free, but when you connect with students and go home feeling successful, there's no job that compares to being a classroom teacher. You feel on top of the world. It's immensely satisfying work. The question ed reformers and policymakers need to ask now is what can we do to make more teachers feel successful and their jobs more doable.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Some Wisconsin school districts are turning to science of reading, despite lack of financial support from state
This is the second of two columns on the state of changes in reading education in Wisconsin. If you're looking to see if the reading education reform law that passed in Wisconsin in 2023 is having any effect, don't look so much to state government, where disputes and delays have meant there's been limited action. Look to places such as the suburban Milwaukee schools in Greendale and the Whitnall district. Or to districts such as New Berlin and Cudahy, which didn't wait for the state law to pass before embracing the phonics-oriented changes pushed by the state law. More: Cudahy Schools' shift to a new reading curriculum looks like it's paying off More: Cudahy's move to science of reading curriculum hasn't been easy, but test scores are encouraging More: Reading looks different now in Cudahy Schools, as students g-r-o-w through science of reading While more than $49 million of the $50 million approved by both legislative Republicans and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has been frozen by the legislature's Joint Committee on Finance as part of a power dispute in the Capitol, some districts have been moving ahead with implementing the "science of reading' called for by the law. In Greendale, reading scores for students were not as alarming as in some other places. But school district leaders felt too many students were not mastering reading by the time they completed third grade. The district has made major progress in adopting curriculum and teaching approaches in line with the science of reading. Superintendent Kim Amidzich said switching from what is often called a balanced literacy approach to teaching children to read using the science of reading was difficult for some teachers. Some were reluctant to change, while some felt guilty about previously using curriculum materials that left some students behind. Maggy Olson, director of equity and instruction for Greendale schools, said a trifecta of patient and supportive work with teachers paid off. The approach emphasized professional training, learning different ways to teach reading and personal development for teachers. Greendale tried several curriculums and settled on Core Knowledge Language Arts or CKLA, one of six curriculum choices endorsed by a statewide early literacy curriculum council created through Act 20. Barb Novak, director of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Office of Literacy, said recently that CKLA has been the most frequent choice of school districts statewide that have purchased new curriculum. Amidzich said the passage of Act 20 provided a good framework for change. As Olson put it, it added to the sense of urgency around getting more students to be capable readers. What the state didn't provide, at least so far, is money. Greendale took a loan from a different state fund to pay for some of the cost of the new curriculum, with the expectation that part of the cost would be reimbursed from the $50 million approved under Act 20. The result of not getting that help is increased financial pressure on the district. But Amidzich and Olson said they were pleased with the how the change was going. 'We see huge results,' Amidzich said. Olson said there have been double digit gains in proficiency rates, and 80% of students are hitting their reading targets. Greendale growth rates are in the top 5% of the state, Amidzich said, and all three of the elementary schools in the district were given five stars, the top rating, in the most recent state report cards for schools. Olson said that at recent meetings of school administrators from across southeast Wisconsin, there has been more talk about reading and more urgency to the conversation. 'We needed a jolt to tell us this matters,' she said, and Act 20 provided that. Brady Reinke, superintendent of Whitnall schools, is a firm supporter of the science of reading. He said, 'Now that we know (what works better), we've got to do something about it. ... It's a moral imperative.' Getting some money from the state to support implementation would help, he said. But not getting the money shouldn't stop schools. 'We can sit here and whine about that, or we can do what's best for kids,' Reinke said. 'You have to prioritize.' If you really believe reading is so important, then you find the money, he said. One recent morning at Seeds of Health Elementary School, a charter school on Milwaukee's south side, a third-grade girl and a reading teacher sat at a table. For one minute, the girl read a passage from a story about frogs, and then, for one minute, read from a story about a boy who loved socks. The teacher kept track of words the girl stumbled on. The result: a quick assessment of how many words she could read per minute and how accurate her reading was. 'Pat yourself on the back, my dear,' the teacher said, praising the girl's effort. The girl did her best to do exactly that. This was a glimpse of one requirement of Act 20 that is being implemented statewide: screening all public school students from 5-year-old kindergarten through third grade to identify those who are in the bottom quarter of students in their grade nationwide. Act 20 calls for those students to get individualized help to improve their reading. The first round of screening in Wisconsin was completed at the end of January. The law calls for screening to be done three times a year going forward — near the start, middle and end of each school year. The DPI specified a specific screening program to be used in all schools. The cost of the screener is being paid by the state from money separate from the $50 million set aside for Act 20. But there is no specific state aid for providing individual help for students or coaching for their teachers. Especially in schools serving low-income populations, well more than a quarter of students will score in the bottom quarter of the national results, which means the obligation to help will be large. How schools will handle that is one of the important unknowns about Act 20's impact. The girl at Seeds of Health scored just above the 25th percentile. But about half the students in the school were below that point. Michael Pointer Mace, director of curriculum and instruction at Seeds of Health, said the school has added a half-hour a day to its reading efforts so there is time to give students both what they need to catch up to their grade level and still get reading and literacy work on their grade level. What about Milwaukee Public Schools, where overall reading scores are among the lowest in the nation? Jennier Mims Howell, chief academic officer for MPS, said results from each student's screening would be included in that student's records, and students would be given help based on their needs. She said MPS also planned to encourage students who need additional reading help to attend summer school. MPS has been using HMH Into Reading as its reading curriculum for several years. It is among those recommended by the state. Act 20 calls for reading teachers statewide to receive training in how to teach reading and specifies a training program known as LETRS. It is not clear how widespread LETRS training is so far, but teachers in districts such as Greendale and some teachers in MPS have been getting the training. Novak, the head of the DPI's literacy office, said she believes Wisconsin school districts as a whole have been changing their approaches to reading instruction in line with Act 20. Pressure is on nationally to get better outcomes, she said, and schools generally are putting more emphasis on teaching fundamental skills. Buying better curriculum, screening children, dropping approaches to reading that have been strongly criticized — these are potentially good steps, she said. But 'none of this matters unless they change the way they are teaching.' Holding back the $49 million that Act 20 said would be made available to schools means some schools have had 'a tremendous out-of-pocket cost,' Novak said. And not funding the coaching work that was intended to improve the teaching of at least some teachers around the state 'really weighs on my heart.' Kathy Champeau, a veteran reading teacher and a leader of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, said her organization remains critical of the science of reading and of the requirements of Act 20. The real issues that are not being addressed, she said, are providing all students the expert teachers and the resources they need. That gets at the heart of why scores statewide have been flat for years and have declined recently, she said. 'Instead, we have a legislation that is based on speculation as to why our test scores are the way they are,' she said. Act 20 relies on private companies to provide curriculum materials, training and screening procedures when reading instruction should rely on educators' expertise, she said. That means teachers are being given training in how to use products but not how to teach, Champeau said. But even as Act 20 has encountered political headwinds — the hold-up on state funding, uncertain prospects for money in the coming two-year budget and continuing resistance from some educators —there appears to be significant action to change reading instruction on a fairly broad basis in Wisconsin. Some if it is a matter of acting with more urgency, some of it is an eagerness to see better results for students, some of it is prodding due to Act 20. But overall, the pressure is on, even if overall scores haven't improved in recent statewide results, and patience will be needed to see if Act 20 pays off. On an optimistic note, the DPI's Novak's said, 'If we move forward in the spirit of Act 20, we'll see a change.' Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Some schools adopt Act 20 curriculum despite lack of state money
