Shifting Paradigms: Teacher Attrition

One of the current movements to systematically enable the abuse of educators is this philosophical debate between veterancy and effectiveness.

The current movement to reform teacher evaluation is necessary but it is not facilitated appropriately.  Our school in particular has multiple 6-figure salary educators as ATR's that teach zero students.  What possible impact do they have on students?  As a school, as a faculty, as administrators, and even as students, there is something clearly odd about these ATR's who show up everyday yet teach nobody.

I can't help but side with the mayor in terms of the need for reform in this arena, however, I cannot advocate their method of implementing these changes.  It's one thing to single-handedly wipe the ATR slate clean, it's another to say, we've done this, this, and this to try to get them back into the classroom and since they haven't been able to, we must let them go.  I don't see any attempt on the DOE's part to systematically assign or train ATR's to remotely want to go back into the classroom.

On another note, there are some serious shifts in paradigm in terms of attrition.  It seems that teaching is the only profession where attrition is not only an accepted reality, but an expectation to close budget gaps.  That's really pitiful.  When you look forward to turning over percentages of your workforce in order to close a future budget shortfall there's a serious problem with the profession itself. Essentially, if you're counting on teachers to burn-out and quit in order to help a municipality close a budget deficit then you have bigger problems in your society than a budget.  It's the dollars and cents of the profession that don't make much sense.

Imagine a world where teachers become the same as cubicle employees.  They're easily assigned, fired, and replaced.  What sort of learning experience does that create for our students?  When a teacher leaves a classroom mid-year there are serious consequences that affect hundreds of students.  These consequences are in no way addressed by this movement to force abusive teacher evaluation measures through state legislatures.

Let's just turn the profession into a revolving door of burnt-out teachers and see what the quality of this high school diploma will be after 3-5 years.  It's a social experiment that is the scary reality in the current reform movement.