Texas’ lesson in devaluing teachers
Do Texas public school teachers feel appreciated?
If teachers were paid more and had adequate benefits, they could afford to pay their bills and buy themselves the small Teacher Appreciation Week treats parents and principals give them without a second thought. If they felt valued, their morale wouldn’t be so low, and they wouldn’t be fleeing the profession.
But who can blame teachers for quitting or looking for a way out of the classroom? These days in Texas, not only are public school teachers not supported, they are attacked.
Hundreds of teachers have quit this year, risking losing their licenses to teach. Over six months, at least 471 contract abandonment reports have been sent to the state, a record high, according to recent data. This is a 60 percent increase from the 2021 fiscal year, according to the Texas Tribune.
It’s telling how Teacher Appreciation Week, held last week, is celebrated right around the season of STAAR — the $97 million, high-stakes standardized exam that mostly excels at highlighting inequities burdening low-income schools and their teachers.
Worsening student behavior, increased mental health needs and learning gaps exacerbated by the pandemic continue to make teaching difficult; Gov. Greg Abbott’s actions and the GOP’S relentless attacks on public education and students make the job overwhelming.
Consider how last week, Abbott, likely emboldened by the leaked draft decision about Roe v. Wade, threatened to fight the landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe that rejected the denial of public education funding for undocumented children.
Speaking Monday in San Antonio about his “parental
bill of rights,” Abbott touted school choice vouchers that would allow government funding for private or charter schools.
While parents have always mattered in Texas public education, it seems teachers don’t. Why else would Abbott and his supporters accuse and threaten teachers?
While in San Antonio, Abbott made this offensive threat and baseless accusation: “Educators who provide pornographic material will lose their educational credentials, forfeit their retirement benefits and be placed on a do-not-hirelist.”
Part of Abbott’s pledge is to keep fully funding schools while empowering parents who support his policies banning mask mandates on campus, letting parents choose when their students return to the classroom during COVID-19 and banning “critical race theory” in Texas schools.
There’s a lot to unpack about this dynamic — Abbott saying
he will fully fund schools as he undermines them and caters to conservatives — but it all hinges on the GOP’S obsession with red meat fights that are based on fake problems. Let’s be clear: There is no porn in schools. Sex education curriculum is developed with expert input — and parents must opt in. Traditional public schools aren’t even adequately funded now; continuing to add charter schools or offer vouchers to private schools would only make matters worse.
Texas School Alliance — a superintendent-led education organization that comprises 44 of the largest school districts in Texas — calls Abbott’s proposal a “proposed voucher scheme,” saying the math doesn’t work, especially because it offers a tuition break for the wealthiest Texans, who already send their children to private schools.
School districts already can’t afford to give teachers fair raises. A couple days after the May 3 Schertz-cibolo-universal
City ISD budget meeting in which administrators proposed a 1.5 percent raise for teachers, an anonymous teacher’s letter was posted to Facebook.
In her letter, the teacher called the raise “pitiful” and a “serious insult during Teacher Appreciation Week.” She described a lack of custodians, leading to teachers and volunteer students helping clean.
She wrote about how teachers innovated during and after the pandemic. She called for an increase in pay and a decrease in insurance costs. She said the school board and superintendent are “‘complicit in a system that gives lip service to the importance of teachers in our students’ lives but cannot pay them a living and competitive wage.”
Likewise, parents in the district who reached out to me have said they are unhappy with administrators getting raises while teachers don’t.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Texas teacher or teacher organization that disagrees, but state leaders are mostly to blame.
Constant changes and requirements add to teachers’ stress while their pay remains stagnant. Consider the new requirement for kindergarten through third grade to take a 60- to 120-hour course on reading. This as they are working through monumental challenges in their classrooms.
The recent Every Texan and Texas American Federation of Teachers joint report, “The Lost Decade,” sheds a damning light on underfunded schools, underpaid educators and staffing shortages.
As Texas AFT reported in February, a survey of its members showed that 66 percent considered leaving their profession in the past year, saying the primary motivator for keeping them in public education would be an increase in their salaries.
A lack of state funding holds districts back from increasing pay for educators. Texas ranks 45th nationally in per-pupil funding, Texas AFT said last month.
And filling teaching positions could get even more difficult.
Our state is making it more difficult to become a teacher by requiring the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment, a more expensive and rigorous exam that requires essay questions, a sample lesson plan, a teaching video and a student progress report. The exam costs nearly $200 more than the current Professional Responsibilities exam and is proven as a barrier for people of color. New York and Washington stopped using it.
Do teachers feel appreciated? If they did, we wouldn’t be in danger of “hemorrhaging” them, as the anonymous teacher wrote on Facebook.
Texas should overhaul the way it funds and regulates education. More must be done to retain, attract and certify new teachers. Instead, Texas pursues policies that are pushing teachers away.
When will Texas leaders act with urgency to save teachers? School can’t happen without them.