The Teacher Exodus in Tennessee

Nashville’s NewsChannel5 is reporting that more than 1 in 5 Tennessee teachers want to leave the profession. The teachers in a survey conducted by Professional Educators of Tennessee (PET) indicated that low morale caused by low pay and lack of support is driving the exodus from the profession. The story notes that while teachers are leaving the field, there is a serious shortage of new teachers waiting to replace them.

Among the comments in the survey:

“Support isn’t a blue jean day. It’s giving them the time they need to work on the assigned tasks without sacrificing their own families.”

“I feel underpaid and overworked. I spend extra money and time trying to provide a decent education to my students.”

The mood echoes a national trend that is reaching crisis levels.

The PET survey also noted that Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system is overly onerous, and is based on outdated practices no longer in regular use in the business world. Essentially, the Tennessee Educator Evaluation Model (TEAM) is based on the premise that schools can simply fire their way to better performance.

Here’s what educator and blogger Peter Greene has to say about this flawed idea:

A working paper just issued by five researchers concludes that the “massive effort to institute new high-stakes teacher evaluation systems,” had essentially no effect on “student achievement.”

The term “student achievement”…