Guest Post by Anthony Cody

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The Metlife survey of American teachers has been much discussed in recent weeks. The biggest red flag I see waving here is the 70% increase, over the past two years, in the number of teachers who are likely to leave the profession in the next five years (from 17% to 29%). Assuming this data is accurate, this amounts to more than a million teachers who are preparing to march out of our classrooms. And this is in addition to the roughly one million baby boomers approaching retirement age! I wonder if the teaching profession as it is now being redesigned and redefined is one that any of us would have chosen when we began teaching? And I especially wonder who would choose to teach in a school with a high level of poverty?

Here is what the Metlife report says:

There is a strong connection between this dissatisfaction and the rising levels of poverty we are seeing impact our schools.

The very strongest educational data available shows a huge correlation between poverty and student achievement. As has been discussed here many times, poverty impacts student achievement in many ways. As unemployment takes hold on a community, and more families lack food security, housing and health care, the impact is felt in the classroom. Students become more transient, because their housing is unstable. They do not have a place to do homework, because they are crashing on someone’s couch. They come to school late because they do not have transportation any more. They eat corn chips for breakfast because they do not have someone helping them get ready for school. And they worry! They are preoccupied with fear and insecurity, and that makes it hard to focus on academics.

The Metlife survey report aligns these conditions with teachers’ job satisfaction, and the likelihood they will leave the profession:

Their schools should be oases of stability in these neighborhoods. But instead, they are similarly buffeted by these economic winds. Art and music programs have been cut, counseling and library staff laid off. And Federal policy continues to demand that states label the 5% to 10% of schools with the lowest test scores as failures, and require they undergo disruptive “turnarounds” or be closed altogether.

When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed in 1965, it was part of the War on Poverty. It was designed to provide all children with fair and equal opportunities to a high quality education. But that law, through NCLB, and now the NCLB waiver process, only delivers funds to schools that implement Federally favored reform projects. Furthermore, schools with the greatest challenges – large numbers of English learners and students in poverty, are subject to the threat of closure, teachers and administrators in fear of being fired for low test scores.

I spent the last four years in Oakland leading a mentoring program that was trying to remedy the very high turnover rate we experience there, even higher among science teachers. The school where I taught for 18 years once had eight stable science teachers. I taught whole families of students, whose younger siblings would follow them. Now there is one science teacher there who has lasted more than a decade, and the other science classes are taught by temporary teachers, who come and go, doing their two or three year-long stints. Our students have instability in their homes, and instability at their schools to match.

When I see the numbers from the MetLife survey I am not surprised. It appears that the difficult conditions I experienced at my school are becoming more widespread.

When I began teaching in 1987, things were a bit different. My school struggled with poverty, but I felt supported by my administration. I was encouraged to be innovative in my classroom. I engaged my students in scientific inquiry – and even had them designing their own experiments. I led an all-girl technology class that met before the school day began. Our science department was supported as we experimented with assessments and lesson study. There are still brave schools where this is allowed and encouraged – but high poverty schools tend to be under such pressure that this is no longer the case.

There were some remarkable reactions to the data about the increase in the number of teachers planning to leave from some of the “reformers.” Some, like Rick Hess, suggested that if these dissatisfied teachers are “lousy or doing lousy work, they should have lousy morale. Hopefully it’ll encourage them to leave sooner.” Unfortunately, I think it is likely to be some of the most creative teachers, working in the most challenging conditions, who are being encouraged to leave by the relentless pressure to increase test scores and the inequitable and unsustainable funding of high poverty schools.

And it must be noted that this 70.5% increase in teachers planning to leave the profession has occurred between 2009 and 2011, on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s watch. Perhaps this is one of the things energizing those who are calling on President Obama to replace him, and shift the direction of federal policy.

I wonder if I would have chosen to begin a teaching career in an urban classroom of 2012?

If you are a teacher, what keeps you in the classroom? What makes you want to leave? Are you considering a career change?